Maybe we need a Cataclysm

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I did not realize there was a limit of just one.

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Now you know. This stunt that Yoshi pulled wasn't even an ace up his sleeve; it was betting everything on two-of-a-kind with a stern poker face at best. Not only will the man never use it again on FFXIV, he very likely won't gamble like that again in his life. It could have easily gone the otherway, and none of us would even know who he is today.

I don't want to say he was entirely lucky. That brain of his deserves a ton of credit, and he can throw a strawberry through a battleship. But the game is not in a state of crisis like it was when he made the decision to make this move.

Saying the world should have a cataclysm and change the landscape/entirety of Eorzea just to change the roulette grind is silly.

The denizens of the general discussion board descending on the OP like a pack of rabid hyenas in heat is sillier. Calm down, guys. It was just a suggestion. A silly, completely out of proportion to the problem suggestion, imho, but still. This post isn't a troll. This isn't militaryvet123 or titanman or whoever the new guy is who made a ridiculously long post that starts with "Why does everyone hate that I want to make the game better?". Its not even a reddit copypasta. Chill.



And, adding flight to the ARR zones was not just a technical matter of adding a ceiling and turning on fly. They had to add to a lot of landscapes and create some assets you couldn't see from the ground before.

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

Saying the world should have a cataclysm and change the landscape/entirety of Eorzea just to change the roulette grind is silly.

The denizens of the general discussion board descending on the OP like a pack of rabid hyenas in heat is sillier. Calm down, guys. It was just a suggestion. A silly, completely out of proportion to the problem suggestion, imho, but still. This post isn't a troll. This isn't militaryvet123 or titanman or whoever the new guy is who made a ridiculously long post that starts with "Why does everyone hate that I want to make the game better?". Its not even a reddit copypasta. Chill.



And, adding flight to the ARR zones was not just a technical matter of adding a ceiling and turning on fly. They had to add to a lot of landscapes and create some assets you couldn't see from the ground before.

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Actually, it was literally taking the same map and adding traversable z-axis with the same exact invisible wall collision that is on every other flight-capable space. They did not add anything but flight and if you'd done any research into the game's development you'd have noticed this... But I don't blame you, most people are not aware of the actual size of the ARR maps or that they are filled with redundant wastes of memory /rendering.

For game development period, the initial development cost is always the highest hurdle to overcome. It's actually embarrassing how little content they are adding at this point and speaks largely of the culture we are in.

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Originally Posted by Evrardoux

Actually, it was literally taking the same map and adding traversable z-axis with the same exact invisible wall collision that is on every other flight-capable space. They did not add anything but flight and if you'd done any research into the game's development you'd have noticed this.

For game development period, the initial development cost is always the highest hurdle to overcome. It's actually embarrassing how little content they are adding at this point and speaks largely of the culture we are in.

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They're on record as saying they needed to add to the landscape in places. Cus normally, since those places weren't visible before, they didn't bother having anything there to render.

Also, the draw distance and other issues that were mentioned to you before. Source: https://www.millenium.gg/news/19660.html

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Millenium: You mentioned the cost of adding flying mounts to the ARR regions, could you tell us more about what this update represents in terms of workload?

Yoshi-P: *"*The areas in the ARR maps were originally made without any consideration for flying. There are many dedicated elements that must be addressed when incorporating flying, such as the level of detail of objects when viewed from a distance, the number and range of objects visible when flying, and collision settings for takeoff/landing.

Since none of this work was conducted for the areas in ARR, the amount of work involved in implementing all these elements and in debugging was enough to cause a headache for our staff... Both the dev team and QA team would be over the moon if you all take to the skies and enjoy the ride."

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I wasn't claiming it was the highest of highest development costs to add flight to the old zones. Just that there were more considerations than simply "adding a traversable z axis".

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Originally Posted by Evrardoux

They did not add anything but flight and if you'd done any research into the game's development you'd have noticed this...

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As someone who has personally been behind the scenes of a glitch around Ul'dah, I can tell you that there are, indeed, more things that had to be done than 'add flight' to ARR areas.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

After a point then it just gets dumb. "Oh no, the world explodes all the time, oh well. LOOK SUDDENLY ITS A NEW GAME! only works once.

After that, MAKE A NEW GAME!

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Except in this world specifically, you can absolutely have more that one.....

or do you not read the story?

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Originally Posted by SakiKojiro

Except in this world specifically, you can absolutely have more that one.....

or do you not read the story?

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I've read the story. The only way we can have another 'cataclysm' is for the remaining Ascians to succeed. Whoops?

Well, WoW Catalysm fif killed the game itself, literally and metaphorically. It is not something that current FF14 requires and I would like to see FF14 maintains its current course.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Well, WoW Catalysm literally killed the game itself, literally and metaphorically. It is not something that current FF14 requires and I would like to see FF14 maintains its current course.

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As someone who played WoW back then, Cataclysm was the first step in the wrong direction but it did not "kill" the game. The zone reworks for example were a net gain.
What did ultimately "kill" the game for me and the majority of my circle was the disappointment that was Warlords of Draenor after years of the game developing in a direction we did not like.

I still did not grow tired of telling anyone who will listen that Wrath of the Lich King was the best expansion that game ever had, though.

As for FFXIV? We'll have to see where things go when the Ascian arc is wrapped up.
They'll have to consider an alternative starting point for new players sometime in the not too distant future because the required number of MSQs for people to go through is already daunting enough without heaping another three Expansions worth of Quests onto it. The start of a new saga seems like a decent enough opportunity to do so.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

We already had a cataclysm.

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Um..
Last time I checked we had... like eight?
And wasn't the Thundering also a cataclysmic event?

Honestly, I would like another cataclysm if it meant we get a real BLU, a glamour dresser or classes that are more than just differently coloured DPS just to name a few.

If I wanted a game with a different way of progression, I would just play a different game.

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Originally Posted by Astrus

As someone who played WoW back then, Cataclysm was the first step in the wrong direction but it did not "kill" the game. The zone reworks for example were a net gain.
What did ultimately "kill" the game for me and the majority of my circle was the disappointment that was Warlords of Draenor after years of the game developing in a direction we did not like.

I still did not grow tired of telling anyone who will listen that Wrath of the Lich King was the best expansion that game ever had, though.

As for FFXIV? We'll have to see where things go when the Ascian arc is wrapped up.
They'll have to consider an alternative starting point for new players sometime in the not too distant future because the required number of MSQs for people to go through is already daunting enough without heaping another three Expansions worth of Quests onto it. The start of a new saga seems like a decent enough opportunity to do so.

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I can’t agree as I am seeing Catalysm killed raiding and guilds. It also destroyed the original player base and the community established. I am pretty sure I am not only one who only raid because of friends we knew before Catalysm and don’t gives a horse crap on people we pick up to full the gap after Catalysm

We've already had more than one "Cataclysm".
The first one was the end of 1.0/start of 2.0

And the other is what happened to the first. We explore the aftermath of their Cataclysm.

If you mean like the change from 1.0 to 2.0, we'll never get that again. That was a big hail mary to save a floundering game that was costing the company a lot of money. It was like a Spirits Within level disaster for Squeenix, and it's kinda nuts that they didn't just cut their losses and shutter the project. But now the game is one of their most successful ongoing projects, so they have no financial reason to rebuild the game a second time. Sure, it would be nice to have a game not built on spaghetti code that could reach greater heights, but from a business perspective, there's zero reason to risk what they currently have as long as the game's numbers are continuing to climb. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush and all that.

If you mean like a WoW esque cataclysm, that likely won't happen either unless they are able to only destroy stuff just enough that the general landscape stays the same. Something like the mountain exploding next to Komra where they can instance it between players who are far enough in the raid to see it and those who aren't. It's visually different but doesn't affect what people can do movement wise. Since unlike WoW, XIV is sticking really hard to the idea that you play the story from start to finish instead of just jumping into whatever is current, they aren't going to do anything to the landscape that would make the early game not work. And they likely also aren't going to have two versions of every zone since that would split the playerbase between those who are at X point in the story and those who aren't, which would make certain areas suddenly a lot less populated.

That said, I wouldn't mind if they left the time bubble. NPCs at least can be changed without affecting instances too much.

I don't know about a cataclysm, but I feel like FFXIV would benefit from a PSO2: New Genesis type of update.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Um..
Last time I checked we had... like eight?
And wasn't the Thundering also a cataclysmic event?

Honestly, I would like another cataclysm if it meant we get a real BLU, a glamour dresser or classes that are more than just differently coloured DPS just to name a few.

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It really shouldn't have to be pointed out that we are witness to only one of the cataclysmic events that lead to the rejoining of one of Hydaelyn's shards. These things don't happen like weather change patterns. The 6th calamity iirc was 1500 summers past. Even if I'm off, it was a long arse time ago.

I still can't deny that there are players whom for some odd reason want this to happen. It's not going to happen again for XIV though. However, a possibility is to launch a XIV-2 single player game wherein the events take place after the 8th. This might not bode well for some players though as the premise for this would likely be the aftermath of the death of the WoL/WoD. That actually sounds kind of interesting to be honest.

Anywho, I find that players who want Yoshi to drop another bomb on XIV seem to be generally unhappy with it, and are pretty ripe to start up a new game. I strongly suggest they do so if this is the case.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

What the game needs is what they did with 1.0 to 2.0 but without sacrificing the current service. This means the company itself would have to hire more people, you know, invest in your own product and service for the betterment of it, and do this over a 2-4 year period (or however long it takes).
That, or just invest on a new FF mmo that isn't held back.

Edit: Thinking about it, how about they get Sony to invest in this kind of upgrade just like Microsoft invested in Sega for Phantasy Star online 2's substantial upgrade coming next year.

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It'll never appear on Xbox if Sony put any kind of money towards it. I mean if you don't care about them thats fine. I play on Playstation so if they did do that it wouldn't effect me. Now that I think about I almost agree...

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

I can’t agree as I am seeing Catalysm killed raiding and guilds. It also destroyed the original player base and the community established. I am pretty sure I am not only one who only raid because of friends we knew before Catalysm and don’t gives a horse crap on people we pick up to full the gap after Catalysm

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Its poor class balance and, therein, difficulty killed raiding guilds, not a change to the world from 2 expansions prior that would only affect new alt classes and better flesh out their leveling experience.

It did not destroy the original player base.

It did not destroy the community, outside of the aforementioned raid guilds getting tired of being forced to reroll to a handful of jobs to clear cutting edge content because they were so contextually overpowered and the checks were so tight.

Sure, you probably weren't the only person to care only about the friends you had up to a given expansion, and care not at all for all the other people who continued playing the game after your friends' departure, but... what does that have to with Cataclysm™? The same can be said for every expansion.

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On (the broader) topic:

The OP is referring to only one thing: a sweeping change, by way of some large event, by which to reinvigorate the open world and various systems (e.g. of progression). All other parts of a "cataclysm", in reference to WoW or otherwise, are besides the point. Let's not conflate them.

I don't see how the two things are linked.

You can redesign the game systems without altering the story setting.

You can alter the story setting without making any updates to the surrounding game systems.

You're asking specifically for one of these things when really you want the other.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

It really shouldn't have to be pointed out that we are witness to only one of the cataclysmic events that lead to the rejoining of one of Hydaelyn's shards. These things don't happen like weather change patterns. The 6th calamity iirc was 1500 summers past. Even if I'm off, it was a long arse time ago.

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Yeah. The writers' hands are really tied. I mean, it's not like it's a fantasy setting or anything... or that we go up against Zody who's part of the reason why we have shards?
But, that really shouldn't have to be pointed out. :p

On a more serious note, I don't really mind what the end up calling it if it were to happen, but I'm starting to like PSO's approach to it.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

It really shouldn't have to be pointed out that we are witness to only one of the cataclysmic events that lead to the rejoining of one of Hydaelyn's shards. These things don't happen like weather change patterns. The 6th calamity iirc was 1500 summers past. Even if I'm off, it was a long arse time ago.

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To be fair, in the alternate timeline we averted due to the events of Shadowbringers, we're only months (or less) away from the Eighth Calamity.

The events of Shadowbringers are also very clear that another Calamity is not something we should be wishing for.

Well we the players could theoretically wish for one for the sake of story possibilities.

Though I wouldn't want one to happen so soon considering we just averted one in 5.0

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The OP is referring to only one thing: a sweeping change, by way of some large event, by which to reinvigorate the open world and various systems (e.g. of progression). All other parts of a "cataclysm", in reference to WoW or otherwise, are besides the point. Let's not conflate them.

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The problem is that such a "sweeping change, by way of some large event," disturbs the leveling experience story-wise like Cataclysm in WoW. In FFXIV, 1.0 to 2.0 only works because it's a reset of the game and essentially your character (with people not remembering 1.0 characters).

So unless SE is willing to move the player starting experience forward in the story timeline, which is more doubtful now given the recent ARR revamp, another calamity would not be appropriate. Not to mention that Shadowbringers was about preventing a calamity and this overall story arc coming to its end, which should be the end of all calamities altogether, one way or another.

Sweeping change can still occur, but not with some large event that physically changes the existing world in a large scale like a calamity.

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Originally Posted by linayar

Sweeping change can still occur, but not with some large event that physically changes the existing world in a large scale like a calamity.

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I think the most likely thing to happen is if we do see another calamity it will be somewhere that we haven't been to yet. As you have said SE have just revamped ARR. There is no way they will render all that work irrelevant by having a calamity remove that content. Also by having it somewhere we haven't been to yet means the places that players love stay intact. I recall in WoW's Cataclysm expansion many players were upset by how some of the zones changed.

And no I don't mean a calamity by ascian design, I just mean a large scale disaster in general. SE have more or less closed the book on ascian calamities, and I get the impression that a certain someone who was revealed at the end of 5.3 msq is more interested in seeing people suffer rather than just erase them entirely. You can't play with your toys if they're turned to dust.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

First it's a calamity here. This isn't WoW.

And the only thing we need is to bring the Ascians/Garlemald story to a close. We don't need another world shattering event, just a closure to this already way to drug out storyline and the start of something new. With it they could introduce new systems and retire old ones. Could still keep the old storyline intact and have a new set of "starter" zones and just link them somehow early on so ppl have access to the original areas and stories as well as giving ppl the option to choose if they want to start in the new or old story.

Could even make coming back to the original areas a side quest that incorporate the original opening cutscene of coming to one of the 3 city states on the choco carriage.

So many possibilities.

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One idea? Just consign the old MSQ to NG+, and allow new characters to access it after they finish the new one up to X point. I'm intentionally not going to pick a breakpoint because all of them have good reasons for and against being used.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Yeah. The writers' hands are really tied. I mean, it's not like it's a fantasy setting or anything... or that we go up against Zody who's part of the reason why we have shards?
But, that really shouldn't have to be pointed out. :p

On a more serious note, I don't really mind what the end up calling it if it were to happen, but I'm starting to like PSO's approach to it.

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So if Frodo spent the entirety of the Lord of the Rings Flying to Mount Doom on a cloud of magical rainbow farts before defeating Sauron with a super powerful multicoloured guff. Your reposnse to people saying how utterly ridiculous that scenario would be: It'S noT LiKE iT's A FaNTaSy sEtTinG OR anYthInG GuYz.

Sigh, you can't deal with all your imaginary problems with calamities.

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Originally Posted by Sequine

One idea? Just consign the old MSQ to NG+, and allow new characters to access it after they finish the new one up to X point. I'm intentionally not going to pick a breakpoint because all of them have good reasons for and against being used.

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There is no real need to push it to New Game+, there are already very few rewards to the msq and NG+ would take even these away. If nothing else, keeping it intact would be a great way to level alt jobs for new players with the added bonus of the mounts, orchestrations, furnishing, etc. already included in them. And not add the extra work for the devs of trying to find alternate ways to open dungeons and anything else locked behind the msq, like primals and raids.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I am going to share a real controversial opinion here, but maybe it would be a good idea to have another cataclysm. There is nothing really wrong with the game and it doesn't need a restart but I feel that something like this could really energize the players and maybe give the development team a chance to work themselves out of some of the very rigid loops they have designed. For instance we have been running roulettes for tomestones to get new gear for 7 years now.

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I'm not convinced we'd need a calamity to change those traditional gameplay loops. There isn't any in-world reason why we have to keep getting new kinds of tomestones. Heck, I don't know an in-world reason for why we get any kind of tomestones, why we get different amounts and types from different kinds of content, and what does Rowena even do with them. There's no in-world reason for us to befriend three beast tribes per expansion and for them to offer us three quests per day, no more and no less. Even character levels have to be largely meaningless in-world, or else Garlemald should send a Lv70 soldier from Ghimlyt Dark into the Eorzean cities and capture them from their Lv35 defenders. The game can easily be freshened up without a calamity.

Introducing another calamity would likely involve a reset akin to the 2.0 release, and to be honest, I probably wouldn't have the energy to start over in a new game. Especially not at the moment when I barely have enough time to keep up with the patches.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

I think the most likely thing to happen is if we do see another calamity it will be somewhere that we haven't been to yet. As you have said SE have just revamped ARR. There is no way they will render all that work irrelevant by having a calamity remove that content. Also by having it somewhere we haven't been to yet means the places that players love stay intact. I recall in WoW's Cataclysm expansion many players were upset by how some of the zones changed.

And no I don't mean a calamity by ascian design, I just mean a large scale disaster in general. SE have more or less closed the book on ascian calamities, and I get the impression that a certain someone who was revealed at the end of 5.3 msq is more interested in seeing people suffer rather than just erase them entirely. You can't play with your toys if they're turned to dust.

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Yeah, the only problem with tying systems change to that type of event is that it will only be applicable to the new zones.

If the OP wants a change that affects the entire game at all levels, then it would have to be its own change with no tie to any world event.

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Originally Posted by Sequine

One idea? Just consign the old MSQ to NG+, and allow new characters to access it after they finish the new one up to X point. I'm intentionally not going to pick a breakpoint because all of them have good reasons for and against being used.

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That could've been a plausible idea before 5.3.

With 5.3, there is the ARR revamp and HW is now part of the free trial. They're not going to move that much content to NG+ anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by linayar

The problem is that such a "sweeping change, by way of some large event," disturbs the leveling experience story-wise like Cataclysm in WoW.

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Not necessarily. Take the more recent change of the world being overrun by Nzoth's corruption, for example: that only takes effect after one has encountered Nzoth, in the endgame. Now, that particular example doesn't have the presence that the TC was looking for, as it was only ever meant to be a story-immersion component rather than sweeping change, but the same could as easily have occurred for Cataclysm, bringing players through what parts they wanted of the original experience and then reopening the original world through its changes after Deathwing's awakening.

It just depends on the changes one wishes to make and what range they wish to affect. The "sweeping change" could occur at endgame, and yet provide excuse for improvements at endgame and so forth that in turn provide excuse to make general improvements to the leveling experience, all without retroactively touching the game's storylines in any way.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Not necessarily. Take the more recent change of the world being overrun by Nzoth's corruption, for example: that only takes effect after one has encountered Nzoth, in the endgame.

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I'm not sure what you mean by this. You don't encounter N'zoth until you get inside the raid. Meanwhile, you can experience the corruption effect, including gears that can corrupt, before you even do the 8.3 starting quest that gets you the cloak. In fact, in the beginning, people in LFR can even go to N'zoth without getting the cloak before Blizzard fixed it eventually.

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Now, that particular example doesn't have the presence that the TC was looking for, as it was only ever meant to be a story-immersion component rather than sweeping change, but the same could as easily have occurred for Cataclysm, bringing players through what parts they wanted of the original experience and then reopening the original world through its changes after Deathwing's awakening.

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I think they just wanted to redo quests and add flying to the original zones and they used Deathwing as lore reason, so the quests had to reflect that even though they're at low levels. If they didn't tie it to Deathwing, they wouldn't even need the Cataclysm itself and just have Deathwing be another threat without affecting the landscape.

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It just depends on the changes one wishes to make and what range they wish to affect. The "sweeping change" could occur at endgame, and yet provide excuse for improvements at endgame and so forth that in turn provide excuse to make general improvements to the leveling experience, all without retroactively touching the game's storylines in any way.

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You have to be careful with the part in bold.

For example, you can change the FATE system in this game and tie it to an event that happens at MSQ level 80, but if you do that, it does not make any sense for that change to be experienced by people who have not done that quest. Or, you can just change the FATE system without tying it to any particular event and make its effect felt throughout the whole game.

Anyways, after rereading the OP, I hope that the roulette for tomestones isn't going to change. The point is to give max level players a reason to do old duties and help others queue, so I'm not sure how a calamity is supposed to change that while still helping out the queue.

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Originally Posted by linayar

I'm not sure what you mean by this. You don't encounter N'zoth until you get inside the raid. Meanwhile, you can experience the corruption effect, including gears that can corrupt, before you even do the 8.3 starting quest that gets you the cloak. In fact, in the beginning, people in LFR can even go to N'zoth without getting the cloak before Blizzard fixed it eventually.

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I'm referring to the entity in the plot, not just the final boss fight (or trivialized LFR version thereof). My alts have no trouble leveling through Uldum just because that zone is later reused for endgame content.

Nzoth had already spoken to us (literally getting in our heads) well before the 8.3 starting quest. Heck, his name's been tossed around a fair bit since the previous expansion and was a prominent lore figure behind the both the 8.1 and 8.2 raid series. He was even featured in a cinematic before BfA was released.

He's not exactly "an unknown" prior to his fight; he's the central antagonist of the whole expansion, just acting through various other agents until that final boss encounter.

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For example, you can change the FATE system in this game and tie it to an event that happens at MSQ level 80, but if you do that, it does not make any sense for that change to be experienced by people who have not done that quest.

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It absolutely can. You can build up cooler uses of FATE's central mechanics, allowing for -- for once -- a truly interesting or difficult FATE, and then trickle those interesting mechanics down across all prior FATEs. You don't need 'Latest Ascian Boi X' to feature prominently in each of those FATEs for them to make use of the tech.

Similarly, you can develop, say, more interesting gearing or upgrade/augmentation systems as a central feature for a new raid tier, but still make use of parts of those concepts (with the lore in no way conflicted) across the game as a whole.

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Anyways, after rereading the OP, I hope that the roulette for tomestones isn't going to change. The point is to give max level players a reason to do old duties and help others queue, so I'm not sure how a calamity is supposed to change that while still helping out the queue.

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Same, honestly. I mean, I do want to see an actual Expert Roulette at some point, and content upscaling, and a ton of other features to make more efficient use of development time as considered over more than just the latest patch, but the purpose of roulettes is a good one.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'm referring to the entity in the plot, not just the final boss fight (or trivialized LFR version thereof). My alts have no trouble leveling through Uldum just because that zone is later reused for endgame content.

Nzoth had already spoken to us (literally getting in our heads) well before the 8.3 starting quest. Heck, his name's been tossed around a fair bit since the previous expansion and was a prominent lore figure behind the both the 8.1 and 8.2 raid series. He was even featured in a cinematic before BfA was released.

He's not exactly "an unknown" prior to his fight; he's the central antagonist of the whole expansion, just acting through various other agents until that final boss encounter.

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Ok, so I didn't have an alt that could level through Uldum at the time, so I'll take your word on that, and that's good. However, maybe it's because WoW separates level from quest progression, but my alt that was still doing initial BfA zone quests that got to 120 and did world quests got corrupted gear even though corruption was only supposed to happen because of N'zoth being freed, which doesn't even happen until the end of 8.2 with the EP raid. So that's the type of sweeping change that (hopefully) would not happen in FFXIV.

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It absolutely can. You can build up cooler uses of FATE's central mechanics, allowing for -- for once -- a truly interesting or difficult FATE, and then trickle those interesting mechanics down across all prior FATEs. You don't 'Latest Ascian Boi X' to feature prominently in those FATEs for them to make use of the tech.

Similarly, you can develop, say, more interesting gearing or upgrade/augmentation systems as a central feature for a new raid tier, but still make use of parts of those concepts (lore in no way conflicted) across the game as a whole.

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In both cases, the change seems separate from any specific event, and that's fine.

To use N'zoth again as an example:

You can develop a corruption-like system and not tie it to N'zoth and make it available on gears at all level (1-120 pre-Shadowlands). But if you make a system and calls it corruption and say it's from N'zoth escaping from prison, then it should not be available to players who have not done the quest to see N'zoth freed, even if they're at level 120.

But WoW is a different game, so corruption is available (at 120, I think). But to go back to FFXIV, I don't think it should happen here. If you want to make a generic change, then just change it.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It absolutely can. You can build up cooler uses of FATE's central mechanics, allowing for -- for once -- a truly interesting or difficult FATE, and then trickle those interesting mechanics down across all prior FATEs. You don't 'Latest Ascian Boi X' to feature prominently in those FATEs for them to make use of the tech.

Similarly, you can develop, say, more interesting gearing or upgrade/augmentation systems as a central feature for a new raid tier, but still make use of parts of those concepts (lore in no way conflicted) across the game as a whole.

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Yes, they can improve game mechanics in a way that that has no impact on the game's lore. That's the opposite of the OP's argument, which seems to be that it's somehow necessary to have a cataclysm calamity to achieve that effect.

If you want gameplay improvements, ask for gameplay improvements. Don't ask to restructure the game zones to achieve that objective, because they aren't linked.

The zones stay as they are because they are set pieces for the MSQ. Whether it's current, whether it's via NG+, those zones need to retain their physical forms so new and old players can share that space.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

I am going to share a real controversial opinion here, but maybe it would be a good idea to have another cataclysm. There is nothing really wrong with the game and it doesn't need a restart but I feel that something like this could really energize the players and maybe give the development team a chance to work themselves out of some of the very rigid loops they have designed. For instance we have been running roulettes for tomestones to get new gear for 7 years now.

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They just need to redesign ARR dungeons and raids to make them more interesting. Even with the ARR streamline it's still really borin

With the way this expansion is ending, I think we are headed towards some kind of world altering event soon. Probably towards endwalker. While I don't think we necessarily need another 'calamity', the same story line can't go on forever. Another giant moon primal or evil towers doing evil tower things could be one way they transition out of this story line and into another.

I hope we never stop running roulettes for tomestones. Don't fix what isn't broken.

As odd as it might seem, I don't think killing the last boss and everyone lived happily ever after is nearly as interesting as the last boss winning and trying to scramble to pick up the pieces in the endgame.

Heavensward had this to an extent; Kefka did this as well. Though it would be an absolutely monumental task that isn't likely to ever happen, I would *love* to see an Eorzean World of Ruin.

That said, I'm glad they dropped a piano on Garlemald offscreen rather than have us go through a reskinned Stormblood. Too bad they missed their chance to offscreen Lyse.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

There is nothing really wrong with the game and it doesn't need a restart but I feel that something like this could really energize the players and maybe give the development team a chance to work themselves out of some of the very rigid loops they have designed.

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Why fix it if it's not broken? The rigid loops they designed are designed are rigid for a reason. Cataclysm destroyed WoW both in game and IRL. Just take a look at this video and observe what happened to WoW after December 2010, when Cataclysm was released: https://youtu.be/rU19OFZ0vz4?t=173

Spoiler: Within a year it had lost half of its players. Players like roulettes and tomestones. Change for the sake of change is never good. Removing the game's most popular content just to switch things up is a great way to alienate your players and foster hostility.

Why the focus on tomestone grinding? If you are not grinding tomestones, you will be grinding something, and complaining about that.

The real problem you're detecting, is that the game only has one real output--a boss battle with mechanics that try to foil your rotation. Every bit of content culminates in essentially the same thing.

I happen to enjoy the system, but it is very limited. It will never not be something else. Whatever rewards are attached to that are immaterial. Changing them will not change the complaints.