Expansion is only temporarily enjoyable. Fails to fix all main flaws.

We can't have varied builds because people will go on the internet and look at guides? Sounds just like what happens with every single piece of content currently in the game.

Thing is guys ffxiv 1.0 almost destroyed SE so ya their going to be more careful when it comes to this game but just be patient I'm sure they will be puting in some risky content eventually we don't even know everything their putting into 3.1.

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Originally Posted by Zaft

This. There is always one correct choice. The only thing builds give you is the illusion of choice.

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There's still something fun about seeing all those shiny buttons where you could dump your skill points and whatnot, even if realistically there's only one real way to do it.

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Originally Posted by Kekeri

I disagree with this. Other MMOs and games have been more flexible with respect to builds.

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WoW had big enough skilltrees to dump all your points into one and not fill it completely. Know what happened? They scrapped all of that, because even the devs themselves said that there was only one real way to build your character depending on your spec and if you played pvp or pve, and called many of their talents "newbie traps". Those talents sounded good on paper, but were pretty much useless in any real scenario.

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Originally Posted by Ferocious

Sure, plenty of examples. Rift (before it went F2P) was everything I described in OP. Amazing character build system, multiple paths to obtain gear, challenging content and expansion launched with three raids. It was a WoW clone like FFXIV, but felt more like its true successor than FFXIV does. Too bad, they ditched the game and made it trash after F2P.

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There was still only one optimal build for the role you wanted to do on you class shortly after launch when I played. For example, every single rogue ever went Saboteur or whatever the ranged spec was.

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Originally Posted by VargasVermillion

Correct me if I'm wrong but WoW has more raids in each patch but they also have multiple difficulties of those said raids for various types of players yes? Would the same system work here as well? From what I've seen they seem to add more raids/dungeons in general and in multiple difficulties. Then again I've never played it so I'm open for someone to enlighten me.

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I think WoD had two raids at launch, but don't quote me on that. The 6.2 patch, after seven or eight months after launch, introduced the first and last raid after the launch and features 14 bosses. There will be no new raids until the next expansion, which will come no sooner than 2016 earliest.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

WoW had big enough skilltrees to dump all your points into one and not fill it completely. Know what happened? They scrapped all of that, because even the devs themselves said that there was only one real way to build your character depending on your spec and if you played pvp or pve, and called many of their talents "newbie traps". Those talents sounded good on paper, but were pretty much useless in any real scenario.

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Dual wielding elemental shamans would like a word with you.


WoW offered plenty of actual choice, but over the years it was more and more dumbed down for the sake of ''balance'' and ''making it easier to get into for all type of players, not just the hardcore''

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Originally Posted by Waliel

WoW had big enough skilltrees to dump all your points into one and not fill it completely. Those talents sounded good on paper, but were pretty much useless in any real scenario.

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This shows you have no clue what you are talking about.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

There was still only one optimal build for the role you wanted to do on you class shortly after launch when I played. For example, every single rogue ever went Saboteur or whatever the ranged spec was.

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I was a Riftstalker, so no...not every rogue became a Sab. A lot of players were trying it out when it got buffed more for AoE, to get a feel for it, but that's different. There were plenty of Assassins, Nightblades, and Blademasters running around.


Your claims are quite laughable and I am beginning to understand why MMOs are becoming so boring and bland.

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Originally Posted by Fatshine

I admit, it stung hard seeing people with Hive weapons and max geared while I wasn't. My competitive nature urged me to do the same shit again, but playing the story at my own pace made me see how free I was playing. People in my LS and free company were farming Ravana EX by like the 3rd day of early access. Now I see how SE played it real safe. No I am not calling them lazy. I know they worked their asses off, but I already got through the best part of the expansion in my eyes. Soon we will get a new Crystal Tower, Syrcus Tower, World of Darkness with more of the same formula, and a new relic weapon to go through hell with. There is no real fundamental change.

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My experience is that the majority of people in MMOs want the best gear to come from challenging group content so I don't see FFXIV's model changing anytime soon. Adding ranked pvp would be one way of adding variety to group content but I believe a lot of competitive raiders would be unhappy about having to pvp to speed up gearing. Open world content would have to be competitive (tagged by 1 group, long respawn, changing location) to not be too easy and to not resemble the existing format of raids, and people already complain about the open-tag hunts being too exclusive... This is why I think that dungeons, trials and raids will remain the primary source of gear or currency in the future.

After playing during 4 different expansions of WoW, I've reached the same casual mindset as you. (This is a subjective feeling about the subject so don't take offense people!) It's exciting to be a part of the first wave of progress each time new group content is released, but after I witnessed a few gear resets i.e. expansions I realized how superficial the competition for the newest and best gear was. There will always be another raid, another dungeon, another trial and another gear vendor, and it's like a neverending treadmill of killing enemies for bounty which will eventually be rendered worthless. I ended up quitting my raid team in WoW and it felt really relieving to not have to make time for raiding and to keep my gear in shape.

Nowadays I don't mind taking my time leveling, reading quest text and doing things that don't advance my character, because in the end I pay to be entertained. I focus on lasting things like the story experience, titles, pets, mounts, class leveling and getting money for housing. I saw a fc message a few days back telling people to get ready for Alexander and I was genuinely happy I didn't have to hurry to finish questing and to get gear. It's hard to let go of the competitive attitude at first but in the end it's worth it to some people.

I'm very happy I found FFXIV as it offers a casual story based experience that I've enjoyed from the start. There's grinds, easy group content and world content but also challenging stuff for those days I'm in the mood for it. However, I understand that this might not be enough for the more competitive players. Those who would like bigger amounts of raid content might be better off looking for different games to play on the side. (WoW still makes top quality raids, for example.) The resources of the dev team are limited after all and they will probably continue creating a lot of casual content, just like they have for the past 2 years, in order to maintain their core audience. As a poster on the first page said, it's a conscious design choice made to attract a certain gamer crowd, not a flaw.

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

Dual wielding elemental shamans would like a word with you.


WoW offered plenty of actual choice, but over the years it was more and more dumbed down for the sake of ''balance'' and ''making it easier to get into for all type of players, not just the hardcore''

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There was no choice. The choice was useless flavor talents that did nothing but add single digits of HP/reduced damage, or made things more shiny. In the end they all accomplished the same goal, nothing important. Sure you could take more damage reduction; or you could be less bad, stop taking unnecessary damage and take the increased crit chance instead.

You ran one build and that was it. The "choice" you speak of was nothing but useless abilities or traps that new players fell into which did nothing but point them out as second rate.

You raided as Arcane in Wrath and you liked it. Frost was laughed at.

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Originally Posted by Wisekuma

I was a Riftstalker, so no...not every rogue became a Sab. A lot of players were trying it out when it got buffed more for AoE, to get a feel for it, but that's different. There were plenty of Assassins, Nightblades, and Blademasters running around.

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This makes no sense. Sab was the go to build until it was nerfed. Then it slowly shifted into Sabodancers as Bladedancer was buffed. Anything else was, again, second rate. You were nothing more than a hinderance to the raid as the sheer amount of DPS Sab/Sabdancer could put out was stupid compared to anything else.

You remember the balancing incorrectly.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

You remember the balancing incorrectly.

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No. I do.

What year did you play Rift?

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Originally Posted by Asierid

You raided as Arcane in Wrath and you liked it. Frost was laughed at.

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That was one class and after the started cutting the skill tree. The others (with the exception of Shaman) had more than one competitive build.
Balancing was done because of hybrids (panzerkin, slsl, etc) and pvp. If Blizzard controlled the skills the had better control of the damage.

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Originally Posted by Kona_Nightwind

snip

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Actually I suggest you read what you typed and more importantly what you responded to.
"So what you are saying is there isn't one, all the games you describe crashed and burned or had very small player bases. Sound like a good business plan, SE should get right on it." - your words. This is entirely incorrect. You can go play any of these games right now if you want to. They are currently among some of the most popular MMORPG games out there.
You are suggesting that it's erroneous to follow successful mechanics because the game itself in your (incorrect) opinion has crashed and burned.

There has never been a time WoW players didn't complain about something, but hard raids never used to be one of those things. Complaining in general happened in a much lesser volume than it does now.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Actually the downward spiral in WoW came from stupid design decisions and a year of gap between content patches...twice (going on three times now). Nice try at cherry picking though.

BC/Wrath were popular because it was the only game of its kind back in the day. Not because "raids were hard". There were no instanced raids even remotely close to what WoW did. We played it because there was nothing else like it.

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Hey, nice cherry picking, though. I wonder what those stupid design decisions were, must not have been the simplification of content. You know it's very easy playing this game but what's tragic is that you completely missed the point. I'll just leave this post as it is, I'll help you figure it out if you don't get it after re-reading.

Ok. So, my experience with mmos goes all the way back to the original EQ days. EQ bored me to death. It's battle system was so slow. I played WoW as a mage during the burning crusade era. I agree that it was fun trying to form my own type of mage. I decided to be a frost/fire mage. I had a blast! ...until I had to raid. I was told that my super fun build that got me to lvl cap just wasn't cutting it and I had to build it their way. On top of that, I was forced to do raid A to get gear for raid B to get gear for PvP to get gear for Raid C. Needless to say...I quit that game very quickly and never looked back.

Also:

This game allows me to play at my own pace, to get through content with a FUN difficulty and not an annoying one. The mechanics they come up with are amazing and I don't mind farming the fights to learn them. I agree that gear becomes obsolete when new content comes out and that gets really annoying but the fights being FUN is what is important. As others have said; if it isn't fun or challenging to you, then maybe this isn't your game. For me, I like the idea of breaking the Holy trinity of heal/tank/dps and going for more of a ff tactics route where you go in with a party of 8 you want and hope for the best but in order to do that, they need more jobs with variety.

Maybe you should play ESO. I don't know about content but I know you can build your character any way you want

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Originally Posted by PandaPause

That is the only challenge tho, never knowing who you might be paired up w/ in the DF. If you run w/ friends/guildies you are going to steam roll it every time.

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That's because communication and teamwork are important. Do you expect something to stay difficult when people can relay messages and work together and understand what' going on? There is a fine line between difficult and just unfair and with the dungeons that were released I honestly believe they all did a good job staying fair. They threw in familiar tactics, added in some new ones and made it where even if you mess up it's not the end. It's meant to be fun without being punishing, like coil and the upcoming savage mode of Alexander.

Honestly is it fun or stressful to have to be 100% perfectionist all the time? Personally for me it isn't fun or relaxing to have to be on A game all the time, to not mess up it's stressful and at the end of the day that stress is counter-intuitive of what an MMO is suppose to offer and that's a fun relaxing experience.

I can't take the OP at all serious, basically he’s moaning about XIV being XIV.
You can't type up an essay for cons and just bullet point the pros - sorry kid but life doesn't work like that. In the real world that entire post would look like a whine above all else instead of looking like constructive feedback.
SE deserve credit for doing something well, if it doesn't feel new I suggest you quit because unless they drastically change XIV - you're not going to be happy.
Speaking of quit, I suggest you uninstall the game and quit because you are moaning about the very fundamentals about the game. Every MMO has that grind/repeat feeling, that's MMOs. I've played over a dozen and yet to find a single one that always feels different when going through expansions- even WoW, EQ, STO, KOTR, XI.
You are complaining about something that frankly the majority feel is a great expansion if not one of the best SE has made.
So please just quit.

And yes my 1st post is having to defend SE for a damn good job well done because I am sick of people crying like a child.

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Originally Posted by lonix

I've played over a dozen and yet to find a single one that always feels different when going through expansions- even WoW, EQ, STO, KOTR, XI.

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Perhaps I should first use a disclaimer that I really dislike wow, but anyway:
Wow felt very different with each of its expansions. They reworked quite a few mechanics/class workings in each of their expansions.
That's kind of the whole point of an expansion: to take the old and expand upon it. Simply prolonging the old content only really works if the old content was super awesome.

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Originally Posted by Ferocious

Lengthy read ahead.

If you make a list and compare pros/cons of FFXIV: Heavensward, the bad outweigh the good by far. It's mostly because the flaws are still there which plagued the original game. I know I may get criticized for this because it's the official forums, but I'll do this detailed review anyway. Some things need to get pointed out, the reasons why most players unsubbed before and will do it again.

First, the pros:

+ Level cap 60, this is what keeping most busy at this point with leveling main/alts.
+ Main storyline done much better than original.
+ Massive zones and flying.

Unfortunately, that's all I can say for pros because it seems that's where most of their efforts went. Once you hit 60, it's like now what? Back to what it was like before, which is...

Cons:

- Linear Gear Progression. Back to mindless tome grinding and hunts. Repeat easy dungeons over and over again. How about actual challenge in dungeons and have a sense of progression from the start? There are many MMO's that get this right by making Hard Mode dungeons actually "Hard" and make their gear necessary to obtain in order to start progression in raids. Or have raid attunement, world bosses, rep grinds, open world drops, etc to provide different options for gearing. FFXIV has taken the most boring path possible and it only hurts it further when the gear resets every six months.

- Second flaw, still no challenge anywhere to be found. Raids for example, they're planning "one real raid" every 6 months like before and only 4 bosses. Are you kidding me? We have so many classes/jobs now, but still only 4 bosses to farm to hope for your gear piece. I know this from personal experience as a hardcore raider before, it kept many people unsubbed for months. Raiders get tired of farming same old content for six months straight and only four bosses.

Instead of releasing one billion easy dungeons, how about transfer some of that effort for creating more raids instead? And I don't mean 24 man raids, they're a joke. Typically, MMO's release with couple of raids for progression. One higher tier than the other. Here, we don't have our first raid yet. The last one came out in 2.4, which was October of last year. It's been almost a year. That's too damn long for an active and profitable MMO like this.

- Third major flaw, still no such thing as character builds. The new 51-60 skills only add to your existing rotations, but they haven't done anything to have a variety of character builds. It's an MMO after all. Like the gear progression, the depth in classes are so bland and linear. The rotations are still 1 > 2 > 3. Think about it. If they continue like this till level cap 100, you would need all hotbars you can get to run all available skills. Because a character build makes only certain skills viable, but here everyone is running on same gear and rotation. Speaking of gear, the gear stats are still as bland as they can get. Where are the special powers or pieces that could help with different skills? There are no thoughts invested.

- Fourth flaw, glamour and inventory systems are still a mess. Instead of giving us some more storage to gather all new crafting materials, glamour etc like MMO expansions normally do, here we have more retainers to "purchase". Are they so desperate for money that they have to nickle and dime on every opportunity? Glamours are a huge mess. It will clutter up your retainers like crafting mats do. Why couldn't they do come up with a transmog system like Blizzard does? Then there are other issues like crafting still can't take materials directly from your bank/retainer. Can't manage multiple retainer storage at once to search and manage items. Everything is so archaic here.

- Fifth flaw, too much recycling/re-skins. New jobs were a huge disappointment.

It started with 2.4 when the raid bosses were re-skinned mobs, crappy Bahamut fight and the efforts seemed lazier compared to 2.2. Now in expansion, majority of enemies are recycled from original including even raid bosses. Same old recycled mechanics, nothing refreshing as seen on new Extreme primals. Again, it makes me question where their efforts were spent.

Then to make it worse, the new jobs were pretty much copy/pasta of another job with their silly gimmick thrown in.
Take AST for example, re-skinned WHM skills with the card gimmick. I really expected better thoughts put into new jobs.

I can go on forever with more issues, but these were the top five I wanted to point out. I know FF games are all about storyline, but this is an MMO with monthly subscription so it wouldn't hurt to fix the flaws I mentioned. Maybe next expansion, I hope they focus on fixing/improving rather than "more of the same".

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You can carry my children OP.

I hate rep grinds but I'd welcome them if they meant getting some more stuff too. Esp an expansion of raid content.. and having it NOT be replaced by group gear the next patch.

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Originally Posted by Wisekuma

This shows you have no clue what you are talking about.

I was a Riftstalker, so no...not every rogue became a Sab. A lot of players were trying it out when it got buffed more for AoE, to get a feel for it, but that's different. There were plenty of Assassins, Nightblades, and Blademasters running around.

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Sure you could spec either Assassination or Combat for Rogues, but inside those specs there was only one choice. If you wanted to be fire mage, there was exactly one build for PvE fire and one for PvP. Maybe one talent variations at best. 41/25/5, or whatever it was, with X talents was the only viable Arms Warrior PvE build. Mists did change it around, but what little I played it at launch, there was the best choice for DPS talents and for the utility ones you took what you wanted. Some choice, at least, but choice that didn't really matter outside of PvP.

I don't know how it was later in Rift but the short time I played it, I could swear every damn Rogue was Sab.

Larger Apples only temporarily enjoyable. Larger apple fails to fix hunger problem.

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Originally Posted by Airget

That's because communication and teamwork are important. Do you expect something to stay difficult when people can relay messages and work together and understand what' going on?

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Short answer of mine would be yes. I would love if we had some more AI and less scripted encounters but that's a different discussion and probably game all together. I get keeping dungeons needed for story or progression "Fair" But there is nothing "Expert" about Expert Roulette aside from it having the highest tier ilvl to enter.

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Originally Posted by Airget

Honestly is it fun or stressful to have to be 100% perfectionist all the time?

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Not sure anything in this game requires to be 100% but some degree of danger can be exciting or fun in an encounter.

Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

Sure you could spec either Assassination or Combat for Rogues, but inside those specs there was only one choice. If you wanted to be fire mage, there was exactly one build for PvE fire and one for PvP. Maybe one talent variations at best. 41/25/5, or whatever it was, with X talents was the only viable Arms Warrior PvE build. Mists did change it around, but what little I played it at launch, there was the best choice for DPS talents and for the utility ones you took what you wanted. Some choice, at least, but choice that didn't really matter outside of PvP.

I don't know how it was later in Rift but the short time I played it, I could swear every damn Rogue was Sab.

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Then I'm assuming you only played vanilla Rift and not post expansion? Rogue was my main after expansion and I was a hardcore raider in one of the top 5 guilds. As a matter of fact, I was the best Rogue ranged dps on server. There were quite a few popular Rogue builds. Riftstalker (Tank), but usually wasn't used in hardcore progression groups. Marksman and NB/Sin were two most popular DPS builds. Bard (support) was another must have in raid groups. Tactman was absolutely amazing and the go to AoE build for any fights that required it.

In the end, each class had many build variants. I raided with them all. Even if someone came up with the best possible build for one thing, there were always "options" to tweak and push further. For example, there was one famous build for Ranged specs but personally I was running a tweaked version of it that I never shared with anyone and that's how I remained on top. Then I knew people in other hardcore guilds who were doing the same. That's why I loved the competitive nature in Rift and the character builds were a huge part of it.

Yeah, I only played close to the vanilla release and downed like two or three raid bosses. Didn't renew after my free month.

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Originally Posted by Lucidbro

I need to lookup what relative means.

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Just because you don't agree with my opinion, doesn't mean I'm wrong. But hey saying a very successful dev team should change their business model to one used by a less successful dev team is totally logical. Maybe Google should base their business plan off of what Ask.com does.

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Originally Posted by Kona_Nightwind

snip.

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In order for us to even consider whether you're wrong or not you would first have to make sense.
This has nothing to do with business models. WoW and as an extension Blizzard itself is a prime example of taking elements or mechanics out of other games and being a lot more popular than where they're borrowed from.
Also, your word usage is incorrect, if you would have specified in relation to what, mainly something like WoW then, it would make sense but in relation to an average MMO's every single one of the mentioned ones are and/or have been successful but it would be nonsensical to hold something like WoW as the only measure of success.
In any case, it's completely irrelevant, you only added the word in after and your word usage of "small user base" and "crashed and burned" were quite clear.

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

Your first 3 cons are the intentional design direction of the game. May as well criticize CoD for not having a diplomacy minigame, or Witcher3 for not having spaceships. Diplomacy can be fun, and spaceships can be fun, but everything has its time and place.

No offense, but maybe this game just isn't your speed?

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his first two points are pretty valid. the whole expansion feels like 2.0 with a new skin and less content

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Originally Posted by Waliel

I don't know how it was later in Rift but the short time I played it.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Waliel

....the short time I played it.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Waliel

short time.

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Anything you say now I just can't take seriously. You are claiming the talent system is flawed and you didn't even spend enough time with either game. This is the problem I am seeing, the current gamer that the gaming industry is pandering to are those who can't grasp the game's profound gaming mechanics. These gamers are just shallow and want something easily digested and games just aren't what they were in the past: something that made you think.

And there were more choices for classes in the old WoW talent tree. People are acting like they were all in pro-raiding guilds that were going for server-firsts, and that's clearly a lie.

really? i'm still at level 55 and I'm enjoying everything, how is that people finish everything so fast? u dont have a job? family? and how can u talk about other jobs when u dont even have those leveled up? i belive expansion gave me everything I wanted and I'm still have a long way to go to finish story, I also belive Alexander was launched too early, side quest are so nice, great mini stories, but i belive you don't even read the dialogues, so meh, you can always play other games you know

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Originally Posted by Lucidbro

stuff

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Who is us? I didn't know you spoke for others. From what I've read most people think your full of it.Wildstar was a dumpster fire. Rift was a great game imo, but it went F2P, which is telling me they weren't making money. And Guild Wars was a niche game with a small player base.

(Not replying directly to quote)

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Originally Posted by AldoVonAlexandros

really? i'm still at level 55 and I'm enjoying everything, how is that people finish everything so fast?

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^ There are people like this and SE is trying to balance between this and that. As for myself, I work 7am to 6pm, get home at 7pm, do chores, play for some hours and then go to bed. I play a lot more during weekends. I am able to do hunts, quests, crafting, gathering, duties in those few hours. I was able to get to 60 and had enough item levels to unlock and clear Alexander. But not everyone is like me and I have seen that in my own free company. I think SE did well with their first expansion, and I believe they will improve (even if little by little) over the next few months as they check the feedback of the community. I think overall we need to be more considerate of the other people who play the game and remind ourselves that we're not the only ones playing this MMORPG.

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Originally Posted by Kona_Nightwind

Who is us? I didn't know you spoke for others. From what I've read most people think your full of it.Wildstar was a dumpster fire. Rift was a great game imo, but it went F2P, which is telling me they weren't making money. And Guild Wars was a niche game with a small player base.

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Us is you and me, of course. How basic is this going to get? You're going to have to elaborate on Wildstar, but Rift is most likely among the top 10 most popular MMORPG's and has only been doing better after going free to play, just like most games that do. Guild Wars was never a "niche" game. Back when it was released and several years after, it was the MMORPG if you weren't playing WoW. Obviously there's GW 2 now, so it isn't as relevant.
But this is drifting off the main point, you need to realize that a single feature such as was proposed doesn't determine the success of the game as a whole, that's way too simplistic. We aren't talking about business practices here. Just like FF is borrowing the Duty Finder mechanic from WoW, they can borrow class builds. It doesn't really matter what you're using as an example as long as the execution is good.

Where is the voice acting though?

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Originally Posted by Kona_Nightwind

Who is us? I didn't know you spoke for others. From what I've read most people think your full of it.Wildstar was a dumpster fire. Rift was a great game imo, but it went F2P, which is telling me they weren't making money. And Guild Wars was a niche game with a small player base.

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Small player base? LOL! Just goes to show you don't know what you're talking about. GW1 sold over 7 million copies. That's twice of FFXIV. It's still somewhat active today after 10 years. It had the power to damage WoW's numbers, but lucky for Blizzard, the game was B2P.

Rift was the second most popular P2P MMO when it came out. It sold a million around its launch like FFXIV did. Its downfall was after expansion. It didn't sell too good even though critics awarded it the best expansion. I believe that may have to do with Star Wars going F2P the same week, which was insanely popular for F2P. Now speaking of expansion, Rift's expansion is still the best of this gen. It brought way more to the table than Heavensward. So much that people didn't complain for lack of content for six months. Here, we have people complaining already.

Wildstar is the only one you can say that didn't sell well. It did good at launch and had a lot of hype, but like I mentioned in other post, it wasn't the concept that failed. It was the execution that failed. It wasn't a polished game at all which pissed people off. Otherwise, it had all the right ideas.

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Originally Posted by Ferocious

Stuff

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Rift went F2P before the beta released and was planning to before preorders were even available. So clearly it wasn't a "good game" of it couldn't keep subs for their first year.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wisekuma

No. I do.

What year did you play Rift?

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2011. We're talking beta into release and quite a few patches after. So yes, you do remember incorrectly.

While I don't agree with the OPs listing of flaws that are not fixed, I do agree they have issues that still need to get fixed, such as the broken housing system that is lumping player housing together with FC housing, resulting with major population centers like Balmung having such heavily inflated prices that the majority of players are never going to have a chance at buying a home or any permanent space to decorate. You can buy an FC room, but if you leave the game and the FC has a policy of cleaning old characters out (quite a few do) you come back and have lost that investment with all your stuff stuck on an NPC until you join another fc, spend more gil, and rebuild your room.

Also, player population needs to be better spread out among servers. There are too many people on legacy servers and too few on others and it shows in the availability of FC and personal housing plots. I'm not even sure how they intend to handle this issue, since there are so many people who have investments in the server based housing market that forced population distribution will definitely burn quite a few dedicated players.

Finally, they still have to address inventory. However, Yoshida has at least stated they are actively trying to solve this issue, so it's probably a bit lower on the list than the first two.

Edit: They also introduced another problem with how they are making people quest to get flight unlocked. It would have been better if they made flight unlock based on the main quest progress rather than on quest completion in general, as some people level differently and may choose to ignore mindless fetch quests and other tasks in favor of just running things with their friends in party finder. I know I personally got to level 59 by running DF and PF and have so many quest markers left in the previous zones I don't even know where to start. All I did was run roulettes and farm for dungeon sets when I saw one I liked...

Again, people who are talking about skill trees are missing the point.

Is the current model sustainable? No. We don't need to wait until we have 8 hotbars covering half our screen and a 51 unique input opener to realize this.

I think they did a good job with HW's new skills for the most part. They filled gaps in some classes and added skill to playing some other classes. But, I can't see this system lasting another 10 levels and 5 skills.

I don't like skill trees either and only think they're viable when you have actual choices - a caster class choosing between a DPS or healer spec, a melee class choosing between a tank or DPS spec. It's for this reason that effective skill trees won't work in FFXIV -- we have jobs with defined roles. But, there has to be some type of solution to the skill problem eventually. Like I said earlier, SE just punted the problem down the road with HW rather than address it.

My biggest gripe would be the lack of any new systems. I was really looking forward to new things to go out and do, but there is nothing, literally nothing new that they brought to the table. I think that is a bit shocking considering the caliber and history of SE and their other mmo 11.

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Originally Posted by Naraku_Diabolos

OP, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Just because the game doesn't cater to what you want, it addresses things that people have been looking for. The world does not revolve around you and this game was not designed just for you. It was designed for everyone. So please show some respect to the developmental team for releasing a great expansion pack, even though it did not satisfied your needs, it as satisfied us other players. The developmental team broke their backs rebuilding ARR and making this expansion, so show some respect for them. They are working hard at addressing things and they will listen to us. That is what the forum is for, it's for discussion and for also providing feedback to the game.

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or of the one.

For the re-skinning, yes I agree. It's a disappointing things for two things, Male Au Ra and equipment. Au Ra's body just like Elezen and his run same with Male Miqo'te running. Also no muscle slider for all race is the things I don't like.

Second, the equipment. You know those Kirimu's Coat that has unique sense for BRD, now MNK and NIN (iirc) can wear this stuff and you can easily obtain it from crafting that the recipe item is really common compared with Kirimu's Coat (Yet mages still can't wear this :( ).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Musashidon

character builds in any game are an illusion, you can pretend all you want you can be different but you can't if you don't go the good build you are nothing but dead weight to your team.

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Exactly.

I'd rather see new jobs than maybe a maximum of 2 viable "builds" from all the energy a customization system would take to be input.

Its not as bad as it seems but i do have issues with the expansion. i feel like the flying was kinda pointless after you got further in the storyline. they should of at least had some easter egg areas but all we got was floating rocks. i think this a short lived expansion due to having the story unless they make something up. they should of went the FFXI route with the story missions. i was kinda upset when i saw the credits roll up and it was still week 1 of launch. I Know there's more than Alex runs in the upcoming months but the new dungeons wasn't all that. i hope the hard modes brings the excitement back cause im feeling some buyers remorse already

Well, Final Fantasy XIV ARR is a 6 or 7 out of 10 game, anyway. It doesn't compare to titles like the Witcher 3 or Bloodborne for engagement and depends a lot on the community driving itself to keep people invested. That's still an amazing score for an MMORPG, mind you. The majority are so copy pasta there's basically nothing BUT a self driven community and a cash shop.

Here's the thing, the game is at it's best when people are together running content and earning rewards they can show off to each other. The running around the overworld doing mindless fetch and kill quests for npcs is annoying filler, which has been made partially necessary now thanks to it being required to enable flying. The development team did show they want to add things that players can use as personal milestones, such as owning a house, but their own population distribution strategy backfired and now they have people stuck on servers that are overpopulated or underpopulated, which is killing the ability to even utilize these systems.

That being said, one can still enjoy a game that is flawed. There are tons of people who still enjoy Sonic the Hedgehog, Dynasty Warriors, and other titles that get panned by the majority, and Final Fantasy XIV is one such game.

Edit: Also, I think MMORPGs post World of Warcraft have had a hard time identifying what they are supposed to be. The game type, despite the name, really wasn't meant to be something thronging masses of people would get into playing like Call of Duty, just as pen and paper RPGs were and still are. They are for a specific grouping of people that want to get into playing together and immersing themselves. That's why so many people have fond memories of FFXI or Star Wars Galaxies: They weren't about end game, they were about the journey. The developers would throw in their own scenarios much like WoTC would campaign modules.