How Cataclysm killed WoW is how Heavensward will kill FFXIV.

Problem is that their making content irrelevant. I tried to build a Ravana ex party yesterday could only get 3 people before people started leaving.

But you also have stuff like Alexander normal which by right if it's existence is so people can experience the story. Why dose normal give gear that you need to start progressing in savage? Normal should have been a mid core content type at lest if it was going to give gear. But given the fact that a whole ship lode of people cleared it in the first day. Something's wrong with adding gear to it if you ask me.


However it looks like the sky island exploration is going to be giving il 210 gear. I wonder how long till people start complaining about the difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Dererk

Problem is that their making content irrelevant. I tried to build a Ravana ex party yesterday could only get 3 people before people started leaving.

But you also have stuff like Alexander normal which by right if it's existence is so people can experience the story. Why dose normal give gear that you need to start progressing in savage? Normal should have been a mid core content type at lest if it was going to give gear. But given the fact that a whole ship lode of people cleared it in the first day. Something's wrong with adding gear to it if you ask me.


However it looks like the sky island exploration is going to be giving il 210 gear. I wonder how long till people start complaining about the difficulty.

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I'm actually kind of amazed how the community managed to really just flat out kill off endgame in all these MMOs. World bosses, raids, legendary rare items. They are literally non-existent now, and replaced with running the same easymode dungeon over and over until you comatose from boredom. My MMO days are over soon i think. They just aren't fun at max level anymore.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

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Everything else that the game has to offer is either shallow, bad, or not interesting to said player. I do all DoL, DoH, PvP for ADS mount, and in process of leveling my other classes, but I still feel that the game lacks meaningful content for the average player.

DoL doesn't have much going for it unless you want to keep inflating your gil with the market (and considering I'm sitting at 82m, I'm pretty comfortable with this), and loosely died to problems with DoH

DoH is in a joke of a rut where they can't craft for anyone else other than themselves, not even for other gatherers. And they still rely on materials gained from gatherers. They can't even craft glamour for the combat classes because the 2 star versions are exactly the same as the 1 star model with week-gated material costs.

PvP, from a competitive standpoint, has no competitive scene. The format of seal rock doesn't allow for that and honestly is just time to pass as much as expert roulette at this point. I've spent the last 9-10 weeks or so doing frontlines to get my ADS mount, and now that's accomplishes I really have no other reason to do it because it does not appeal to me without a balanced, active competitive scene.

Leveling other classes, I really can't lump it together as "more content" or "something to do" if I'm doing it just to do it. I won't be playing more than 3 of these classes actively in end game, let alone gearing them up with esos/gordian drops when my MCH still needs some eso pieces.

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Originally Posted by Kedo

Now I am not asking for horizontal progression, but what I would like to see are multiple ways of acquiring End Game gear, or ways to acquire tomes a different way aside from just experts and the like, XI had Dynamis, Limbus, Sky, Sea, ZNM, Nyzul Isle, Assault, Salvage, Einherjar, Kings, BCNMs, KSNMs, all which offered different gear, items to sell, and they weren't all the same really. I am hoping that this air ship exploration will breathe some new life into end-game but I won't hold my breath.

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The problem is with the sharp vertical progression we have in FFXIV, all content has a 6 month life span. In order to have that much variety in relevant content under the current system, they would need to release 3-4x as much content every major patch.

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

The problem is with the sharp vertical progression we have in FFXIV, all content has a 6 month life span. In order to have that much variety in relevant content under the current system, they would need to release 3-4x as much content every major patch.

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Or more content outside of vertical progression. Content having the life of 6 months is fine if it lasts long enough to bridge to the next content patch (which really isn't the case, especially now). The otherside is you don't want old content to still be relevant/required to get onto the gear threadmill because that makes it harder for people to catch up if they have to do the previous tier to get the ilvl needed to push the current tier

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

The otherside is you don't want old content to still be relevant/required to get onto the gear threadmill because that makes it harder for people to catch up if they have to do the previous tier to get the ilvl needed to push the current tier

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Funny you should say that, seeing as the very games that led to the explosive growth of MMOs operated on exactly those terms. That was the molten core (lol) of the genre, and this game wouldn't be here without that "mistake". These games aren't channeling the wants of their player base like they used to, and I believe this is directly responsible the tendency of MMOs to wither so suddenly after blossoming with players. The idea that if we don't climb, we'll be carried, heavily undermines our incentive to challenge difficult content.

WoW vanilla, again, had what I consider the ideal model - it did offer parallel gear progression, but this was not an alternative to the climb - it was a poor substitute, intended to get you just adequate enough to simply step on the lower rungs of the ladder.

This is nothing like what we have now, which is the assurance that you will never have to raid or even be competent to experience everything there is to offer - you will be hand-fed and you will never really have to understand your class or the game's dynamics to a meaningful degree. People think they like this. They think it's good to be fair - and then they complain about their experience being meaningless, lacking new things to do and places to go, which is really a sign that SE is spending so much time designing parallel content that the main course, as it were, fails to satisfy. i.e; Alexander normal and savage.

What they actually need in an MMO isn't what they want - they need to be challenged, and to struggle, and they need to look up at things they don't have, and they need to know that they won't see all of the content if they don't get good, and they need to be able to do it as weekend warriors (casual schedule, in other words), too. It's a difficult thing to balance, and the fact that we're all here arguing about it means the balance is out of whack.

The ladder theory (heh) can be taken to extremes I would consider negative, of course. Everquest had that problem.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

Everything else that the game has to offer is either shallow, bad, or not interesting to said player. I do all DoL, DoH, PvP for ADS mount, and in process of leveling my other classes, but I still feel that the game lacks meaningful content for the average player.

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Wait til November and ask yourself again if you feel this way. People who are basing the longevity of a game before it's first true patch after an expansion are just silly.

3.0 wasn't about having everything the expansion had in mind, it was about creating a story that would get you from 50-60 and then added in end game content later on for more to enjoy.

As others have mentioned it's just plain silly to scream about the sky is falling when some of the concerns do have plans of being worked on during the next patch. If you aren't having fun atm, then take a break for a month, come back when you have stuff you want to do.

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Originally Posted by Dererk

I wonder how long till people start complaining about the difficulty.

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I was actually talking about that with a FC member the other day and we joked how it'd probably be perfectly fine with its difficulty. You know, regular mmo stuff. Then within a month, all the whiners and people who want to be carried through things will complain enough to where SE nerfs it to the ground so you can do it in your sleep (steps of faith etc) :/

I am trying to understand how 2.0 was fine but 3.0 is ending FFXIV... yeah I don't see what changed that is going to kill it.

I'm almost somewhat disappointed Skizzle isn't in here summoning a giant meteor made of his disdain for Yoshi-P and the direction the game has taken in comparison to FFXI.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

It wouldn't be a normal day in any game forum without a "Game is dying!!!!" thread on the front page. xD

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Life would be meaningless otherwise, right?

It is the same thing for every MMO.

Patch gets released, people are happy. Months later when near the next patch, people go on the fritz and think the game is dying.

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Originally Posted by magdahmhara

Yes but the 'average' player is only concerned with easy or hard. If things are too difficult most people will just give up and quit. When I first started playing mmos people didn't quit after wiping once or twice or even three times. They stayed and worked harder to get it done. But nowdays people quit if a group wipes once. Those that prefer more challenging content are very, very few. If a company wants to make a large profit they need to appeal to a wider audience. Still, that's no excuse for being lazy with development.

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No, the average player isn't merely concerned whether the game is easy or not. The average player is concerned whether the game is fun or not.

People don't want to wipe in modern MMO because it is plain unfun. Back in the old days of MMORPG (like 10 years ago), killing a boss was more an issue of finding a good strategy for your group and executing it. Nowadays it is more about micromanaging your character while avoiding whatever the boss throw at you ("coordinated rope jumping"). In the first game design, competent players and beginners can play in the same group, because overcoming content was more about talking with each other. In the later, it is simply not possible, as you can't go to your teamates place to micromanage their character better. A beginner in an advanced player group would be yelled at, and the experienced players would be frustrated.

That's why raiding is slowly dying since WOTLK. MMORPG implementing the later game design are simply frustrating.

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Originally Posted by RocheKat

I am trying to understand how 2.0 was fine but 3.0 is ending FFXIV... yeah I don't see what changed that is going to kill it.

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The problem is that nothing changed. 2.0 was fine since SE said they'd be building the foundation then they'd give us actual content come the first expansion. It's 3.0 and it's just an exact rehash of 2.0 with different scenery. There's nothing "new". Alex is basically coil, but less. Void ark will be CT. Neverreap/Fractal are WP/AK.

That formula is stale and you can tell more and more people are realizing it by the amount of topics on that popping up daily. A lot of people are bored because SE didn't even bother to try to give us variety or any sort of new content. They just took 2.0, changed the scenery and called it a day. Something doesn't have to change to kill a mmo. Changing nothing can also kill it too.
And because I know someone's going to jump in here all "It's an expansion, not a rebuild of the whole game". We're not asking for a whole new game, just something new thrown into the mix. And no, it hasn't "always been this way", as someone else will say. Countless other mmos have actually added something new (without completely outdating everything else) when they released an expansion.

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

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You have written this really well and I couldn't agree more.
I put high hopes into 3.1 which seems to show that they have learned from our feedback. Hope I am right.

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

You have written this really well and I couldn't agree more.
I put high hopes into 3.1 which seems to show that they have learned from our feedback. Hope I am right.

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Same :/ I really hope the island exploration is something new and fun, rather than dull and dies in under a month (golden saucer lol). With 3.1 being pushed back and releasing around the same time as other big name games, I can see the population taking a pretty big hit if 3.1 is lackluster.

A lot of the problems with this game comes down to the size of the developer team in the end... If they are going to satisfy the demand in the future, they need to be able to put out new types of content, without having to sacrifice other content while doing it.

To be able to develop the airship exploration, they had to sacrifice 1 new dungeon for example, which is totally worth it IMO, but still... they shouldn't have to do that.

Patches should come out every 3 months like they initially advertised, and not 4-4.5 months. I know they had a vacation after 3.0, which is fair, but we've never got a patch every 3 months before, and I don't expect it to happen for 3.2 either.

It's pretty obvious to me that they're heavily understaffed, and they are working extremely hard to try and make up for that.

SE needs to invest a little into this title and get some more developers. The MMO market is dead right now(by that I mean, Wow is falling off, all other MMOs are failing and there are no MMOs on the horizon) so they have every opportunity to grab a very large player base the coming future, IF they can just produce some more as well as new content.

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Originally Posted by Craiger

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This is only my asumption and feeling as I really don't see into Square Enix and have no idea about their finances, but I really think that they aren't actually making any big investments into FFXIV, which is in my opinion a huge mistake. Once the game has proven to be a success in my opinion they should have put lots of money into it (instead to FFXV which will never return the money put into it).

I repeat once more that it is only me personal feeling about it, I am not part of SE to see into that.

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

This is only my asumption and feeling as I really don't see into Square Enix and have no idea about their finances, but I really think that they aren't actually making any big investments into FFXIV, which is in my opinion a huge mistake. Once the game has proven to be a success in my opinion they should have put lots of money into it (instead to FFXV which will never return the money put into it).

I repeat once more that it is only me personal feeling about it, I am not part of SE to see into that.

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I view it the same way.

It would be one thing if Wow still was that powerhouse MMO, and new big AAA MMOs were coming out soon or something. Don't get me wrong, Wow has lots of players still, but the interest has declined a lot, and many would jump ship if they saw FFXIV having cool content.

If Wow still was grabbing all players, and MMOs like SWTOR, GW2 etc were coming out soon (I know they failed, but was hyped up), I could maybe understand SE not wanting to spend a lot of money on FFXIV, because MMOs are huge risks, and titles like that could easily grab all players, leaving SE with big losses.

That isn't the case though, and what could really compete with them? I can't even name any new MMOs coming the next 2 years....

I think more of the problem is, that everyone played a whole boatload when the game came off(some folks took a week off work for example) and ran out of stuff to do recently because they burnt through it too quick.

I know I wouldn't be done with it all now if I had my friend's 3 hours a day regardless of day schedule. There is no taking off work for him. 3 hours a day. Every day. That's it.

He's still not 60.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Back in the old days of MMORPG (like 10 years ago), killing a boss was more an issue of finding a good strategy for your group and executing it. Nowadays it is more about micromanaging your character while avoiding whatever the boss throw at you ("coordinated rope jumping").

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This is the result of a decade long arms race where players constantly overcome whatever challenges developers can implement, leading to the developers having to find some way to outdo themselves.

Take a look at any of the NMs in Sky, which was current end game content in FFXI 10 years ago. The entire strategy for any of them could be summed up in just a couple of lines. People already complain, at length, that Alex normal is too easy, can you imagine how loud the outrage would be if they'd provided something even simpler?

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

I think more of the problem is, that everyone played a whole boatload when the game came off(some folks took a week off work for example) and ran out of stuff to do recently because they burnt through it too quick.

I know I wouldn't be done with it all now if I had my friend's 3 hours a day regardless of day schedule. There is no taking off work for him. 3 hours a day. Every day. That's it.

He's still not 60.

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Nah... While I did spend a lot of time early on get things done quickly, it doesn't really take that long to do all the content (for one job), not including Savage, which most people do on a schedule a couple of days a week anyways. Not being 60 yet even with "just" 3 hours a day is extremely slow, no offense to him. Unless he didn't start at 3.0's release ofc.

A lot of players blame it on everyone playing too much, but I have barely been online for over a month now... I come online to cap Eso and do raiding. Before that, I really didn't play much either... because there isn't really much that I want to do.

If I spent more time leveling other jobs, did more crafting/gathering etc, then maybe it wouldn't be this bad... but I haven't had to do that in the past. I have leveled gatherers, crafters and other battle jobs, just haven't put much time into them at 60. That doesn't appeal too much to me, and you shouldn't have to do all that just to keep busy.

It took me like 1 week to get through the leveling, gear grind, primals etc... then it was all just weekly caps/loot, and raid at scheduled times. Even if you play a lot less during the beginning of 3.0, you would get through everything very quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't bored right away, I enjoyed it for a while, but it's been 3 months now, and even if you leveled all jobs, crafted/gathered a lot, you would still pretty much don't have anything to do now...

Also, 3 hours every day is a lot of play time at the moment IMO... It was nothing special some time back, but now I don't know that many players that can keep busy for that long (not including being AFK) every day.

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Originally Posted by Roegadyn_Bear

I'm almost somewhat disappointed Skizzle isn't in here summoning a giant meteor made of his disdain for Yoshi-P and the direction the game has taken in comparison to FFXI.

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Hahahaha, this... he's on my server, haven't seen him recently though. Used to see him all the time complaining in Mor Dhona and Idyllshire.

The problems with Cataclysm aren't even remotely relevant to HW.

Cataclysm had a number of major missteps; bad zone and leveling design, needless development time wasted on "remaking" the old world, and most importantly Blizzard reversing directions on dungeon and raid difficulty.

During WLK Blizzard had made content far more accessible to the point where pretty much everybody was doing it; you could find groups for ICC in trade chat. What Blizzard didn't realize is that once you lower the difficulty bar, you can't raise it back up again or people get really angry and quit, which is exactly what happened.


Blizzard made dungeons and raiding so hard at the start of Cataclysm that people who were used to WLK's difficulty got angry because they could no longer faceroll content. Following this, Blizzard nerfed the absolute crap out of raiding so that everybody could do it again, but by then it was too late. Cata had a lot of problems but many of the things that people point to in Cata actually began in WLK.


Heavensward has an entirely separate problem. The issue with HW is that they spent too much time on the leveling experience and not enough time on the endgame. There is just straight up not enough interesting things to do at endgame right now, especially if you aren't interested in Savage. Although plenty of people are content to mess around with other aspects of MMOs, the bulk of MMO players come for the endgame, and if the endgame isn't good, a lot of people get bored really quick.

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Originally Posted by adn

The issue with HW is that they spent too much time on the leveling experience.

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Your kidding right?

The game has hardly any leveling experience to speak of it's over as soon as it starts. There is a lack of endgame for sure but in reality a "Bulk" of MMO players don't actually come for the endgame, the developers do need to flesh the entire game out the problem is it's all a linear path to one end.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Your kidding right?

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No, I am not kidding. The HW zones are twice as large as they need to be at minimum; there are WAY too many leveling dungeons and not enough dungeons at endgame. Gubal, Aetherochemical and potentially even The Vault should be level 60 dungeons and accessible via exro.

And if you don't think the bulk of MMO players come for the endgame then I don't know what to tell you. If that were true then why are 90% of the complaints here about a lack of content at endgame? Nobody complains about the leveling experience not being long enough. Please show me all the threads of people saying BOY I WISH I SPENT MORE TIME LEVELING!


Wildstar and Warlords of Draenor failed because people got to max level, realized the endgame was pretty much crap unless you raided, and quit. Why is every MMO expansion dedicated to expanding the endgame and giving more stuff to do a cap level instead of adding low-level content? There's simply no other explanation: the BULK of players come for endgame. And if the endgame doesn't deliver they get tired and leave. I have never seen anyone quit an MMO over "not enough low-level content" unless it's like a KMMO where all you can do is sit around and grind monsters or something.

I have been around MMORPG's for a long time, I started in June of 1999 on Original Everquest. And every single successful game including FFXI had one thing in common. They gave you TONS of stuff to do, it was pretty much left up to your imagination on what you wanted to do for that day.

What do we have to do in FFXIV, Crafting which 50~60 crafting is broken and useless if you ask me. A sorry excuse for a raid, and grind 450 eso a week and thats it. Every other game I have ever played if you wanted to get gear for you toon there was no limit on how much gear you could get other then a lock out on the raid, which wasn't a problem because there were several raids that you could do that produced tons of gear. We have one lousy raid!

Another HUGE problem with this game is lack of community. Back in the day everyone knew everyone and if you caused problems no one would group with you. In this game you can be the biggest dirt bag on earth and it dosent even matter because your never going to see those people again.

To sum it up this game needs a lot of work and it needs it quick before it becomes the next free to play game!

There is a very simple answer to all these responses in regards to all the negative reactions lately.......there is not currently enough content in end game at 60! 2 dungeons, 1 raid and 2 primals, that is all the current player base has to do which is very little. Compare that to 2.5 with over 17 dungeons, over 15 raiding events and not to mention all the primals. Understandably that this was a combo of all content from 2 years, but SE could have come up with more than the little we have to do at endgame for 4 months doing content that rewards something.

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Originally Posted by Bremic

Hahahaha, this... he's on my server, haven't seen him recently though. Used to see him all the time complaining in Mor Dhona and Idyllshire.

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Maybe he unsubbed.

Please.

You're grasping at straws for these wow comparisons. Heavensward has nothing in similarity to Cataclysm. Sure there are some issues, but really the bulk of people saying there isn't anything to do were the ones that powerleveled every single job to 60 and all crafting and gathering too. Of course you're running out of things to do.

Cata was a failure because of it's stupid difficulty changes. Making healers have to "think about mana" all the while making their heals absolutely sucktastic meant you had tons of stressed out healers. It basically caused a mass exodus of all the tanks and healers who all rerolled dps. The raids sucked, and outside them there was virtually nothing to do. This trend continuing to Mop, and WoD, and most like Legion. Sure Final Fantasy has raids, but it's not the ONLY thing to do. Besides expansion just came out like a few months ago. Wait till 3.1 to see what you like about things.

I liked healing in Cata.

And I maintain what killed wow wasn't the content or the difficulty, but rather the devs' shitty attitudes.

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Originally Posted by Zer0

You're grasping at straws for these wow comparisons. Heavensward has nothing in similarity to Cataclysm. Sure there are some issues, but really the bulk of people saying there isn't anything to do were the ones that powerleveled every single job to 60 and all crafting and gathering too. Of course you're running out of things to do.

Cata was a failure because of it's stupid difficulty changes. Making healers have to "think about mana" all the while making their heals absolutely sucktastic meant you had tons of stressed out healers. It basically caused a mass exodus of all the tanks and healers who all rerolled dps. The raids sucked, and outside them there was virtually nothing to do. This trend continuing to Mop, and WoD, and most like Legion. Sure Final Fantasy has raids, but it's not the ONLY thing to do. Besides expansion just came out like a few months ago. Wait till 3.1 to see what you like about things.

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I really laughed at this.

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Originally Posted by Gardes

I really laughed at this.

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Care to enlighten or add to the discussion or are you just going to spread nonsense like a basement troll?

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Originally Posted by Zer0

Care to enlighten or add to the discussion or are you just going to spread nonsense like a basement troll?

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Only cata raid that arguably sucked was Dragon Soul, and that's because you were subjected to 13 months of it.

Hour of Twilight heroics and gearing my 10 85s from them kept me busy all of 4.3.

to be honest cata didn't killed wow for me it mop that killed wow for me. i must admit i enjoy the mini pet game through. i just find them add the stupid panda race stupid. and add argo, I thought be more cooler for jaina and thrall romance myself. nothing said we want peace like romeo and juilet case. who separate factions hatred for each other. the whole change jaina personality made me frustate. it curse jaina and jacen aka jacen for star wars expand unverise

Heavensward is lacking in patch-defining content to keep the public at large going, but, it's really raids in late WotLK that spelled a slow death for WoW raiding.

Some backstory for my raid exp in WoW:

It was only the beginning of the end of good raid design, with Argent Tournament (lazy, buggy design) and later Ruby Sanctum (we cleared ICC for a year for another lazy raid). It was a warning for what was to come in Cata and beyond, really.

In TBC we cleared BT for a year (with Zul Aman in between) to experience Sunwell, which was going from one great raid to an equally top notch raid. Challenging bosses, and allowed for some creating tactics to get through. Then WotLK came and brought rehashed content. Most of us didn't mind, Because wotlk was new. But towards the expac's end a lot of comments were floating around about how only Ulduar was the worthwhile raid (the best raid in the game next to Karazhan), and how Blizzard killed it too early by adding Argent Tournament only 6 Or so months after Ulduar's release, to test the terrible concept of gated raids. They pulled the same stunt for ICC. Then came Ruby Sanctum which was just filler, and in no way compared to Sunwell as far as end-of-expac raid content. Then there was the feeling that you had to experience heroic modes in order to get that challenging, unique fight or mechanic.

Cata raiding was a whole nother beast (drastic changes to homogenize healing, throwing people off & putting Shaman and Druid out in the cold). The opening raids were not memorable, and many people hated the whole concept of Firelands & its dailies (just a rehashed copy of Isle dailies for Sunwell). I understand that Blizz tried to recreate Molten Core with Firelands, but it didn't quite work out--lots of complaints about the design and Implementation. Dragon soul is considered the worst raid of that expac. The raiding experience falls into more mediocrity with MoP and WoD.

With all that said, I take FF14 raiding with a grain of salt. Raids in this game are more boss rush modes, with the exception of coil and 24 mans. Not all that challenging, except for end bosses in coil. I do think they're currently in a slump with what happened to Bismark/Ravanna with weapons upgrades; who thought that was a good idea?. Void Ark alone won't be enough to sustain players; there needs to be filler raids alongside it.

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by rappa

What could you do?

- Alexander Savage
- Alexander Normal
- Crafting
- Gathering
- Leveling 2.x jobs
- Leveling 3.0 jobs
- PVP
- Triple Triad
- Chocobo Races
- Play the market board game and earn money
- Help friends
- Cap Esoterics
- Others random options.

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It's sad that people have to sell a game's basic functions as reasons why content isn't stale. Capping eso is an argument to keep playing? I'm sure running Neverreap and Fractal over and over is a huge, wonderful, refreshing experience. Let's not forget the loving attention PvP has been given so far. Leveling alts? Yes, let's go grind FATEs and spam DF for the 6th time!

The point is that HW doesn't distinguish itself from 2.0, and players are feeling the burn out even faster than in 2.0. 3.0 shouldn't have a dry spell THIS early in it's life cycle.

question work on your fc airship.

mop wait almost entire year before players could play it. what is 2 month before new content