ARR or Heavensward Classic

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

And I think that's entirely feasible while still retaining the qualities that people want from job design. I mean I think the real answer is just to move modern FFXIV away from this simplification crusade that no one is asking for. Asking for FFXIV Classic is more of a cynical jab at the lack of faith anyone seems to have that we ever will. The people asking for it would rather job design just have new life breathed into it but have no faith that SE ever will, so they'd rather just ask for a Heavensward server just to be able to play FFXIV before it turned into this.

I can't tell you how many times I wish I could just dick around with HW or SB Scholar because of how much I miss it.

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Given the endless complaints about homogenization, I am unsure if hw but with a little homogenization, as a treat, would pan out broadly but at least the 2 of us have a consensus on this I suppose.

another thing youre missing is wows years of homebrew private servers , Even 11 has private servers to the 75 days.

14 doesnt, not 1.0, not ARR. There isnt enough of a draw.

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

Given the endless complaints about homogenization, I am unsure if hw but with a little homogenization, as a treat, would pan out broadly but at least the 2 of us have a consensus on this I suppose.

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I think the flaw is in assuming homogenization is the only answer to resolving balance concerns from Heavensward or Stormblood job balance. Just because that is the answer SE chased does not mean it is the only answer to creating healthier balance between jobs.

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Originally Posted by 4clubbedace

another thing youre missing is wows years of homebrew private servers , Even 11 has private servers to the 75 days.

14 doesnt, not 1.0, not ARR. There isnt enough of a draw.

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The ff11 private servers I don't care for because there not official and people make custom changes that aren't 100% from the time period there trying to create like changing xp rates and damage values based on memory or making custom content that wasn't originally in the game with there own ideas. And a lot of the times the people that make private servers makes rules/changes that benefit mostly there friends groups and have unfair advantages and privileges over normal players.

It is not like we are going to have private legacy server of XIV, so, we need Square Enix to step up and make it happen ! :cool: Let's go back to ARR/HW !

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

No.

The qol changes from later on are immense. No one would want arr classic or hw classic.

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least obvious square employee

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Originally Posted by xivYuiM

least obvious square employee

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I believe the wow line. "You think you do, but you don't" springs to mind.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

How about a robust 7.x, and 8.x instead-?

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Still thinking the same ?

Gimme HW Classic.

I survived the jank the 1st time around and I miss WHM and SCH being fun to play and I enjoyed MNK a lot more back then too.

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Originally Posted by Chelsei

It's all in the name ! Choose.

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No.

They would need to put in an anti cheat for me to even THINK that doing either of these would be a good idea.

UP ! UP ! UP ! :D

Considering how much I LOVED ARR, i'll take an ARR classic server please... actually, I'd take HW too, because I also loved that era of gameplay... I loved the class structure of ARR, and I would very much like to return to it every now and then.

Whatever won Heavensward that award, it likely wasn't Caster Bard.

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Originally Posted by 4clubbedace

another thing youre missing is wows years of homebrew private servers , Even 11 has private servers to the 75 days.

14 doesnt, not 1.0, not ARR. There isnt enough of a draw.

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I'm thinking back to DSR's launch and subsequent world first race, and all the accusations of "x team cheated" or "x team practiced on a private server" flying around, only for YoshiP to make a blog post stating something along the lines of "the game won't run unless the client interacts with a bunch of proprietary code located on servers between them and the actual game server, and nobody knows what that code is except for some random engineers at SE, so what you're accusing the world first race winners of is actually impossible".

Assuming that's accurate and I'm not misremembering things, that's probably a bigger reason why there aren't already ARR or HW private servers floating around than simply "nobody wants one."

And the code for 1.0 apparently got yeeted into the stratosphere. Sure, they can attempt to rebuild it based on videos and such the way WoW Classic got off the ground (seriously, there was one Youtuber from back in the day who used to speedrun leveling and document it, and his footage was the primary source Blizzard used to figure out how things actually worked back then when initially putting 2019 Classic together), but I somehow suspect there isn't anywhere near enough external documentation of FF14 1.0 for that to be viable.

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Originally Posted by ArchlordPie

what you're accusing the world first race winners of is actually impossible

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What he meant is they can't know the mechanics in advance because they are revealed by the server itself over the network as the fight progresses.

Would be pointless when the easiest way to do it is to practice the normal mode (use the arena to practice positioning after the fight ends). Often you can predict how the savage version will differ from the normal one to an extent - for example, automatically placed objects get placed by players instead, casts are often faster and untelegraphed, attacks do more damage, tank busters are swaps, stacks often become healer stacks, any missing patterns are often there. Not killing the boss too fast sometimes reveals savage mechanics at the tail end of the fight, because that's when it starts "combining mechanics" more and ramps up the intensity. A good example I remember is E3.

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Assuming that's accurate and I'm not misremembering things, that's probably a bigger reason why there aren't already ARR or HW private servers floating around than simply "nobody wants one."

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Realistically, everyone uses repositories that have commit histories allowing them to revert to a previous version of the code easily. And the fights themselves are almost unchanged since release beside the stat squish or the nerfs we got in HW. I'm sure they could do it, but it wouldn't be worth it due to the QoL we'd lose; they should just make the current game what people want to play.

UP ! UP ! UP !

Classic server pretty please, Square Enix ! :p

I'm a Shadowbringers baby so my opinion doesn't matter, but the game got a toooon of QoL improvements since ARR/HW times from what I saw!

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

Oh yeah, because doing a couple of threat combos and then switching off of tank stance for the rest of the fight, wholly ignoring said threat combo after was super engaging. This mechanic that was meaningless to competent players but a massive stumbling block for the bad ones was definitely a load-bearing mechanic.

Oh wait, no. The removal of threat as a relevant mechanic is probably the single greatest qol feature added to this game outside of the glam dresser. What was previously the number one source of vote kicks and abandons vanished overnight. Not only were tanks holding threat consistently, I also never had to deal with the middling nervous tank who sandbags their dps 25% or however much it was for the whole dungeon by never leaving tank stance.

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The moment Pictomancer could rob aggro with their crazy damage, was the single most engaging thing in dungeons I've experienced as a tank. The dungeons are a snoozefest on a tank, I have can tank 10 000 vuln stacks, solo bosses and aggro as a mechanic is gone. There is 0 need to even CC mobs. You are basically running through a slideshow of sightseeing. All the bosses are just dodgeville, why bother positioning them when they teleport to the middle anyway, most of them don't even do anything that would endanger the group if I tanked it in the middle of the group, my positioning of them does NOT matter, the tank does not guide the group nor guide the flow as they do in EVERY SINGLE OTHER MMO probably. Over half of them are just wallbosses that don't move AT ALL.
If you're a lazy sightseer, Yeah? Probably great for you. If you actually want engaging content and job identity, probably not so good for the game.

While I would love to play in the ARR/Hw/Sb sandbox again, the "Classic" MMO formula isn't particularly worthwhile IMO. Who wants to play an inherently transient MMO that's comprised exclusively of ancient solved content and destined to either die in a few months when the novelty wears off and people stop playing, erase your progress through server resets, or go through the same gradual decline as the main game?

OSRS is the only game that this will ever work for due to its sprawling horizontal progression and vanilla+ design. I could also see it working for FFXI but I don't think SE will invest in that idea.

I'm not really sure splitting the playerbase further between different iterations of the game is a good idea. Maybe it'd drive more traffic to the game, but idk, seems like all the people who talk about HW just have rose-tinted glasses on.

Maybe just fix the current game instead?

Are classic exists on mobile

I would take 1.0 all over again over what 7.0-7.25 has shown me sadly.

No, thank you.

I don't really see much of a point. The game that ARR was is mostly intact, and HW was so much of a mess with bad raid balance and button bloat that SB did a swath of job changes across the board.

I don't know anyone that wants the old versions of Bard and Machinist back with their cast bars, and I certainly don't miss the time when I couldn't play Scholar at cap because the 40 buttons I used on cross-hotbar suddenly wasn't enough because of how manual the fairy was. And the static breaker that was Faust.

And that's just what I remember off the top of my head.

Neither. Hated it when WoW did the Classic nonsense, and have 0 interest in it for FFXIV.

I have little to no interest in a true "Classic" but would be happy with seasonal Classic+ 's of each prior expansion.

For the most part, I'd rather try some changes in the current/main game first to see what can be pretty universally lauded. Things like reducing the max ilvl of dungeons or at least allowing people to use the Matchmaker for Minimum Item Level runs that'd have their rewards increased proportionately to stats lost, general FATE scaling improvements, Hunt improvements, perhaps even uniting Skill Speed and Spell Speed, maybe even adding a Ping system, etc.

As for "Classic+" -ing ARR and HW, that'd probably mean making MP and TP tick individually per player GCD (though for ~20% less, rounded, since /3.0 -> /<2.5) as not to go back to making SkS/SpS so self-sabotaging, returning CD resets on wipe, etc., atop the general changes above.

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Who wants to play an inherently transient MMO that's comprised exclusively of ancient solved content and destined to either die in a few months when the novelty wears off and people stop playing, erase your progress through server resets, or go through the same gradual decline as the main game?

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In effect, anyone playing the current game past week 1 of each piece of content?

I'd love ARR classic. Yeah there are tons of QoL changes that really helped the game since then, but it was it's own bundle of joy even with it's flaws. It would not be very popular though I don't think. It's easy to see that a lot of people had issues with it.

Thriving market board, no world hopping, Spirit Bonding for money, a great raid series after Twintania got sorted and OG Monk with a fun Relic system. Delicious. Take me back to early 2014.

Couldn't care less about ARR/HW classic. What interests me in the classic idea is to return to a time when the battle system made a modicum of sense, not to return and run content I've already ran thousands of times, or to redo the same story again.

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Originally Posted by 4clubbedace

Are classic exists on mobile

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It's not the same battle system and, i don't want to play on mobile too :)

ARR or HW but because Summoner would be the most radically different. If we were to have equivalent of Classic+ or Season of Discovery, a version of pet-summoner where egi-titan would become more durable and good at holding aggro, essentially a pseudo tank.

One spicy world ending calamity please.

Or Stormblood classic if it must be classic.

Robust 7.x didn't happen and 8.x is not going to be " ROBUST " either !

CLASSIC PLEASE !

At least, we could enjoy the game how it was before for the battle system.

ARR/HW classic servers would be the best thing ever. Let us play fun jobs again.

I'd rather they focus on making the current game get better. Further dividing the player base would make Dynamis even more dead than it already is, and might even take Primal with it.

I'll still take that HW revisit :)

Honestly would love to see how the SHB toddlers, EW babies, and Dawnbie fetuses would react to the glory of stance dancing tanks, BRD and MCH casting/replenishing MP/TP, Parry and Accuracy, and the majesty of SCH being stupid busted for both DPSing and healing :)

One large Bane with non-diminishing DOT spread, to go!

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

Edit: And if you say aggro management I am just going to disregard you because aggro management was not and never has been complex in ff14.

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This I have to disagree with, because I started the game as PLD in 2.16 and it was nightmare as a new player. You go into normal dungeon for story, your bard pulls before you and you spend next 30 seconds trying, without much of a success to get off the army of mobs off of them. Aggro was very easily lost in the early days, especially if DPS in party had an ounce of higher iLvL gear. "You pull - you die" wasn't a joke back then, and the only DPS who could somewhat substitute the tank for a short while if needed was DRG thanks to their tankier gear.

Doing Garuda EX as ilvl 60 PLD with a ilvl 110 Bard during one of the patches scarred me for quite some time then because dude just couldn't read the room and stop freaking pulling, and I couldn't take off the boss off of him even with Provoke and aggro combo, simply because I was geared worse compared to him. I even remember our ilvl of the time, it left that much of an impression, and it wasn't a fun experience in the slightest.

This is not a thing anymore these days, for better or worse (and I can see both cons and pros to how aggro is today).



And on the question of the post, I'd say no, personally. DT isn't by any means perfect, but I don't really want ARR and HW experience back.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

This I have to disagree with, because I started the game as PLD in 2.16 and it was nightmare as a new player. You go into normal dungeon for story, your bard pulls before you and you spend next 30 seconds trying, without much of a success to get off the army of mobs off of them. Aggro was very easily lost in the early days, especially if DPS in party had an ounce of higher iLvL gear. "You pull - you die" wasn't a joke back then, and the only DPS who could somewhat substitute the tank for a short while if needed was DRG thanks to their tankier gear.

Doing Garuda EX as ilvl 60 PLD with a ilvl 110 Bard during one of the patches scarred me for quite some time then because dude just couldn't read the room and stop freaking pulling, and I couldn't take off the boss off of him even with Provoke and aggro combo, simply because I was geared worse compared to him. I even remember our ilvl of the time, it left that much of an impression, and it wasn't a fun experience in the slightest.

This is not a thing anymore these days, for better or worse (and I can see both cons and pros to how aggro is today).



And on the question of the post, I'd say no, personally. DT isn't by any means perfect, but I don't really want ARR and HW experience back.

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The problem was less of an aggro management design issue but more of a tank stance unlock level kind of issue, since WAR and DRK had theirs only at lvl30 and PLD at lvl40 (!). Granted, what generated the most aggro was just using the enmity combo and the tank stance was only a secondary boost to it, but 1) it helped new players immensely and 2) not all tanks were equal there either because while WAR and DRK had an AOE aggro filler, PLD was stuck with Flash only, and even in SB Total Eclipse was introduced without any aggro modifier attached to keep Flash relevant. Even more in SB actually since due to wanting to use Total Eclipse for damage, PLDs were forced to play optimally with a minimum amount of Flash as possible, which wasn't very new player friendly.

Still, support damage was generally very on par with DPS damage under lvl30 so with the added enmity from aggro tools getting back aggro wasn't really a problem: the real problem was asshole players not trying to accommodate new players learning and not even trying to bring the mobs to them as it was generally meant as a grief tactic before anything actually optimal or fast, just to pin the blame on the sprout (I should know, that was my second tanking experience in a nutshell).

Also I'm sorry but if you couldn't pull aggro from a BRD with full aggro combo (+ tank stance as a bonus), which generated about 6k to 8k aggro potency per 3 step combo depending on the tank (and stance was x1.7), no matter your gear, you were probably doing something very wrong or just overexaggerating it for the sake of argument.

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Originally Posted by Drimn

I'd rather they focus on making the current game get better. Further dividing the player base would make Dynamis even more dead than it already is, and might even take Primal with it.

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Do you really think they're capable of making this game better?

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Originally Posted by Valence

Also I'm sorry but if you couldn't pull aggro from a BRD with full aggro combo (+ tank stance as a bonus), which generated about 6k to 8k aggro potency per 3 step combo depending on the tank (and stance was x1.7), no matter your gear, you were probably doing something very wrong or just overexaggerating it for the sake of argument.

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It's well possible that I was doing something absolutely wrong (I was frankly not a particularly good tank for at least first half a year of playing), but I also remember that parties generally made it a big point to not pull ahead because there was some kind of a weirdness going on with first hits specifically.

I had missed HW and based on some of the replies here it seems like it was a mixed bag of an expansion atthe time. Some are saying that it was awesome, while some here are saying that it was the worst expansion ever.

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Originally Posted by Grimforth

I had missed HW and based on some of the replies here it seems like it was a mixed bag of an expansion atthe time. Some are saying that it was awesome, while some here are saying that it was the worst expansion ever.

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Imo, each expansion has its good and bad aspects (yes, even DT), and while a big portion of community will probably agree on what they consider best and worst expansion, ultimately any patch we have will be someone's best and someone's worst.

The thing with HW is that it was our first expansion, so nearly everything had an appeal of novelty and was looked at with excitement. The project was barely 2 year old, after all (if we don't count 1.0).

People who joined the game and stayed during that period of time are also more likely to look back with fondness and nostalgia, because that is the version of the game that made them intially fall in love with it (and I think that to an extent it will apply to every expansion, for new players).

I went through every expansion release, and while statistics do pinpoint that some changes are generally received better than others (and that's why certain expansions are so broadly praised, while others are met with scepticism), every single expansion there's, still, always someone who will say "it was better in the previous version", even back in HW. That's just how things are in online games.