Your biggest fears for 4.0

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Originally Posted by Gemina

How she got 37 likes is beyond me. One, we're talking expansion and not a patch. It's basically a new game. Peeps are still heavily involved with HW, or not even there yet. Two, leave the game if this is the attitude. She's not doing anyone any favors sticking around. The last thing I want to think my guildmate is thinking when running content I am new to is: "This again...sheeesh!"

The grind is all about the chase. Do people really want stuff handed to them? The grind existed long before FF MMOs. You do crap over and over and over and over again until you can do the sh*t in your sleep. You want something? You will grind. To claim it "mine"; you have no choice, but to put in the time.

I agree with Ryu. Do something other than kill sh*t will ya. There is a community and an economy than benefit greatly from your contributions. You might want to think about that Genaxx.

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I am trying to figure out why you are attacking people. This game has had the same pattern
from over 3 years. The expansion of HW, was basically ARR in a different paint of coat.
No one's asking for stuff to be handed out, but more variety to shake the system a bit.
Not sure why you're being aggressive. I for one, am tired of predicting what's coming next in 6 months.
I already knew how 3.4 was going to play out in 3.1/3.2/3.3.
For over a year I knew how this current patch was going to be. It's the same exact treadmill under new paint.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

The issue I had with that part is that you need to be REALLY careful implementing dungeons in that style. While I personally wouldn't mind a bigger dungeon (Blackrock Depths and the revamped Karazhan come to mind) with an increased reward, without other gameplay aspects keeping advancement on a leash you'd probably get tanks pulling entire rooms of trash to get AoEd down. The increased reward would thus make all other content not worth doing because you'd likely be able to cap tomestones faster with the big dungeon. If you don't increase the reward on a bigger dungeon, you make that dungeon not worth doing (see: Occulus during WotLK).

The focus should be on introducing different dungeon content. Have one be a sort of free-roam zone where you can kill the first three bosses in any order you want to unlock the fourth boss. Have one dungeon require some back-tracking in order to advance. Make another one a coliseum fight where you fight only bosses and no trash. Make another take place on a moving train. Make another a descent down a big pit where your stopping points are to fight some trash and a boss mob.

The mentioned 3.5 dungeon that'll take place on top of an airship sounds like a step in that direction.

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As for me, what worries me is what the devs are planning for the battle system (I'm hoping they'll go into more detail on this as we move forward instead of release only a vague video with pretty special effects). Suffice to say, the move to HW has left me with shaky faith in the devs, specially taking into account some of the design decisions they made for certain jobs.

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This.

I wonder (no sarcasm) if it's unreasonable to expect that SE would take the same thorough look at their dungeons as, say, WoW has when creating and adjusting the dungeon timers for their mythic+ runs, varying from dungeon to dungeon... or similarly, in applying differing rewards for each dungeon to match the time and effort necessary to complete it. That just might be something they're not interested in doing. I imagine a lot could be done through minimum or "dungeon" ilvl scaling, to keep the expected times and rewards around the same band, rather than needing readjustment over time as larger pulls become safer, where the rewards rather than the completion time scales with your (excess / amount reduced in sync) ilvl, or some similarly universal adjustment to mitigate need for manual/individual effort-to-reward balancing, but beyond that... I'm not sure SE will even make the attempt, or even if it'd really be worth it for them to do so?

All these examples would be refreshing in themselves. While I'd love a true exploratory dungeon, let's face it, "dungeon" itself has a new connotation compared to D&D days -- which even then may have been mixed between 'exploratory' and 'survival grinding'. Just getting away from the 'running routine' as you said, Munba, should do a lot for revamping dungeons. And who knows, maybe someday we can get a decent bit of auto- / procedural generation, rather than just randomly attached cube rooms a la Palace of the Dead.

Sidenote: I too am very wary of the upcoming design changes, but more in a WoW 'streamlining' kind of way than the half-assed-ness of HW.

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

I really hope they don't continue the Heavensward gear progression trend of releasing normal mode/crafted gear that outclasses the previous savage gear.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I wonder if it's unreasonable to expect that SE would take the same thorough look at their dungeons as, say, WoW has when creating and adjusting the dungeon timers for their mythic+ runs, varying from dungeon to dungeon... or similarly, in applying differing rewards for each dungeon to match the time and effort necessary to complete it.

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That would require them first creating dungeon tiers like WoW's normal vs heroic vs mythic, which I find unlikely given how they implement hard mode dungeons.

It would require a change in the reward structure as well, with tomestone gear being the first casualty by either notably nerfing it (to the level of the class order hall sets relative to raid gear) or outright removing it from the game.

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That just might be something they're not interested in doing. I imagine a lot could be done through minimum or "dungeon" ilvl scaling, to keep the expected times and rewards around the same band, rather than needing readjustment over time as larger pulls become safer, where the rewards rather than the completion time scales with your (excess / amount reduced in sync) ilvl, or some similarly universal adjustment to mitigate need for manual/individual effort-to-reward balancing, but beyond that... I'm not sure SE will even make the attempt, or even if it'd really be worth it for them to do so?

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The problem with ilevel scaling or capping ilevel is that you defeat the purpose of getting gear, which is to get stronger. I guess the third option would be weakening the gains in power from ilevel jumps (so ilvl270 gear is not notably weaker than ilvl280 gear), but I'm sure that'd lead to people complaining about how their gear is not making them notably more powerful when they upgrade one piece.

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While I'd love a true exploratory dungeon, let's face it, "dungeon" itself has a new connotation compared to D&D days -- which even then may have been mixed between 'exploratory' and 'survival grinding'.

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I guess I look at it differently. What I was thinking is that you're in a jungle or something with three bosses, a big tiger, a big gorilla and a giant worm. To get access to the last boss of the instance you have to kill those three bosses, but the ordered is not decided for you and instead they can be tackled in any order you want. If you want an idea of what the instance would look like, I'd point to The Black Morass from TBC; just bigger and without the portals and time-traveling dragons.

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

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You might want to be specific, since the word generic seems to mean nothing these days aside from "something I don't like that I'm trying to make look bad".

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

I really hope they don't continue the Heavensward gear progression trend of releasing normal mode/crafted gear that outclasses the previous savage gear.

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This is sort of inevitable because of ilevel jumps. Crafted gear should be able to allow someone to leapfrog having to do older content, but materia and overmelding has sort of messed that up a bit. Granted, I don't think crafted gear should be of higher ilvl than past tier gear. The Midas Savage sets were all i240, and I think that heavy metal/star velvet stuff should have been i240 to act as a starting point for those that don't want to grind lore tomestones or raid.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

You might want to be specific, since the word generic seems to mean nothing these days aside from "something I don't like that I'm trying to make look bad".

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Think any Korean MMO with strifing/button mashing gameplay. I really really love the RPG feel that the FFXIV targeting system gives, and I hope they don't change from a rotation to "press this button as fast as you can while maintaining your camera on the boss".

My biggest fear is that in trying to simplify the battle system they'll pull a 'Legion' and oversimplify. I gave wow a go when it dropped a while back after years of not playing and so many of the classes have devolved into 'press this button over and over in hopes of a proc' or 'press these two buttons over and over until this third button is off cooldown'. Personally I don't find any of the ffxiv classes overly difficult to play and manage with the current level of difficulty and while I agree they may need to look at condensing down some skills (looking at things like Stone and Aero having three versions or little used skills that could be combined into others) I'd hate to see them gut the classes in favor of 'fewer buttons'.

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

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As opposed to... an even more generic tab targeting system?

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

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I do not fear this. I think this would be the single biggest improvement they could make. Then it would feel more like combat with physics and action/reaction and less like competitive synchronized dancing.

As MAX level up to 70, new skills added, there'll be too many skills that my hot bar BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

The amount of exp to get from one level to the next... /cringe.

And then having to do that with every craft and gathering job...

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Originally Posted by Slevin_Impudicus

I do not fear this. I think this would be the single biggest improvement they could make. Then it would feel more like combat with physics and action/reaction and less like competitive synchronized dancing.

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But that's the premise of the game. They got their players with that kind of mechanic because that was the way to bring old-time FF players to FFXIV. By chaging it too much they will probably lose a large amount of players.

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Originally Posted by Elazu

As opposed to... an even more generic tab targeting system?

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Wich is still miles better than any Korean action MMO battle system right now.

Tomestones of <new name goes here> eternal grind
No Viera (I guess it's still ok if it doesn't happen, it won't bother me much, tho I really want my bunny men)
SAM being a tank (much as I am enjoying PLD and WAR, sword dps in an mmo or rpg is almost a default and I still can't wrap my head around why is it that every sword wielder in this FF has to be a ****** tank. Inb4 'NIN has swords' no, I don't count NIN as a swordy )
Pretty much what others have said of 4.0 being a rinse repeat of everything we've seen so far, though I don't see SE straying too far from their 'formula', I'd love for it to change at least a little (I'm looking at you tomestone grind)
Battle system overhaul ending up actually messing everything up
The facerolls increasing

Also completely agree with someone who mentioned the animation locks, please, remove this from Assassinate o)-<

That the skill reduction won't be enough.

For how much they've been talking about simplifying rotations, I hope they don't touch machinists too much. We have one of the better designed and cohesive toolkits out there, and the last thing I want is to end up with a boring 3-button rotation or something - I quit WoW precisely to get away from that.

That said, given its status as a new job in 3.0, and that they seem happy to acknowledge its complexity by calling it a 'difficult' job, hopefully I won't have too much to worry about.

My biggest fear is that the character creation system won't be updated for 4.0 despite it being a popular request, sorely needed and perfectly opportune given the graphical updates that 4.0 is cited to gain.

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Originally Posted by Taika

My biggest fear is that they'll mess up the battle system with the planned adjustments. I really enjoy this game's battle system and having so many abilities available. I get that Heavensward rotations might have gotten a tiny bit too complicated, but I really hope they won't be taking the WoW route.

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i don't think it's too complicated at all, at least for the DRG as i'am too lazy to try and lvl up other jobs. and actually i want my rotation to be a lot more complicated and what i would want there to be is something similar to abandon stack and mp management.
and also i'am not having any problems having 38 actions currently on my hotbars and could use 10 more of them too

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Originally Posted by FyrmurlFloerasksyn

drg STILL having the freaking annoying animation lock/s for jumps. Seriously, why is this still a thing? The same applies for assasinate too! It's so stupid. SAM ending up as a tank. Not reducing the amount of buttons needed for rotations. In fact, it needs to be reduced imo.

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first of all there is nothing wrong with animation locks in any way. and if really are having problems with them you clearly are doing something wrong, like using jump in middle of AoE when you could have easily dodged it and use jump right after that. and for rotations why would you change something that is already easy to make it way too easy and boring?

that i cant hide the QQ and whine threads on the forums :P when SE brings down the servers for emergency maintanence :P

-making Samurai a tank
-ruining the point of story mode by giving savage raids their own/better/canon story
-oversimplifying the combat system and turning it into a 3 button faceroll
-listening to the FFXI nostalgia crowd and bringing back old gameplay systems with Eureka that I just don't see working with today's playerbase
-"32bit restrictions :^)"
-not bringing back the Miqo'te butts

That crafting will keep taking longer and longer to complete. I hope we crafters get new useful skills.

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Originally Posted by AzuraWinters

That crafting will keep taking longer and longer to complete. I hope we crafters get new useful skills.

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why would we cot get new usefull skills, we did get them in 3.0 too.

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Originally Posted by swiss_Momo

-making Samurai a tank

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If Samurai and Red Mage both come one of them will be a tank and either being a tank will be a disappointment to a lot of people.

However i don't see why Samurai would be a tank, that would be two Two-Handed Sword wielders and that would be pretty weird.

IMO there shouldn't be new tanks, Two DPS and one New Healer or three DPS would be better, they could also add an extra Job later like they did with Ninja since the Budget this time is pretty big.

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Originally Posted by RobbieH

If Samurai and Red Mage both come one of them will be a tank and either being a tank will be a disappointment to a lot of people.

However i don't see why Samurai would be a tank, that would be two Two-Handed Sword wielders and that would be pretty weird.

IMO there shouldn't be new tanks, Two DPS and one New Healer or three DPS would be better, they could also add an extra Job later like they did with Ninja since the Budget this time is pretty big.

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We want new jobs too... I've preached it a lot but having 4 tanks and 4 healers would keep those communities happy for a long time.. At that point I couldn't care if purely DPS were added in 5.0 and 6.0.
By having 4 tanks and 4 healers we could actually see more unique comps (Going by what Yoshi P said, he would bring the other tanks and healers up in 4.0) Meaning we could have a lot of varied comps.
Also by adding 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 melee DPS in 4.0, we would see 4 tanks, 4 healers, 4 melee and 4 ranged DPS, as I stated before, making compositions hugely varied.

So as for my FEAR for 4.0, it would be not adding a new tank and healer. As I primarily am a Tank/Healer player. And if anyone makes the argument, "We don't need more tanks/healers" then please shush, why do we need more DPS then? It's simple, for variety.

Edit: I know this is your opinion, so I will respect that. Just want to state my opinion too.

My biggest fear is that SE will cave in to western zoophilia maniacs and will create some furr clad ugly cat/wolf based beast race.

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Originally Posted by Katana190

We want new jobs too... I've preached it a lot but having 4 tanks and 4 healers would keep those communities happy for a long time.. At that point I couldn't care if purely DPS were added in 5.0 and 6.0.
By having 4 tanks and 4 healers we could actually see more unique comps (Going by what Yoshi P said, he would bring the other tanks and healers up in 4.0) Meaning we could have a lot of varied comps.
Also by adding 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 melee DPS in 4.0, we would see 4 tanks, 4 healers, 4 melee and 4 ranged DPS, as I stated before, making compositions hugely varied.

So as for my FEAR for 4.0, it would be not adding a new tank and healer. As I primarily am a Tank/Healer player. And if anyone makes the argument, "We don't need more tanks/healers" then please shush, why do we need more DPS then? It's simple, for variety.

Edit: I know this is your opinion, so I will respect that. Just want to state my opinion too.

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i have to agree and disagree. i dont want another ast and another drk, EVER again. and look at the point that theyre considering. they said they gotta do something about sch/war we all knew this we all know this. but a slight competitor to either will definately go wrong, when we get competitors that are sp similar they dont break the lb rules, and yet are far more appealing than what we have available. at that time you can kiss whm/ast goodbye and ironically drk.pld since yeah we got another warrior and another sch to
compete" with them that would just wreak disaster after 4.0 launches, but whatre they gonna do? im all for another tank and healer itd be wrong to tell both roles to "shove it" but what really can be done that wont end up like this?

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Originally Posted by gzuscry

My biggest fear is that SE will cave in to western zoophilia maniacs and will create some furr clad ugly cat/wolf based beast race.

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It's an Asian game. Hair abundance and fur on humanoid characters is not very appealing, outside of a very small fetish crowd (for Asia). Viera is probably the closest thing we'd have... which I think most of us are A-OK with.

End game tomestone grind repeated identically to 2.0 and 3.0, and big ilvl jumps every progression patch.

They lost me shortly after finishing 3.0 because of it and while I've come back recently that's mostly because I missed the people I used to hang around with in game. They'll lose me shortly after 4.0 if that's the plan again, running the same dungeons day after day gets old pretty quick. And no, just making them harder wouldn't help damnit, wish people would stop suggesting that. Then I'd just be running the same dungeons every day, but for longer...

Gonna type in some things I would have the expansion do for us.

Jobs: No buff preservation mechanics. Simplify current jobs so you can actually focus on fight mechanics instead of internal job mechanics.

Story: Make it good, that is all.

Relic: No more FATE grinding. No dungeon atmas either.

Crafting: More subtle recipes. Heavensward recipes are bad. Made lots of crafters quit on 3.0.

Gathering: To me, everything Heavensward did to gathering was bad. Everything. Complete overhaul requested.

Combat: Its good. If you can make it better, go for it.

Items: Request creation of perpetual items. For example, an item that works exactly like a potion, but is not spent when used.

General nitpick: Fix the hair clipping.

My current biggest fear is that they won't know what to really do to fix WHM.
Right now, it lacks identity (please don't tell me it's identity is raw heals when AST is as strong as it is right now), it's underwhelming and it needs a makeover, not potency changes or anything like that.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

End game tomestone grind repeated identically to 2.0 and 3.0

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I haven't mentioned any fear yet, but this is the biggest problem i have with the game.

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

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I see your point, and it's also of some concern to me. But Yoshi said he would bring PLD/DRK up to WAR standards, which can easily be done with new skills in 4.0. I also somewhat disagree, the Utility PLD/DRK bring is really good! And the likes of double WAR is an OKAY comp, but it's nothing special or compares to PLD/WAR or DRK/WAR. Obviously with the addition of a new Tank it would also bring more Utility to the table. We'll just have to see how SE balance things!

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Originally Posted by RobbieH

I haven't mentioned any fear yet, but this is the biggest problem i have with the game.

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One of my issues I have with the game currently as well. I really hope they find a way to spice things up for 4.0

The new tank will feel the same and hardly any utility.

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Originally Posted by FinalWolf

The new tank will feel the same and hardly any utility.

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You're asking for a lot there. Balancing and tradeoff, combined with a somewhat strict following of the holy trinity, are powerful tools that prevent unique design that isn't simply different visuals and minor playstyle differences. Even with mechanical differences, if it's too convoluted or management heavy, then it's too difficult and not something the devs want.

That Eureka is going to be a let down =\

My biggest fear? That there will be no way to condense early-game experience. I want to get people into the game, and the early ARR MSQ is a huge, bloated obstacle to that. It's especially complicated with this game because of the story - a "leveling potion" is only the answer when levels are the sole thing that players need to progress through, but this game has its story, which takes a significant time investment in a part of the game that doesn't find its groove until dozens of hours in. And then grinds to a halt for a few dozen more quests! Say what you will about Heavensward being "the same game" (a statement I feel is a gross simplification), it really managed to refine and improve upon ARR's bloated narrative. The ARR narrative should be offered as a digest (with episodes maybe broken up by needing to do the dungeons and instances?), as should the 2.x story.

I suppose a secondary worry is over-simplification of combat roles.

That said, I'm not really all that pessimistic about Stormblood. Aside from increasingly-simplified dungeons, FFXIV has gotten pretty consistently better, with the dev team demonstrably learning from past mistakes. Even the return of the Tome Grind (which I think likely) doesn't especially scare me, since recent patches have offered so many different ways of acquiring them at endgame that I rarely need to do more than two or three Expert Roulettes. Give me enough ways to work towards a goal, and I'll be happy; just PLEASE don't completely reset available content to "two dungeons and a raid" like Heavensward did.

If they didn't do anything different or game-changing at all even though they have triple the budget now.
It's been about 3 years now since ARR, 4 when Stormblood is around. It's time for big changes.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

If they didn't do anything different or game-changing at all even though they have triple the budget now.
It's been about 3 years now since ARR, 4 when Stormblood is around. It's time for big changes.

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Except the MMO market is volatile, and exceptionally difficult to achieve success in. They may not have the luxury to try wild experimentation; I imagine there's quite a lot of pressure from those above to "not fix what ain't broke" (and they'd need hard numbers to demonstrate "broke", not the clamours of the online masses), and any major changes they make would have to be just as possible of engaging the same number of people to be worth the investment.

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Originally Posted by Hinoto-no-Ryuji

Except the MMO market is volatile, and exceptionally difficult to achieve success in. They may not have the luxury to try wild experimentation; I imagine there's quite a lot of pressure from those above to "not fix what ain't broke" (and they'd need hard numbers to demonstrate "broke", not the clamours of the online masses), and any major changes they make would have to be just as possible of engaging the same number of people to be worth the investment.

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By change I meant improvements, not really fixing something that's not broken.
ARR was a huge success even though it still felt half-baked. It's still half-baked even now and still successful, but there has been a decline. They should make improvements at this point.