Are we expecting TO MUCH from 8.0?

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Originally Posted by AlliciaCapulet

To the question "Are we expecting too much for 8.0?"

I believe not. In ARR, they managed to bring back this game alive after a disaster.

Now, the dev team, while they did an amazing stroy in EW, almost killed the game by making it too easy and boring to play. DT had some steps in the right directions, but it's again just them "trying to be safe" and not daring to do new things or to ask too much from the players. They also try to keep a "3 month for patch release" model on a 4-5 months patch release, making players wait and wait for content. Add to that one of the worst story where your character was like just a sidekick, and you get one of the worst and most boring expansion of the history of XIV.

For many players like myself, 8.0 will be the reason if they keep their sub or if they are done for good with XIV. Not only the game has to be good and innovative again, and not just a 50 hours of cutscene where I do nothing, but it also need to have a better calendar, patch release and engaging content on the following patches.

I was forgiving the devs for EW and DT, mostly because of nostalgia of how good the game used to be, but if they fail a 3rd time to deliver, then I'm done with XIV.

So, are we expecting too much? No, we are just expecting the game to be good and fun again, if it's not, we'll simply carry on and play other games.

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They need to remember the lessons they so painfully learned from 1.x to 2.0, go look at your slides you used to show players.
They need to remember to communicate with us like they used to instead of, what is essentially, press releases and little interaction with the community.
They need to no longer operate on the concept of "it worked before, let's do it again" over and over and over. Most of DT was rubber stamped with little to no upper management oversight because they were assigned to other projects. They overstretched Yoshi, his leadership team and the developers way too much, making other games instead of maintaining and improving XIV.

If the future of SE depends on the future of XIV, then act like it and deliver.

The post EW patches and most of DT nearly caused me to cancel my sub, let my house go and walk away. I'm giving them one last shot with 8.0, as long as it's delivered fairly soon, Dec 26 / Jan 27. Anything later than that and, well... I left WoW to come to XIV because of a terrible content drought... I don't want to do it again.

Wouldn't mind if it didn't have a story to it and just had lots of engaging fun quests and lots of activities to do.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Wouldn't mind if it didn't have a story to it and just had lots of engaging fun quests and lots of activities to do.

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I don't mind having a story quest, as long as I feel usefull and that I feel connected to the goal of the MSQ... which was not the case for the super long cinematic that was DT.

I don't mind having fun or cute moment like an Alpaca that spit in the face of someone... But, with moderation. I like to feel I'm needed.

DT MSQ was mainly a boring long cutscene that went like :

"-Speak with Wuk Lamat
-Move to X,Y and speak with Wuk Lamat
-Follow Wuk Lamat and speak with her
-Speak again with Wuk Lamat
-Oh no! A thing that we need to continue is broken. Please, go gather a piece of rock somewhere while we fix it.
-Thank you for the piece of rock ! Because of your effort, the thing is now fixed ! Speak with Wuk Lamat
-Follow Wuk Lamat and speak with her
-Speak with Wuk Lamat
..."

That kind of story is boring. If the people that write the story wants us to feel that, for example, the train is broken and you can't do anything... Well, let me help on 3-4 quests to fix it, and not just with gathering 1 or 2 piece of wood and hop, it's now fixed. I want to feel that I really helped, that I did something. Having a NPC asking me to move a crate for whatever lame reason is a bad quest. But, having to fix something, or search something, if it's not happening too often, it's a good quest to make us feel that we actually gather the mats and do the fix.

Oh, and having 80% of the objective that are "Speak with Wuk Lamat"... that's a very bad writing.

So, I really hope that the 8.0 story will be better.

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Originally Posted by AlliciaCapulet

DT MSQ was mainly a boring long cutscene that went like :

"-Speak with Wuk Lamat
-Move to X,Y and speak with Wuk Lamat
-Follow Wuk Lamat and speak with her
-Speak again with Wuk Lamat
-Oh no! A thing that we need to continue is broken. Please, go gather a piece of rock somewhere while we fix it.
-Thank you for the piece of rock ! Because of your effort, the thing is now fixed ! Speak with Wuk Lamat
-Follow Wuk Lamat and speak with her
-Speak with Wuk Lamat
..."

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Oh and don't forget. Speak with Wuk Lamat.

I care way more about content and design philosophy than I do story in FFXIV. With that said, I don't think FFXIV has had a healthy design philosophy in a long time and the story was really the only reason alot of people tended to overlook it. Now that the story sucked in DT, it's taken blinders off of people's eyes and they can see the actual gameplay for what it is, stale. They litter the game with fetch quests or running from point A to point B and then after all of that slog, the reward is an extremely formulaic dungeon that's composed of 2 trash mobs per hallway with a boss at the end, all while making jobs homogenized to the point where there's almost no satisfaction anymore in picking a main job; job identity is ruined.

Honestly the only good thing about DT has been The Arcadion.

I don't have high expectations for 8.0 because I don't think Square even considers some of the problems with the game as actual problems. The most I can hope for personally is they role back some of these awful Job changes/choices, but at this point I feel like even something as simple as that is an ask.

If we're getting another dragon for summoner in 8.0 it should use fire blast , hit the stage like a Charizard, blaze like a Charizard, rage like a Charizard, big bodied Charizard! -Genwunner Rap Music.
https://64.media.tumblr.com/09ac6c30...4omxo1_640.gif

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Originally Posted by SekiaTa1ga

I care way more about content and design philosophy than I do story in FFXIV. With that said, I don't think FFXIV has had a healthy design philosophy in a long time and the story was really the only reason alot of people tended to overlook it. Now that the story sucked in DT, it's taken blinders off of people's eyes and they can see the actual gameplay for what it is, stale. They litter the game with fetch quests or running from point A to point B and then after all of that slog, the reward is an extremely formulaic dungeon that's composed of 2 trash mobs per hallway with a boss at the end, all while making jobs homogenized to the point where there's almost no satisfaction anymore in picking a main job; job identity is ruined.

Honestly the only good thing about DT has been The Arcadion.

I don't have high expectations for 8.0 because I don't think Square even considers some of the problems with the game as actual problems. The most I can hope for personally is they role back some of these awful Job changes/choices, but at this point I feel like even something as simple as that is an ask.

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Rolling back the job changes would require loosening or abandoning the 2-minute rule, and that would require coming up with a new (old) design process for high-end fights, which the entire game has been made to revolve around. That's more work than they've shown they're willing to put in.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Rolling back the job changes would require loosening or abandoning the 2-minute rule, and that would require coming up with a new (old) design process for high-end fights, which the entire game has been made to revolve around. That's more work than they've shown they're willing to put in.

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The job changes that have been done to us were asks by the battle team. Why? Because job actions that require complex and satisfying rotations, having to think about what to use and where, gets in the way of fast paced raids and ultimates.

Ultimates dictate job balance, what we use and the pace of what we use them. Savage has some consideration but all other content is not a factor in job design anymore.

The 2-minute meta has given a strong base in design for high level play, but made jobs play pretty samey because everything now has to comfortably fall into that two minute buff window.

The problem there is in practice, lower skilled players can complete the less difficult content with the current tool kit, and plenty of us on that lower, casual end found some points of the base difficulty and reaction speed of Dawntrail a sharp jump from what we're accustomed to.

I'm so mixed on Dawntrail's combat. Some absolutely jaw dropping fights with lots of creative ideas, but the push towards flash, speed, and everything hitting like a speeding bullet train has hurt the base of players that are those MSQ Andies and RP'ers that keep the lights on. Dawntrail's base MSQ content is harder, but apparently the EX and Savage stuff is easier, and the devs have repeatedly tried new difficulty formats to experiment with.

But instead of funneling players up to the more difficult and more extravagant fights, they've only succeeded in making most players less happy with the content we got and the new experimental stuff like Chaotic and Quantum have failed. We all know release timing annihilated the Cloud of Darkness Chaotic in the west, but Forked Tower (another 24-man savage) was also an unmitigated failure to the point JP players were actually boycotting it. And did anyone actually do anything between zero and maxing out Quantum? No one had any desire to fool around with the scaling system because it was pointless. You either want it difficult or you don't.

They've also made fights have far fewer opportunities to recover from mistakes by making 3 out of 4 attacks one shot kills or by stacking raidwides in rapid succession. It can be pretty demoralizing if you're trying to learn mechanics and you can't pick up and process your errors because you're dying so much your first attempt.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

The 2-minute meta has given a strong base in design for high level play, but made jobs play pretty samey because everything now has to comfortably fall into that two minute buff window.

The problem there is in practice, lower skilled players can complete the less difficult content with the current tool kit, and plenty of us on that lower, casual end found some points of the base difficulty and reaction speed of Dawntrail a sharp jump from what we're accustomed to.

I'm so mixed on Dawntrail's combat. Some absolutely jaw dropping fights with lots of creative ideas, but the push towards flash, speed, and everything hitting like a speeding bullet train has hurt the base of players that are those MSQ Andies and RP'ers that keep the lights on. Dawntrail's base MSQ content is harder, but apparently the EX and Savage stuff is easier, and the devs have repeatedly tried new difficulty formats to experiment with.

But instead of funneling players up to the more difficult and more extravagant fights, they've only succeeded in making most players less happy with the content we got and the new experimental stuff like Chaotic and Quantum have failed. We all know release timing annihilated the Cloud of Darkness Chaotic in the west, but Forked Tower (another 24-man savage) was also an unmitigated failure to the point JP players were actually boycotting it. And did anyone actually do anything between zero and maxing out Quantum? No one had any desire to fool around with the scaling system because it was pointless. You either want it difficult or you don't.

They've also made fights have far fewer opportunities to recover from mistakes by making 3 out of 4 attacks one shot kills or by stacking raidwides in rapid succession. It can be pretty demoralizing if you're trying to learn mechanics and you can't pick up and process your errors because you're dying so much your first attempt.

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The two minute meta is lazy and something I never understood, ESPECIALLY when it comes to high level play. High level players in almost every other game would be against the dumbing down of strategy and mechanics, but FFXIV 'high level' actually just involves people wanting to increase their damage without much thought put into it. Figure out how to optimally use buffs in this fight? Nah, just make it so we can blow everything on odd and even windows. It's actually insane to me the more I think about it.

I wish they'd get rid of the 2 minute rotation and heal the schism between high end content and everything else. Extremes only go so far, they need to integrate challenging content in an organic way into the base game instead of just opt in extremes and savage/ultimates.

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Originally Posted by SekiaTa1ga

The two minute meta is lazy and something I never understood, ESPECIALLY when it comes to high level play. High level players in almost every other game would be against the dumbing down of strategy and mechanics, but FFXIV 'high level' actually just involves people wanting to increase their damage without much thought put into it. Figure out how to optimally use buffs in this fight? Nah, just make it so we can blow everything on odd and even windows. It's actually insane to me the more I think about it.

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Part of the community has become extremely allergic to everything that could upset raiding in any form I think.

Even simple job identity like DRG jumps are first and foremost looked at how they impact fights because you could potentially dodge attacks if you become invulnerable, which an MMO should actually embrace because it would open interestimg strategies and don't get me started of the idea of a melee healer being not usable.
Casters also nowadays have to fit into the fight design instead of...well, casting.
The 2 min meta is simply another result of that mentality.

Part of the fault is with the devs and part with the community but at the root of the problem is that somehow the "casual" MMO seems to more and more be designed around Savage upwards encounters, instead of looking at how that actually impacts the rest of the game.
Fights like M6S are really on the nose that the normal mode is just a thrown in afterthought compared to the Savage fight with cutting out even the add phase instead of having it in an easier way.
As long as that priority of the devs doesn't change or they at least start to give things like job design or normal modes the same love that they give the raids, we will never see a betterment because everything has to fit like a puzzle peace into the encounter design of the harder fights.

In my unimportant opinion, the team around Mr. Ozma has too much power and at least to me it seems that they don't have any love or interest in anything outside designing hard encounters.
And the job design team...either doesn't work or is the yes man to the encounter design team.
Would be nice if 8.0 actually proves me wrong...

Edit:
8.0 has to prove that the game can be fun outside hardmode encounters again (which are in a good spot right now imo).
If it repeats the mistakes of DT (1 year of basically nothing for nonraiders, boring jobs in majority of the content, content being copy pastes and OC-like, overtuned things like FT and Chaotic) then even a good story won't safe longterm reception.
At least I know that i won't accept another spit in my face like the BLM changes just so the fight design is fun in the hard modes.

Also, as a main heal since ARR, I still think that we had enough DPS job in the last expansions. We deserve, if it's 2 new job, to get a new healer. As tanks also deserve a new one.

They took their time and made us wait for way too long the last time, to give us what, sage? A heal that broke AST and SCH, by trying to divide the healer jobs as "shield heal" and "pure heal". The one that took the biggest hit was AST.

But since ShB, healing became more and more boring. Both in EW and DT, when I leveled my heals, I saw no difference at all in the game play. Each healer basicaly have 1 attack with a casting time, 1 instant attack with a cooldown (share the other attack), 1 dot, and 1 aoe. Then, they have a toolkit way too strong for the current level of challenge. You never have to uses that toolkit escept if you have very, very bad players with you, but then, you won't clear the fight if that's the case. When you look at the savage/ultimate fight, at some point, they all got cleared without any heal in the party - There is simply too much mitigation and regen for tanks and DPS.

As a main healer, I want my job to be fun, even when I solo things. Having no rotation and just spamming Broil (or the equivalent on other jobs) and putting a dot every 30 sec is boring. When I get in dungeons, trials or normal raids, I barely have to heal, and the DPS rotation is still boring.

They can do fun healer. HW was a good example where we probably had the best AST and SCH. SB wasn't that bad either.

As a main heal, I expect to have a new job, so we break that "2 pure heal / 2 shield heal" boring meta, that AST gains back it's identity as well for the other jobs, and that we get a decent DPS rotation as an addition to our healkit. I also hope that dungeons, trials, raids sees the amount of damage dealt increased by a lot (normal damage, not just raid wide attack or timed heal mecanics). I want to have to heal, to adjust my dps rotation to throw heal in it... Something fun like HW or SB was.

The pattern we've been getting means were most likely to get a new physical ranged (which we're due over any role because it's the only one with only 3 choices) and a new tank, just like Shadowbringers.

The 2-minute meta was because of everything being so out a line with buffs windows that it negatively impacted some jobs over others. Lining every job up to 2 minutes was to balance the playing field and allow a better variety of party comps.

Most of the job sameness we're dealing with is all in the name of job balance more than ease of use. And it's worked. Any proper party comp (2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS) is viable in bleeding edge content, so it's perfectly reasonable to pick the jobs that appeal to you, personally, and just get good at it.



I think some of the different mentality might be because FFXIV is a Japanese game. Balance and fairness over giving gimmicks that can highlight certain jobs in certain scenarios, which is how I've been told WoW does it.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

8.0 has to prove that the game can be fun outside hardmode encounters again (which are in a good spot right now imo).
If it repeats the mistakes of DT (1 year of basically nothing for nonraiders, boring jobs in majority of the content, content being copy pastes and OC-like, overtuned things like FT and Chaotic) then even a good story won't safe longterm reception.

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Agreed. I think they really need to look at how they space out content, with an eye towards giving each of the different types of players something to do each patch. Especially if they’re going to keep these longer patch cycles.

OC somehow took the worst of Eureka and Bozja rather than the best… I was really looking forward to it, but what we got seems like a watered down version of it’s predecessors, with the only large scale duty at a level of difficulty not able to be easily cleared with randoms to make it repeatable for casuals, and no gimmick to make it easier over time (elemental gear, mettle, etc.) so the lack of a Normal mode was sorely felt.

Chaotic was a fun fight, but made it miserable were the wipe conditions… I’ve never seen so much toxicity in PF!

I didn’t totally hate the Dawntrail story, even though I had my issues with it. I get that they were looking to at least start off with something more light-hearted before they got the next story arc off the ground. But I want the next story to make me feel things. I want to feel like we’re leading up to another ShB/EW. I want it to be another epic story.

Other QoL improvements I’d like to see would be a glamour revamp… please let this “outfit” system be leading up to an Armoire catalog! I want to see the character creator beefed up with lots more options, since the “upgrade” destroyed two of my characters’ faces. I want to see some kind of instanced housing system, to supplement the limited supply of the ward system. And I want the seasonal events to be more like this Valentiones event, especially in terms of rewards. We got two outfits, lots of furniture and music rolls… maybe other events could have minions and mounts alongside the glams instead of furniture so it kinda alternates from event to event. But glam for every event should be standard. And no more undyeable gear. Anywhere. Everything new should come with both channels, and the old ones should be worked on over time to add them.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

8.0 has to prove that the game can be fun outside hardmode encounters again (which are in a good spot right now imo).
If it repeats the mistakes of DT (1 year of basically nothing for nonraiders, boring jobs in majority of the content, content being copy pastes and OC-like, overtuned things like FT and Chaotic) then even a good story won't safe longterm reception.
At least I know that i won't accept another spit in my face like the BLM changes just so the fight design is fun in the hard modes.

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I absolutely agree with this 100%, but it’s also literally the only thing I expect.

More sweeping changes to every job sanding down every last bit of their design until they’re all absolutely perfectly balanced for savage/ultimate raid design, more copy-paste content/concepts, more dull, derivative and extremely ‘safe’ storylines like Dawntrail, more dungeons that practically complete themselves because they need to be easily doable by trusts, more poor planning and development insight (looking at you OC ignoring literally every issue with exploration content before it).

Their absolute obsession with catering the game exclusively to two entirely separate player extremes (mega casuals and mega raiders) has basically pulled the game apart and made a game that literally doesn’t even know who it’s trying to appeal to anymore. I truly hope it’ll change, but based on their track record I can only see things getting worse tbh. The devs have shown time and again they simply don’t care about making a game that’s enjoyable, they just want to make a game that’s balanced. (and designed specifically around player retention but that’s a point for a different thread).

Additional edit: I’m aware I’m being overly negative but at the same time it’s just so hard to actually believe in the developers any more after so many disappointments.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Their absolute obsession with catering the game exclusively to two entirely separate player extremes (mega casuals and mega raiders) has basically pulled the game apart and made a game that literally doesn’t even know who it’s trying to appeal to anymore. I truly hope it’ll change, but based on their track record I can only see things getting worse tbh. The devs have shown time and again they simply don’t care about making a game that’s enjoyable , they just want to make a game that’s balanced .

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I don't think this will ever change.. As you say, they want to try and cater to completely opposing player extremes... Which is why we have such fundamentals shifts this late into the games history... and at some point I genuinely think it will happen again, whether sooner or later...

It's funny because they take these directions in fear or driving groups of players away... But ultimately it is this direction that is causing it... Not saying the game is dying.. But the ongoing trend is not exactly good.

I recall the "We need to stop catering towards the two extremes and try midcore content" is the new design direction as a a few interviews last year.

But so far it's only lead to failures like quantum. No one gave a damn about the scaling system, and everyone going for that final fight just slammed straight into the maxed out version.

Honestly, I don't think the devs have the right idea. They seem to be trying to make it easier for players in the casual end to move into savage content, because most of those savage raiders do also participate in casual content. So, their idea is, "Oh, they need something to level up into!" When the reality is us casuals just do not give a crap about the grind and culture of high end raiding at all and want that theme park feel. In short, if we want to do high end raiding, it's already completely possible to just start right now.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I don't think this will ever change.. As you say, they want to try and cater to completely opposing player extremes... Which is why we have such fundamentals shifts this late into the games history... and at some point I genuinely think it will happen again, whether sooner or later...

It's funny because they take these directions in fear or driving groups of players away... But ultimately it is this direction that is causing it... Not saying the game is dying.. But the ongoing trend is not exactly good.

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Yeah, whether or not it’s ’dying’ it definitely feels like it’s affecting the long-term health of the game either way. To the point where everything is either ‘low effort conveyor belt content’ or ‘high effort body check heavy PF only content’ lol.

And yeah, there’s definitely a sense of irony to the fact that their desperation to cater to such extremes has resulted in them catering to neither of them properly.

It really does feel like ‘enjoyment’ isn’t high up on the dev’s list of priorities, compared to ‘balance’ ‘player retention’ ‘perpetuating subscription costs’ or whatever else lol.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

I recall the "We need to stop catering towards the two extremes and try midcore content" is the new design direction as a a few interviews last year.

But so far it's only lead to failures like quantum. No one gave a damn about the scaling system, and everyone going for that final fight just slammed straight into the maxed out version.

Honestly, I don't think the devs have the right idea. They seem to be trying to make it easier for players in the casual end to move into savage content, because most of those savage raiders do also participate in casual content. So, their idea is, "Oh, they need something to level up into!" When the reality is us casuals just do not give a crap about the grind and culture of high end raiding at all and want that theme park feel. In short, if we want to do high end raiding, it's already completely possible to just start right now.

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And Forked Tower lol. But yeah, it does seems strange how heavily they’re trying to push the ‘casual to savage’ pipeline’ when as far as I’m aware it’s not something people ever asked for, ‘I want it to be easier to go from casual to savage’. Even though in reality the difference between casual content and savage has done nothing but widen because of the relative ease of ‘non-savage’ compared to ‘savage’ content. It’s no wonder so many people have issues with raiding and PF when every piece of content below that teaches you ‘you can put it in very little effort and will be rewarded’, which inevitably bleeds into savage as people approach it with the same mindset

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

Honestly, I don't think the devs have the right idea. They seem to be trying to make it easier for players in the casual end to move into savage content, because most of those savage raiders do also participate in casual content. So, their idea is, "Oh, they need something to level up into!" When the reality is us casuals just do not give a crap about the grind and culture of high end raiding at all and want that theme park feel. In short, if we want to do high end raiding, it's already completely possible to just start right now.

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It's worth noting that Blizzard tried this "graduation" approach back in 2010, it completely failed, and it was the first noticeable and sustained decline WoW had. They did presentations about how it did not work and why. Why is CS3 going through the same motions and expecting a different outcome over a decade later?

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

The pattern we've been getting means were most likely to get a new physical ranged (which we're due over any role because it's the only one with only 3 choices) and a new tank, just like Shadowbringers.

The 2-minute meta was because of everything being so out a line with buffs windows that it negatively impacted some jobs over others. Lining every job up to 2 minutes was to balance the playing field and allow a better variety of party comps.

Most of the job sameness we're dealing with is all in the name of job balance more than ease of use. And it's worked. Any proper party comp (2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS) is viable in bleeding edge content, so it's perfectly reasonable to pick the jobs that appeal to you, personally, and just get good at it.



I think some of the different mentality might be because FFXIV is a Japanese game. Balance and fairness over giving gimmicks that can highlight certain jobs in certain scenarios, which is how I've been told WoW does it.

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It's kind of ironic though because outside of superficial aesthetics, a jobs appeal mostly comes down to how it plays (or you'd think.)

When they homogenize stuff to make it more balanced so it just comes down to appeal, doesn't that kind of defeat the point of balancing stuff in the first place? I mean theoretically they could balance it so much that the appeal of any job altogether is null because at that point, you might as well just have us all playing one of 3 jobs, DPS,Tank or Healer without any meaningful nuance between the jobs. Job identity and appeal of a job are intrinsically tied together.

I also don't buy the 'I'd rather have interesting fights' argument from some people. Job identity and interesting fights are not mutually exclusive.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

Honestly, I don't think the devs have the right idea. They seem to be trying to make it easier for players in the casual end to move into savage content, because most of those savage raiders do also participate in casual content. So, their idea is, "Oh, they need something to level up into!" When the reality is us casuals just do not give a crap about the grind and culture of high end raiding at all and want that theme park feel. In short, if we want to do high end raiding, it's already completely possible to just start right now.

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This here. They could shower me with iLvl9000 equip on the next login, I still would not set foot into savage, chaotic, or whatever. This game mode "do your dance perfectly for the next 10 minutes, or start again from scratch" is no fun to me, no matter how easyly accessible they make it.
Give me a compelling story, nice places to be, and little things to do in between the chapters, and I'm happy. DT failed to deliver on all three fronts.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Yeah, whether or not it’s ’dying’ it definitely feels like it’s affecting the long-term health of the game either way. To the point where everything is either ‘low effort conveyor belt content’ or ‘high effort body check heavy PF only content’ lol.

And yeah, there’s definitely a sense of irony to the fact that their desperation to cater to such extremes has resulted in them catering to neither of them properly.

It really does feel like ‘enjoyment’ isn’t high up on the dev’s list of priorities, compared to ‘balance’ ‘player retention’ ‘perpetuating subscription costs’ or whatever else lol.



And Forked Tower lol. But yeah, it does seems strange how heavily they’re trying to push the ‘casual to savage’ pipeline’ when as far as I’m aware it’s not something people ever asked for, ‘I want it to be easier to go from casual to savage’. Even though in reality the difference between casual content and savage has done nothing but widen because of the relative ease of ‘non-savage’ compared to ‘savage’ content. It’s no wonder so many people have issues with raiding and PF when every piece of content below that teaches you ‘you can put it in very little effort and will be rewarded’, which inevitably bleeds into savage as people approach it with the same mindset

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I would definitely say it is affecting the long-term health of the game, and in a detrimental way IMO... Especially if you look at the game as just being more than current expansion.

They are trying too hard on the balancing and on the player retention, and just completely foregoing the enjoyment aspect as being completely tertiary.. Like, there is no universe where they did 1 FATE, and 1 CE at any given time on the map and thought "This is fun!"

I would have more faith, but I don't, simply because the takeaway was "This is a new arc", and "People must just be too busy".

Given everything this expansion, and since I suspect that 7.5 won't be much different -- After doing 8.0 story, I will honestly likely unsubscribe, and just play free trial for whenever I feel so inclined as to play the game.. I just don't view content now to be too distinctive from content released a few expansions ago, and for the most part I personally find Occult to be inferior over Bozja or Eureka,... and Cosmic to be inferior to Ishgard Restoration. (Both of which will be available from 7.5 if they follow trend).

The more I think about it, I really do not wan more jobs because thy can barely handle the existing jobs. I’d rather they skip new jobs entirely and focus on repairing the existing jobs.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

This here. They could shower me with iLvl9000 equip on the next login, I still would not set foot into savage, chaotic, or whatever. This game mode "do your dance perfectly for the next 10 minutes, or start again from scratch" is no fun to me, no matter how easyly accessible they make it.

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Not just the accessibility, but the company kept as well. Dawntrail more than any other expansion showed us just how many people actually hate having to play with other people (and then those same people wonder why Square-Enix keeps adding more Trusts), especially in high-end content. The casual to hardcore pipeline or "bridge" as Square-Enix called it could never exist when most players barely tolerate each other in their PFs already, and then in the very same breath whine about how they can't find enough people to do the content with.

Square-Enix makes a lot of mistakes, but the playerbase its self doesn't do its self any favors either with the "cultures" we so adamantly enforce, up to and including labeling data centers in ways that Square-Enix never intended, causing even further friction and fractures for ourselves. I too could be given all the gear, materia, food, and potions necessary to run hardcore content, but I would never want to deal with hardcore players, they certainly don't want to do with me, and I don't think there's anything 8.0 can possibly do to fix US even if it manages to fix its self.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

The more I think about it, I really do not wan more jobs because thy can barely handle the existing jobs. I’d rather they skip new jobs entirely and focus on repairing the existing jobs.

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would be nice to have an actual dot job again

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

Honestly, I don't think the devs have the right idea. They seem to be trying to make it easier for players in the casual end to move into savage content, because most of those savage raiders do also participate in casual content. So, their idea is, "Oh, they need something to level up into!" When the reality is us casuals just do not give a crap about the grind and culture of high end raiding at all and want that theme park feel. In short, if we want to do high end raiding, it's already completely possible to just start right now.

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Yeah, that's largely my take as well. I do absolutely appreciate offering some sort of on ramp to allow more casual players to get into more hardcore content if they want to. No complaints or arguments there. BUT the devs (and a lot of the more hardcore players) seem to be of the opinion that everyone views hardcore content as the end goal; that EVERYONE really WANTS to be an Ultimate Raider in their hearts but just don't admit it or doesn't know how to get there. Well, either that or they just want to sit in Limsa all day as if there are only two options.

For me, I don't mind some pushback in content, be that dungeons, bosses, open world, etc.. I don't mind it being difficult or taking a few tries to complete. That's fine. I also don't mind if at least some of jobs are a little more complex to play and/or wrap your head around. Cool. But I just don't gave a crap about doing "hardcore" content. I'm not a terrible player by any means, and I probably could at least do some Savage if I wanted to, but I just don't. I don't have any interest in the grind or repeating the same fights for hours and hours just to "get it right." I'm more than happy spending hours on a Souls or Nioh fight to master it, but FF14 just isn't that sort of game for me. Regardless of what type of "on ramp" you're going to give me or what sort of carrot you're going to put at the end of the stick, I'm just not going to want to engage with it. I want the whole game to be more active, interesting and engaging.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

This here. They could shower me with iLvl9000 equip on the next login, I still would not set foot into savage, chaotic, or whatever. This game mode "do your dance perfectly for the next 10 minutes, or start again from scratch" is no fun to me, no matter how easyly accessible they make it.
Give me a compelling story, nice places to be, and little things to do in between the chapters, and I'm happy. DT failed to deliver on all three fronts.

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This is my exact same opinion.

I've tried to savage raid in the past. It was with FC buddies, but coordinating a section of time where all 8 of us could spend 3 hours or more in the same fight is not fun or satisfying. Personally it was mentally exhausting even with really cool and friendly people. I tried during first coil, second part of Eden, and again during Anabaiseos. Same experience all three times. Went with great people, still hated it.

I'll watch the crap out of Ultimates. And I enjoy watching raid comps with teams like NEST by Drak and Whoops and MrHappy's team. But playing it. My brain CANNOT. I have tried!

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

This is my exact same opinion.

I've tried to savage raid in the past. It was with FC buddies, but coordinating a section of time where all 8 of us could spend 3 hours or more in the same fight is not fun or satisfying. Personally it was mentally exhausting even with really cool and friendly people. I tried during first coil, second part of Eden, and again during Anabaiseos. Same experience all three times. Went with great people, still hated it.

I'll watch the crap out of Ultimates. And I enjoy watching raid comps with teams like NEST by Drak and Whoops and MrHappy's team. But playing it. My brain CANNOT. I have tried!

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After the birth of my child 2 years ago, I had to stop Savage hard core raiding. I enjoyed the content and playing with friends in the static, but I do not have the time to commit to it for the foreseeable future.

Once I stopped Savage raiding, it was quite the eye opener for me on the lack of content for me to do.

* OC ended up being nearly DOA
-----* Yes, I did it but mostly for the relic and story but stopped there
-----* I looked at the entry requirements for forked tower and found out quickly it was Savage difficulty, then I noped out fast, once again, time commitment and way too much drama
* Relics are a bit better this expansion but still finished them quickly
-----* We don't talk about EW relics; I don't consider them real relics as they were tombstone weapons
* Dungeons, my old go to content, have been reduced in number to 1 a patch and tied to the MSQ, and thus, that means there too easy and very boring
-----* Seriously, the Expert dungeon is not expert in any way shape or form... since there tied to the MSQ, there easier than many solo instances
-----* Hard mode dungeons such as Braflox, no wall, pull to the boss was way harder, not to mention so much more fun before they added walls
-----* 1 new dungeon every 5 months and another dungeon that has lasted for 10 months makes Expert a disaster in my opinion
* Chaotic ... sigh... loved the idea but the difficulty was just plain messed up, instant kills, wipes, drama, 0 clears, gave up and not going back
* Criterion and Variant dungeons are great in concept but the rewards made them one and done
* Extreme trials lose a lot of their meaning when you don't need them for raid gear
-----* The 99-totem pity system is really terrible, I'd try Extremes again if they had a more realistic 25 clears and you get your mount, but no way 99, see the time commitment thing again
* Moon crafting - I tried to use the moon to level my crafters and gathers but I have bad gear and the exp given from the quests were horrible for the ones I could finish so I gave up and have not gone back
* PvP is something I have to be in the mood to do, and then I have to have a reward that I *really* want, as such, I have not done it in 7.0
* Weekly raids (normal modes and current 24s) are something I do for the glams and then stop once I have what I want, and if the glams are bad, I'll do it once for the story and thats it
* Gold saucer is something I have done on and off since 2.0 and I am essentially done with it
* Leveling up alts - Something I used to do, get them all to max level but the moon that post EW patches and the DT expansion kinda killed my desire to level anything other than my WHM
* Quantum - No reason to do it, no rewards and nobody did it except on max level and grinding tokens to do it made it not worth it
* Allied Societies were interesting but once again were too easy and quick to hold any long-term attention. Many could be done in less than 3 minutes and the loot tables were lackluster

The one redeeming content they had this go around was the new deep dungeon. With its multiple checkpoints, large reward pool and queue system, it was enjoyable until I played it out. I'd go back and do it for leveling alt jobs, but nobody does it anymore, so I was glad I focused on it when it came out.

SE needs to add a new queue system for all of this content they have created and make roulettes for it. Dungeon finder, Raid finder, Party finder, other finders, queues that are location based only... yea, they need to totally rework this system. One menu, one interface, all of the content, have good rewards for doing them each day.

I hope the new variant dungeon they are releasing in the future will be enjoyable and replayable. If they do not do a new party matching system in 8.0, I fear that this will also become forgotten content.

Lastly, what I want in 8.0 is more glamour items and less focus on ilevel as that does not cause people to go back to old dungeons / raids / etc. Savage raids would give gear with better item level and more tokens to get glamour but if you grind normal levels or other content, you can get those tokens too. Raiders just get it faster. If there is a cute outfit, I'll grind until I get it, easy as that but... *do not* lock it behind content that is Savage, Extreme or Ultimate. Focus on the time commitment aspect and not on gate keeping it behind hard content.

If you think 8.0 is going to magically fix every issue the game has, then yes. They will most likely try and shake things up however.