FFXIV's Future

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Originally Posted by Lium

I am curious, though. Based on everything I've read here, what do you really want to see in FFXIV's future? Keeping in mind that everything they've done up to this point has REVERSED the trend that FFXI followed in terms of hitting a downward slope after the fourth expansion. Shadowbringers brought more people to the game.

But what would you change that would honestly help the game overall? Not just for a subset of hardcore players?

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The expansion TOAU was decent and popular it was what came after that killed off a lot of players and mainly down to SE.

1. The flower pot mass ban
2. Abyssea making all 75 gear redundant and then taking way too long to upgrade the old relics
3. Doing nothing to keep players when Aion and WoW released
4. Pushing players towards 14
5. Ending console support

I don't mind accessibility and easy content. I do mind that easy content is everything bar current content savage (unless you do MINE runs that have almost no incentive so it's very hard to find people for it) and jobs that need to not be complex as to not alienate new players while also being balanced into the ground for spread sheet warriors of light. Why can't jobs be more complex? Casual solo players wouldn't care and continue to press their few buttons, which I think is fine. And meta slaves will always complain anyway (which is more akin to a law of nature lol).

The whole 'the devs aren't even trying' thing is laughable for me. We lost (boring) dungeons, but we got Bozja, Ocean Fishing, Criterion and Island Sanctuary. Just because not everything is a big hitter doesn't mean they don't care. I will say though that releasing the relic grind so late is a bit weird.

Additionally, XI is still around even though it's only being manned by a skeleton crew. That's a testament to its design and how fun the game can be. Personally, if XIV would go into actual maintenance mode, I doubt many people would stick with it as they do with XI. It's just too shallow in terms of gameplay and the story can only keep you playing for so long.

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Originally Posted by Lium

I am curious, though. Based on everything I've read here, what do you really want to see in FFXIV's future? Keeping in mind that everything they've done up to this point has REVERSED the trend that FFXI followed in terms of hitting a downward slope after the fourth expansion. Shadowbringers brought more people to the game.

But what would you change that would honestly help the game overall? Not just for a subset of hardcore players?

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There are rarely good suggestions on this forum. Most of the criticisms wouldn't actually work for this kind of MMO and would actually hurt the playerbase overall.
-> See the "More Healing in Raids" advice from old forum posts and how when they implemented raids with more healing, pretty much PF Healers became the rarest jobs in PF.

Some things can be improved however:

Some of my top picks:

1) Improving the Glamour System - I think it's time we changed how the drawer works. My idea would be to create a wardrobe that catalogs all the gear you have ever acquired, similar to how say Hogwarts Legacy does it. Once you acquire the gear, you can glam it. At the same time, you can see which gears from which locations you don't have (EX: dungeon gear). So I can see a drop down of all the gears of a particular location and I can see which I have obtained "lit" up or have check marks. This would help alleviate retainers of equipment use entirely and also add to a collection aspect of the game moving forward.
**** ALLOWING HAIRSTYLES TO BE SAVED TO GLAMOUR TEMPLATES **** - Desperately needed so we can have different hairstyles for different jobs.

2) New Dye System - Allow for more dynamic dyeing options (Individual Parts / Components or Specific Areas) Ideally breaking gears up into three separate parts you can dye tends to be ideal.

3) New Character Customization options - Facial options, beards, scars, tattoos, cross aura horn patterns

4) Job in Need Bonus added to Party Finder (Current Tier Raids) - This would be a new reward system tied into PF. This would be used to alleviate player droughts for certain jobs. "Job in Need" would be rewarded with either extra exclusive raid drop, or extra non-tome currency or books that can be used to purchase gear. This tangibly also helps with speeding up gearing of alt jobs.

5) Breaking tomestones up from 450/weekly into 450/weekly for DPS, Tank, Healer each or adding a separate exclusive currency for each of the roles for purchasing tome gear at a higher price. Clear content on a particular role, get tomes for that specific role. Simple.

6) Criterion Dungeons (Savage) - Fixing the reward structure here first and foremost. Also Adding more of them. Keep these current with the raid tier, could even be used for an alternative 3rd Gear option besides tome and raid gear.

7) Ultimates - All fights sync'd to max level every expansion. Added rewards to the old ones for newer jobs that came after their initial release. Add new armors to each of them.

8) Something with Healers but I feel this needs to be done very slowly. Perhaps an addition DoT to manage first to see how that goes. Barring any complete job role responsibilty shift, as it is atm can't add anything too complex here or you alienate the healer role further.


That's just some of the stuff that comes to mind atm.

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

Do any of those games even actually "Innovate" or are they just exciting because "new toy"?

Its not shocking that something new will turn heads, but the real test and question is, will it last long enough to build a large enough community and sustain itself?

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I can't speak for any of those but AA2 since I played the original and... with fixes I can see it rivalling the big name MMOs. AA has pretty good PvP, a diverse set of classes, a trade good system that's rarely seen in MMOs (as in you make goods to trade into NPCs) that also ties into the PvP nature of the game long grindy gear progression both for PvP and for even setting up your trading empire, even naval combat.

So... while I wouldn't say its innovated NOW, at the time of its release it was pretty unique and there's still nothing exactly like it on the market.

Its pitfalls were the changing of the trade system, how RNG gearing was and pay to win. If they fixed the latter problems while keeping the old trading system or making something just as enjoyable I at least would move over... despite it being heavily PvP oriented (that isn't to say it doesn't have PvE ala dungeons/raid its just not AA's main draw)

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

Do any of those games even actually "Innovate" or are they just exciting because "new toy"?

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My problem is all the American and Korean MMOs I've tried are so dry, it's just not my thing. I just started today's FF XIV patch and the Loporrit tribe quests are insane lol. So there's that. I give FF a big win in aesthetics, great design of things like bosses. There I said something positive today.

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Originally Posted by Lium

But what would you change that would honestly help the game overall? Not just for a subset of hardcore players?

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- I think they will make an "alternate journey" for all dungeons in the game (the regular ones). Like a "hardcore mode" for each of them. Not a version of "hard", but a true challenging mode for each dungeon to be done after some time passed between the launch of a regular version of a dungeon and this one (like 2 years or so). This could solve a lot of the feeling of "too easy for my taste". I give this thought a credit 'cause Yoshida loves hard content, like he said a lot of times.

- I think at some point in the future, the Gold Saucer will be very diversifyed in terms of mini games (maybe with Blitzball and snowboard games?).

- I think they will conclude the progression for the GC ranks allowing us to have new features in the topmost ranks in a fun system of pvp or something similar or something new.

About the negativity of the forum, I came from a game called Dofus. The community there was really awful and these forums here is heaven in comparision xD
I can't say for the others, but I am positive with everything I like. The life is too short to live only looking to the imperfections of everything :) In fact, I kinda like things to be imperfect. It's more human this way.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

I don't mind accessibility and easy content. I do mind that easy content is everything bar current content savage (unless you do MINE runs that have almost no incentive so it's very hard to find people for it) and jobs that need to not be complex as to not alienate new players while also being balanced into the ground for spread sheet warriors of light. Why can't jobs be more complex? Casual solo players wouldn't care and continue to press their few buttons, which I think is fine. And meta slaves will always complain anyway (which is more akin to a law of nature lol).

The whole 'the devs aren't even trying' thing is laughable for me. We lost (boring) dungeons, but we got Bozja, Ocean Fishing, Criterion and Island Sanctuary. Just because not everything is a big hitter doesn't mean they don't care. I will say though that releasing the relic grind so late is a bit weird.

Additionally, XI is still around even though it's only being manned by a skeleton crew. That's a testament to its design and how fun the game can be. Personally, if XIV would go into actual maintenance mode, I doubt many people would stick with it as they do with XI. It's just too shallow in terms of gameplay and the story can only keep you playing for so long.

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I'm so glad they're making fewer dungeons so we can teleport to a boat and fish in one spot for 5 minutes, or so that I can spend even less time in an instanced factory disguised as "sanctuary" after waiting in a queue to get in.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

6) Criterion Dungeons (Savage) - Fixing the reward structure here first and foremost. Also Adding more of them. Keep these current with the raid tier, could even be used for an alternative 3rd Gear option besides tome and raid gear.

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Alas, I am of the opinion that the poor response to Criterion Dungeons will be the death knell for future development in that quarter.

Players asked for Harder Mid-Level Content and got it. They then blew through that and never returned. Then the complaints about Rewards started.

They were not intended to be Mythic+ dungeons, gearing for Savage Tier runs. Some players expected they should be. SE doesn't want to play in that area.

The experiment will go the way of Diadem 1.0.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Alas, I am of the opinion that the poor response to Criterion Dungeons will be the death knell for future development in that quarter.

Players asked for Harder Mid-Level Content and got it. They then blew through that and never returned. Then the complaints about Rewards started.

They were not intended to be Mythic+ dungeons, gearing for Savage Tier runs. Some players expected they should be. SE doesn't want to play in that area.

The experiment will go the way of Diadem 1.0.

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Tbf, the blowing through it and complaints about rewards are kind of related.
There's very little reason to come back cause you don't get rewarded very well for doing so.

What I'd like to see going forward is a replica vendor for Dungeon/Alliance Raid gear, where you can 'trade in' pieces in exchange for access to replicas, that you can then put in the glamour dresser. Would result in groups farming all gear from instances for glamour purposes, and would allow hardcore glamorers easier access to various gear.

Also, and I'll keep pushing this one, a Personal Workshop where you can augment certain armor/weapons to have particle effects/glows, either by crafting/gathering materials, farming tokens from PvE content, or buying the materials from vendors for raw gil at prices designed to reduce gil inflation, whilst still providing something of value in return.