Your thoughts on the current update path?

To be honest I'm thinking SE is already going down the wrong path. First updates were awesome, zenith was semi-cool, but the glowing irritated me. Now with every new weapon update they're basicly increasing the grind, and making the weapons glow even more.

With every update it feels like it's more towards the hardcore players that are able to clock in hours.

The hunts are also kind of ruining the game. From 15-50 parties in the party finder, you now have like 8-20 tops and they're all about the second coil. I get it, though. There's no point doing any dungeons for myths or soldiery when you can easily cap both in a few hours by doing hunts, and get Allied seals for Sands/Oils of time.

The thing I always liked about FFXIV that it went more towards the medieval era's with armor/weapon looks, but now it's slowly turning into who has the biggest glowing e-peen.

What are your thoughts on the path SE is currently taking with the new updates?

I personally would like to see a more expansive horizontal progress similar to relic weapons over the increase of ilvl capp every update. I'm in favor of getting a class specific set then increase that will class specific traits and abilities that you pick and chose. As far as the glowing, I think the primal weapons look good because it's elemental. The armor augment glow is meh.

People complained that it was too easy/fast to obtain relic (and zenith)... so obviously SE makes the next steps more timeconsuming... which in turn obviously leads to people complaining that it now is too much work...
Personally I think it's just fine for the most part.
Having hunts and the rewards lack any kind of lockout was a big mistake, which has been pointed out time and again that if they don't have lockouts, people will grind like mad often at the detriment of others. Still, players asked for it, and they got it...

I'd say however it's not a majority at all that are grinding hunts instead of other content. Many, yes, but not a majority.

Current update path predicates that we get a new ilevel max in 2.4, likely 130 for coil gear, 135 for coil weapon, 120 for tome gear/weapon upgradable somehow to 130 as well as further relic upgrade steps, which is fine with me.

It is also likely that the 2.4 dungeons will have increased ilevel requirement again, at something like i80, and be put into the Expert group together with the 2.3 dungeons.

Myth tomes will likely be removed from all dungeons and other content that reward them today with Soldiery tomes taking their place, and a new kind of tomestone taking over for Soldiery. New gear from the 2.4 dungeons probably new i90 mixed with myth gear, just like philo gear started dropping in 2.2 dungeons.

Needs more Glow.

But seriously, it is a little annoying that the majority of the new content in the past couple patches I haven't really been able to enjoy because I'm either unwilling or unable to put up with the grind. Just about the only grind I've put up with was the one for the Animus weapon, and even that's caused me to stop playing for a couple weeks twice now, having gotten quite bored of doing the same things over and over again, day in and day out.

As for this patch, I was really looking forward to the Hunts, Chocobo Raising, and the new quests. The hunts pretty much instantly became Hardcore Onry and Chocobo Raising is only available to people in free companies that have several dedicated players to make sure not a single moment is wasted in the growing cycle. So, I guess 1 out of 3 is alright, but it would've been nice if along with enjoying the new storyline and watching the comedy of the Hildibrand quests I could've been hunting down dangerous open-world monsters with a level 12 (or higher!) Chocobro.

tl;dr: Not enough content that suits my playstyle, either by design or because people aren't very nice and won't share their new toys with the rest of us.

Your implied idea of what "hardcore players" are seems to be a lot less involved than what most people would consider someone to be that. I think you might be misunderstanding it for the idea that each brings too much for people to take in at once, thus resulting in an overload of things to do for some people. FFXIV

Needs more smut.

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Originally Posted by NoahArks

With every update it feels like it's more towards the hardcore players that are able to clock in hours.

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I actually disagree with the quoted statement. Other than the continuation of the relic chain it seems that SE is trying to make gear more easily and quickly attainable as to remove gear and time barriers from impacting player's ability to do content.

I may disagree with some aspects of their approach but overall it seems they want to make the content more widely available which means less of a catering to the "hardcore". They have added some time consuming path ways for unique upgrade paths (animus + quest) but those are hardly necessary and I feel more targeted to players who enjoy investing in something that a smaller portion of the player base will do. It doesn't give them any real advantage in content though that couldn't have been quicker to obtain through other means.

I can see the opinion if someone who feels gear is the end goal to be quite upset with the current direction. I more fall into the camp of just wanting to see the different fights and content and am happy that I don't feel content is gated behind long gear progressions.

As for the medieval aesthetic, final fantasy games have a historical record (including ffxiv) of mixing medieval combined with "magical" technology look. I think it still fits... Though if the glows keep getting brighter I may change my stance :)

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

People complained that it was too easy/fast to obtain relic (and zenith)... so obviously SE makes the next steps more timeconsuming... which in turn obviously leads to people complaining that it now is too much work...
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I do agree with this, but for example with atma and novus it's all about luck. It took me 70 hours to actually get my atma (That's my problem, though). It would just be nice to have different ways of getting weapons, instead of Tombs, primals or relic. Till now new dungeons mostly get new armors, but you never really see new weapons joining in a way of a dungeon.

But like you said. While the next coil will have 130/135 gear, like 80% of the people in the game won't be able to enjoy it and will just be hitting the i100 or i110 and will be stuck there only having the same content, till a new update comes and they can finally do it themselfs, but this means they'll always be one update behind.

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Originally Posted by NoahArks

But like you said. While the next coil will have 130/135 gear, like 80% of the people in the game won't be able to enjoy it and will just be hitting the i100 or i110 and will be stuck there only having the same content, till a new update comes and they can finally do it themselfs, but this means they'll always be one update behind.

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How about new tomestone gear at i120, upgradable to 130? Just like i100->i110 today?
With likely mechanics nerf to Twintania (no insta-death wall, no insta-death twister, less potent death sentence, telegraphed divebomb, other possibilities) people that are still not on Second Coil will begin their forays into that while they collect new i120 tome gear.

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Originally Posted by NoahArks

But like you said. While the next coil will have 130/135 gear, like 80% of the people in the game won't be able to enjoy it and will just be hitting the i100 or i110 and will be stuck there only having the same content, till a new update comes and they can finally do it themselfs, but this means they'll always be one update behind.

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Coil is a sort of performance test. And since SE design this game to try to be accommodating as possible, coil is the only content that is catered to the "hardcore" and "skilled" segment of the players.

If one can't put in the time and dedicate plus doesn't have the skill to do so, of course you can't clear coil - the 80 or whatever percentage of players you'd like to refer to. It is NOT possible for everyone to be on the same page unless the game is specifically catered to either casual or hardcores where there are no segmentation of contents (ie, remove coil and FFXIV would be basically a full casual MMO).

In any case, for the causal Joe who can only play a couple of hours a day, what's the rush? There are still players trying to clear Titan EX which is 2 patches ago content. So what if you're technically 1 patch behind when you don't even have the time to put in to clear the content?

For the average Joe who could deal with grind and able to put in enough time but stuck at coil, I guess constant practice and improvement is the only way to go. Coil really isn't designed for everyone.

Like I said, either make it a causal MMO or hardcore MMO if that's the issue. But you will lose either side of the customers entirely - which is not SE going to go for, which they are trying to accommodate both camps. There are casuals leaving, there are hardcores leaving, but at the end of the day I guess being accommodating is still better than losing either camp.