What would you do?

So a goodly number of players are upset about content from 3.1-3.15. Given the current framework and where things are, how would you change course to make the game more fun for you to play or make things better for you or people you play with?

I'll start:



* Slow the ilvl progression - The ilvl escalation is happening a good deal faster than it did in 2.x. Vertical progression means that your gear goes invalid, sure, but maybe not quite so fast.

* BiS PVE gear should be something you attain in the hardest PVE content. "You don't do endgame raids though Teryaani! What the hell do you know?!" I imagine you asking. You're right, I don't. But I understand that endgame players need a motivation to do the content. Let them have one.

* Throw the PVP players a few bones. Whether that's new game modes and/or relevant gear, give them something new to do and something to strive for.

* Give us a sandbox zone rather than a short term instance. Diadem is neat and all, but I'd like a place I can wander and goof off that has some vanity elements without a time limit. If you want to use it as a catch-up mechanism, that's fine, but make sure the ilvls don't make some endgame content irrelevant.

* Put a pet battle system in that isn't LoV. People like LoV? Great. Some of us don't do RTS and would like to do things with our vanity pets.

Those are mine. What type of positive changes would you make?

1) Storyline: Pump up the volume and bring back the epicness that we have in Heavenward. Right now it is moving a little too slow in my opinion. We need more of it, it needs to be a bit more epic in the storytelling. We need more flavor to items, gear and areas. We don’t learn enough about the world imo, I want more! I want it to be epic and make us feel like this is a huge adventure we are taking part in. I want more lore and flavor in everything, I like the storyline and want more of it!

2) Make more unique gear: Give us the same stats but have the gear or even special materia we can put into gear that give us bonuses like a high chance to proc Thundercloud/Free Cure/etc. Or once that give us new things like “use this gearset and X skill costs less TP/MP to use and the CD is shorter”. I would love special materia like this with the addition to materia slots in 3.2 raid gear. Get rid of Raid alternatives like Diadem, have the highest level gear come from the current Raid and Tomestone and that’s it.

3) Dungeons: Open world type dungeons or rndom path dungeons. For open world make it like diadem, big and open where we can get the currents and fly around or just walk. Give us objectives to fill or items that we need to get to open areas for the boss (get Five Blood Feathers and five Bloody Tooth to open the first boss. The firs boss drops an item, coupled with other dropped from trash mobs opens the second boss, etc etc).
Dungeons typically follow the same rule: trash > boss >trash >boss>trash>final boss. Suring the trash stage have three different paths for each that pop up randomly. Have random mobs appear randomly, have them attack us from behind or bust out of walls/water/etc. Have the treasure chests appear randomly after clearing objectives. Have objectives in dungeons that require a bit of skill(like jumping games) to get a chest with crafting items or token items.
Have better stuff drop from dungeons that are not gear related. Token items for diadem-like rewards and crafting items. That would give us reasons to farm dungeons again, especially if they have the above two ideas applied to make the dungeons feel fresh every time we run it.

Since Yoshi's team apparently is lacking manpower.

I'd have the team present their idea's to us. Literally the best ideas they have which are limited by manpower.

Then show the amount of $$$ it would cost if we want to implement that idea now and have us "kickstart" the ideas that we ACTUALLY want.
Let our wallets speak where we can donate to the ideas which we truly want.

And yes have this cost include the hiring/relocating of staff to work on that specific idea.
Don't make it a time-sink gated bull$h!t that we get with every fun content, but actually fun content, increase the damn price if it needs be.

So once a specific idea reaches its $$$ goal it will be worked on. This way you can also see in advance which ones might be the ones reaching their goal soon and start working on them in advance.

Have the team that works on these be partly separated from the actual dev team so that these won't hamper the flow of the actual patch content.

As a bonus add a voting poll where people that don't want or can't donate can still vote for which ones they like the most to give an idea which stuff players really like.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Snowaeth

Snip.

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This is all beautiful and nice but..
We loyal players who are with FFXIV from start have put incredible amount of money into game (especially with the new nice addition of cashshop) and if its team lacks manpower it is only because SE is draining the money for their other products (*cough* FFXV *cough) which aren't even going to be as profitable as FFXIV.

FFXIV doesn't deserve kickstarting anymore. Cash shop was kickstarter, where are the money? EU datacenters? Well, they should have been here from start, not after 2 years of subscription + base game + expansion + 1 year of cash shop. :)

I definitely respect your love for this game, but we aren't their cows to be milked 24/7.

To the topic if I was SE:
I would slow the pace at which the new gear is getting obsolete.
I would add more gearing diversity, a few stats just aren't enough, special passive effects pls.
I would make all PvP maps viable (same level, same rewards), I would make PvP gear viable and I would make real leaderboards.
I would add NPCs to LoV matchmaking so it would work like chocobo racing, yes, tournaments would be easy, but they would atleast be doable.
I would create timesink replayable content that actually has some use - 2M XP after level 60, get one talent point, put it either into talents or stats etc., yes, nolifers would be op, but they would have stuff to do.
I would introduce horizontal progression and during patch cycles (like 3.0 - 3.55) wouldn't shift iLvl by more than 20. All 3.X content should be viable untill the end of 3.X cycle.

I would stop being so greedy and I would put some of the money back into game. We obviously need bigger battle/encounters/itemization teams.

But yeah, viable timesinks were already suggested many times. Unfortunately casuals always deny them because they are too afraid of being kicked from PF parties, so most of the stuff will be always about glamour or useless stuff. We cannot have deeper itemization, we cannot have talents. :)

Star Ocean and FF VII remake too, I'm so waiting for them, aside from FF XV

I would remove all lockouts. Keep tome caps but remove lockouts for instances that have RNG chests. What makes this game boring for me is that I can only raid with one or two jobs at a time. Please let us gear all the jobs if we wish to grind raids for them. Raiding with multiple jobs makes repeating raids more fun.

Of course I want new, big content like everyone else, but right now, if that isn't possible, I would just like to have something be a rewarding time sink without a million hurdles to jump through. So many things that could have been a fun "waste of time" in this game have been damaged by unnecessary restrictions. Triple Triad? Nope, you can't use all these cards you worked hard for, even though the NPCs can and will utilize them while also punishing you with RNG, time limits, and terribad drop rates. Big fishing? Ha ha, have fun waiting for the right time and weather, and then watching as your fish gets away repeatedly even though you over-level and gear it in every way. You were thinking about doing Frontlines with friends? ...But your friends are Maelstrom and you're Flames? I guess you didn't want to Seal Rock that badly anyway. You wanted to casually craft from time to time? Ahaha, sorry, but you're going to need mats from two other higher leveled crafting classes and a level 58 miner just to make that lvl 51 piece of junk. Treasure hunting with the FC? Make sure to save up your maps for days and days beforehand so you'll have enough to make the activity last more than ten minutes!

Is there really anything in this game that hasn't somehow been made into a chore? I get that it's an MMO and the grind is a natural part of how they keep people playing, but (to me at least) it feels like there's no valve at all to "let off steam" at the moment, no downtime activity that can be accomplished by players without requiring excessive investment and plenty of patience for RNG. I'm having trouble finding simple, fun, small side content that I can sink some time into without a sense of frustration over randomness or the need for complicated preparation.

Sure I want new raids and primal fights, but for right now I'd just be happy if I didn't log into the game with a prevailing sense of "Is so-and-so other content going to feel rewarding today? Nope, probably not."

Good ideas, OP, and I also am not against the idea of Kickstarting some of the specific things that we want to see. Granted, this is the first game I've really supported this much, and the only that I am subscribed too, so I suppose I'm a bit more green than others.

For me, the top three QoL improvements would be:


* Something implemented to encourage server players to play and work together more often. The Duty Finder is great and all, but it really hurts the social aspect of the game. Bonuses for helping new players clear content their first time (perhaps in Gil, or maybe a slightly higher chance for dropped items for a set amount of time afterwards) would be something that would benefit all players. But I'm thinking specifically of those of us who only have the Anima grind to keep our main characters active. Gil or increased drop rates would work well, and the "new player" could be tied to service accounts to prevent cheating.

* Slow down on the item level jumps. I liked when a new item level tier made me feel as though I'd accomplished something back in 2.0; as of 3.0, I've effectively gone from 120 to nearly 200, and this isn't even my final form. I've yet to get the gear from Alexander Savage. Focus more on letting us play with our stats to make alternate builds. It doesn't matter that someone is going to come up with a BiS -- didn't Yoshi P. himself once say that if you weren't having fun with the game, then you were playing it wrong? Allow us to do something that we can do in virtually every other RPG on the market instead of limiting us for fear that some people will choose to stop having fun.

* And finally, please add more content and variation to PvP without the liberal use of RNG. I'm not an avid PvPer by any means, but I do have periods of time where that's virtually all I'm doing, and I really enjoy those times. But it really feels as though all the PvP modes were implemented as an afterthought and then forgotten just as quickly.


There are many others that I could suggest, but I think these three things are the most glaring faults with the game currently. They aren't killing it, not by any means, but they certainly hinder certain aspects of it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Snowaeth

Since Yoshi's team apparently is lacking manpower.

I'd have the team present their idea's to us. Literally the best ideas they have which are limited by manpower.

Then show the amount of $$$ it would cost if we want to implement that idea now and have us "kickstart" the ideas that we ACTUALLY want.
Let our wallets speak where we can donate to the ideas which we truly want.

And yes have this cost include the hiring/relocating of staff to work on that specific idea.
Don't make it a time-sink gated bull$h!t that we get with every fun content, but actually fun content, increase the damn price if it needs be.

So once a specific idea reaches its $$$ goal it will be worked on. This way you can also see in advance which ones might be the ones reaching their goal soon and start working on them in advance.

Have the team that works on these be partly separated from the actual dev team so that these won't hamper the flow of the actual patch content.

As a bonus add a voting poll where people that don't want or can't donate can still vote for which ones they like the most to give an idea which stuff players really like.

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The other issue is ideas sometimes don't work out. Game development has a huge amount of iteration and sometimes they outright dump ideas they don't feel they can get to work. That's one of the reasons MMO developer are so careful talking about plans. If they try something that doesn't work out that people got excited about people say they broke promises.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Belhi

The other issue is ideas sometimes don't work out. Game development has a huge amount of iteration and sometimes they outright dump ideas they don't feel they can get to work. That's one of the reasons MMO developer are so careful talking about plans. If they try something that doesn't work out that people got excited about people say they broke promises.

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That's great and all, but they are the ones presenting idea's.
So they can easily filter out impossible ones, while stating how much funds it would take to create the ones deemed possible.

We keep hearing things like, x is delayed because not enough staff and this thing would be better but not enough time.

Well now you could have a team working on the side of your dev team, paid 100% to work only on that project, thus not for profit.
(The profit comes from the fact that you now have more staff working on the game having a higher content flow, thus happier customers.)
So you could continue your normal development cycle while at the same time putting out content the community supported on the side putting less pressure on your main dev team and giving room for more innovative ideas.

I'm not sure how that's not a yay in your book, but it is in mine.