A New Year's Questionnaire on Wants and Suggestions for Future Changes

I wanted to take a little time before diving into a new package of suggestions to test the waters here on the forums and see what is generally wanted.

I have nine questions for you that I felt would best hope me to scope out possibilities for the new suggestions, but would of course be additionally open to any of your own suggestions. I do ask however, that you keep in mind two things:

--1. The suggestions that I will be putting together are meant to work smoothly together as a larger whole, and commonly will not work without all their parts. More simply said, they focus on creating an entire system, stretching across all or most aspects of the game.

That’s not to say that I’ll be replacing everything; simply put, the parts that stay along with the parts newly made will look like they’re ‘perfect for each other’.

In short, I’m not looking for small details. The details are made to build the larger picture, not the larger package meant to box in a set of small and otherwise unrelated details.---

--2. That doesn’t mean that you need (after all, this is just me asking for your advice—“Need” does not apply at all) to have a larger picture for the suggestions to be passed on. It just at least be able to coexist with other possibilities.

Think of it like this: even if a suggestion was simply to introduce a card game, i.e. Tetra Master, into FFXIV, I could certainly go further with that, by integrating the way one collects cards similarly to monsters slain, quests done, and leves completed.

If you wanted to have a way that one’s… tastes in food change with time, I could bring tie into a much more detailed and ‘fun’ or ‘funny’ leveling experience.--

http://www.ffxivcore...nd-suggestions/ (This thread likely sums up the general issue better than I can.)


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Alright, I’m done blabbing. Here are the questions I’d really love to have your feedback on:

1. Elemental Integration - Would you like for elements to be integrated into a wide-spanning aspect or whole of the game? How might this be done? [Previously considered examples include weather affecting combat and mob spawns, elements enhancing aspects of even physical attacks (such as a Skewer extended by air), and acorrelation between elements and emotion (that one’s hard to explain though…ask if curious).

2. Slight Reinterpretation/Interpolation - Would you like various seemingly ridiculous aspects ofthe game to be given a reason (hopefully while retaining a little humor), such as why trees function like piñatas, why a player can only mine the shiny rocks, and why (as in every MMO) monsters spawn out of thin air? [This will likely tie into the expansion of the elements’ roles.]

3. Traits-Leveling - Would you like to see traits be built on one’s unique leveling experience, rather than granted per level? “Spelunker” for instance, could reward your many cave-divings in Shostapoe (I’m horrible with names… sorry) by granting a reduced accuracy-loss under blinding effects. [Traits would again be chosen manually.]

4. Combat System Changes - Would you like to see changes to the combat system? If so, in what ways do you think the overall feel of it could be made more fun or tactical?

5. On Action Bars - If a near-perfect and innovative combat system was made that did not use action-bars, would you use it or prefer the conventionality of the typical action-bar system?

6. Leves - How might leves be made more fun? How might the leve plates tie more into whatwill actually be accomplished? Would you be horribly saddened if the “factions” mechanic tied to doing leves was replaced with something else?

7. Alternate Mission-like Fun - Would you like to see additional things similar to leves (but likely without requiring a stop by a leve counter) such as Hunts, Patrols,etc. [I’ll leve what those are exactly up to interpretation, but think of them as having more control over the targets in mind, and more of continuous or unlimited type of entertainment, sort of a mix between leves and grinding but generally… cooler.]

8. Crafting-Leveling - Would you like to see the crafting system modified? If so, to what extent? Would you like to reduce the need for grinding, and instead focus more on making fewer, more "masterpiece" products? Would you like to see separate branches of leveling for specialties, such as "bonecrafting" or "bowmaking".

9. Crafting/Economy - Would you prefer a simplified, more accessible version of the market system as it is now, or would you like more integration between players (and perhaps also NPCs)? Would you like to spend less of your crafting time on miniature tables? Personal/company workshops? More guild involvement?


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Just a random sort of an example of how I think / what I do with these ideas:

[On 9: What I am currently planning is for players to be able to quickly sell their products "up the lines", be it to NPC or player businesses. For example, I could contract with the Leatherworker's guild to provide them with secondary materials (Dodo / Sheep Leather, Sinew Cord), at above vendor price or "worth", the latter being a material/product payoff collectible further up the chain. Basically, you could provide a guild or business with materials, they ship out the materials to crafters, pay those fees, sell the products through a business, etc, etc, just like a real economy. The true upside to this though is that crafting becomes much less limited to leves, the feeling of working with a business becomes much more vivid and expansive, and you don't have to be a top rank crafter to take part in the making of upper level goods.

What I hope to accomplish with this is a more fluid and inter-dependable world/economy, wherein the individual craftsmen are relatively well known, reputation can be made more useful to a player (though not a disadvantage to be without), with a generally more lively city experience. This will likely be paired with added detail to the crafting system, focusing on the before-mentioned (#8) "masterpiece" concept, unique design and methods, where you're not just a level 42 tailor, but the best damn funny-looking-hat maker or bone-spear crafter in Ulduh. The idea of this is not to feel like real life jobs, but add expanse, intuitiveness, niche, depth, and fun. (This is just a small and likely poorly expressed part of the plan, but I hope it gives some idea of at least the scope of the idea.)]


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Sorry if some of the text did not copy correctly from Microsoft Word. Additionally, if any of the questions are overly confusing, I will rewrite them in a better phrased manner as soon as I can. Thank you again for your time.

1. Would be interesting but perhaps a bit beyond SE outside of affecting mob spawns. Even so, I liked that in FFXI so it would be nice to see it here.

2. Doesn't particularly bother me, mechanics are mechanics.

3. Could be an interesting side bonus, but not as the whole trait system because it would dictate where and how everyone levels up.

4. Proper skillchains without those horrid purple flashes and player coordination, magic bursts, group magic, player AoEs placed on the floor, environment interaction in combat, better quality spell effects, removal of animation lock for all and intro of autoshot for archer.

5. Sure I'd use something else, still waiting for someone to find a better method

6. I made a post that included my thoughts on improving leves in another thread, about making them more 'event' based rather than stupid kill quests:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...mpressed/page2

7. I hope eventually they bring back the hunts from older games like FF12 that involved hunting down NMs for big rewards, and become more challenging the more you do.

8. I'd like to see crafting made a simpler in terms of menus. Right now it just takes too long to even get started. I'd like some better minigames too if possible, the current ones are really lame and they definitely could be done better.

9. I want an auction house, basically. As much as I like player interaction or whatever, that isn't what the wards are and it's unrealistic to expect that to happen when most people log on to adventure and kill things, not hang around cities bartering. If this game wants to attract a decent audience, it needs to streamline secondary features and emphasise primary ones (combat, story missions, exploration etc) that are likely to draw in more people. I've had friends totally turned off by the horrible ward system and not want to play the game anymore as a result of having to deal with it, even in its current hybrid form it's not good enough.

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I'm not really sure what to make of your idea really, maybe it's too early in the morning but I don't really think I'd want to set up a contract to constantly grind dodo skins over and over for a bit more money. It all seems very idealistic in a similar vein to Tanaka's lofty dreams that would never play out in a real MMO (e.g. the market wards being vibrant trading grounds)

Yeah, I realize my description on the market changes wasn't too great... As was stated though, it was just a random thing that popped into my head upon completing the important of the post. To be clear though, I'd never, never want to add required complications. Anything like charters would just be extra, and not at all stringent. I'm a sucker for smooth flow (please don't think that in a funny voice, like I just did), and holistic ideas.

For the most part what I intended with all this, aside from helping my own suggestions ideas, was to simply try to bring back some of the positive construction side of the forums, rather than being akin to say... the WoW forums.
Less "it won't work because of A, B, or C."
and more "Here's how you can do an equally cool thing without it requiring A, B, or C."
or "Here's A, B, and C to make it work (even better)!"

We've got a lot of changes already coming in 2.0. None of the ideas I plan to make with be replaced by its coming, rather I intend to take full advantage of the opportunities made by 2.0. Additionally, there's a lot that's irrelevant or coexistable with the changes to classes, jobs, etc, that would be important for the current version of the game, but I'd rather start with the higher specs and work down if need be, rather than upward. (In my experience, it usually creates a much more creative and cohesive product.)