Arthars: FFXIV should take a few hints from Dragonflight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOK46OR9FQ0

Here is a summary of what he said, with very little modification.

• Dragonflight has more replayable content than Endwalker.
• Grinding Mythic+ is boring, but at least it's more meaningful than 14.
• Dragonflight has the best gearing system in any MMO. Every piece of content gives useful gear.
• FF14 gearing system can be made better by simply plucking out any random thought in your head - that's how bad FF14 is.
• Arthars doesn't think the FF14 dev team actually thinks the gearing system is bad. Just because it works, doesn't mean it's good, and people are starting to get impatient.
• For the first time, I don't even bother using ACT and don't care about gearing because it's is so pointless because the DPS checks are such a joke.
• Yoshi P promised 7.0 would feel like you're playing a FF14-2. Arthars expects a lot of changes. If not, then it's going to be very boring for veterans.
• World proggers and many week 1 proggers don't even play the game past week 1 of Savage. The more you play the more you understand that. Some of them just go back to playing WoW classic after week 1.
• They don't care about retaining players for more than one or two expansions. They need to start think about player retention.
• You can't even being burnt out from FF14 because there's nothing to do.
• Eureka is such good replayable content, and got replaced by Criterion. Arthars loves Criterion but thinks it's very very unreplayable because the rewards are bad.
• Criterion is more fun... for those two days, but Eureka has more things to do.
• The choice the game gives you right now is 3 hours a day, 3 days a week, any more time spent in the game is "your fault".
• Why can't we go into deep dungeon as BLU? Developers say the reason is that it's too OP: you create a job that is supposed to be OP but then you don't let it do content that makes it feel OP.

I'd definitely like to see an equivalent to World of Warcraft's trading post and more focus on exploration/puzzles out in the game world. I like exploration and unfortunately FFXIV has always struggled with that. Even to this day, one of the few hidden side quests in FFXIV is something added way back in the days of ARR and involves handing an item to a particular NPC in order to acquire a couple of minions. Which is neat and something I'd like to see much more of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh71Uol2xEM

• Stormblood is better than Shadowbringers,
• Shadowbringers is better than Endwalker.
• Things got easier and easier like raids and extreme trials.
• Eden raids are better than Pandaemonium.
• Bozja is better than Criterion

Stormblood
Pros

• Ultimate intro
• Eureka best content
• Good relic quests
• Most fun job rotations

Cons

• Raids were kinda easy
• Story was very mid
• Znoes
• EX trials underwhelming.

Shadowbringers
Pros

• Consistency of Ultimate difficulty
• As bad as Bozja was, it still served the same purpose as Eureka
• Jobs are still somewhat fun (GNB)
• EX trials were a lot better than SB
• Best story ever.

Cons

• Covid happened which caused a drought in content
• Lack of 2nd Ultimate
• No deep dungeon
• 24-man raid was bad.

Endwalker
Pros

• EX trials were amazing
• 24-man was solid
• Nophica (this point shows how desperate we are to try to lift Endwalker up)
• Reintroduce deep dungeon
• Criterion dungeons
• CC pvp

Cons

• Raids aside from anabesios was mid
• job balance worst it has been
• 24-man was good, but not as good as ivalice in terms of difficulty etc.
• No Bozja/Eureka, 48-man savage
• No relic quest
• Hildibrand
• Criterion rewards
• Most bugs ever seen in FF14
• If you consider DSR as 5.x ultimate then 6.x only have 1 so far
• 1st half of EW story was literally filler to end SB and it only begin in 2nd half from Elpis

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Everyone says Stormblood is the worst expansion, but when you compare it carefully you start to see that Stormblood is not as bad as ShB and EW. Arthars thinks that FF14 cannot continue like this.

• Endwalker is the first time people are skeptical of the formula.
• FF16 is just like FF14. It's only a good game, not a great game, it's not the best FF.
• Endwalker is paper on crack. It's an expansion that covers the cracks of the game with paper.
• In Endwalker there's nothing that makes you go "holy ****". Endwalker is a filler.

As much as I love Arthars as an entertainer and a player sometimes his takes are really narrow. He’s said multiple times that he thinks anything slower than a week 1 savage clear is casual raiding. To him that’s true, he plays on a world prog level so anything past week 1 is a disaster, but for the raiding player base at large it’s not anywhere representative.

I think he has his head in the clouds on raiding takes because of the level he plays at, but his takes on replay ability I generally agree with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I'd definitely like to see an equivalent to World of Warcraft's trading post and more focus on exploration/puzzles out in the game world. I like exploration and unfortunately FFXIV has always struggled with that. Even to this day, one of the few hidden side quests in FFXIV is something added way back in the days of ARR and involves handing an item to a particular NPC in order to acquire a couple of minions. Which is neat and something I'd like to see much more of.

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WoW's trading post can only work because that game has a collections system. Until XIV solves the issue of the glamour system, the trading post just wouldn't work in XIV. Would be neat if they ever did fix the system though.

I honestly think MMOs should shamelessly steal ideas from one another. WoW is starting to learn from mistakes and making DF a pretty good expansion. Content for all levels of players both in the open world and in instanced areas. World events with decent rewards. I would love to see SE take those ideas from WoW and put their own touch on them and implement them into DT.

Interesting that other content creators are speaking up about EW right after Zepla makes her video. The optimist in me wants to say they're following the momentum to share their own thoughts on 6.X now that someone has taken the initiative, while the pessimist in me is saying they're doing it for the views. Either way it's got people talking, I 'spose.

Wow, this guy is irritating to listen to. He talks too fast, and the rapid cuts/clips make it much worse. I'm sorry, I watched for about 5 minutes and couldn't give it any more.

I think I get the point, though. Endgame gearing in FFXIV is pretty weird. I do the time-gated stuff I can do each week, and then hit a wall. I don't even do Extreme/Savage, not sure how that whole gear scene works, but from the sounds of it it's a similar issue, just at a higher item level?

When a new raid or alliance raid comes out, I jump at the chance to play it. But then I get limited to one item drop only, and if I take it I get nothing else for the whole week. Okay, so why would I replay this at all until next week..? There's literally no reason to.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

Interesting that other content creators are speaking up about EW right after Zepla makes her video. The optimist in me wants to say they're following the momentum to share their own thoughts on 6.X now that someone has taken the initiative, while the pessimist in me is saying they're doing it for the views. Either way it's got people talking, I 'spose.

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Maybe a little of both. There is naturally a lot of cross-pollination of conversation topics among streamers. They literally react to other streamers' videos on their own channels and then give their own takes on it. Or their chat brings it up because it made waves online, so they respond to them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

Interesting that other content creators are speaking up about EW right after Zepla makes her video. The optimist in me wants to say they're following the momentum to share their own thoughts on 6.X now that someone has taken the initiative, while the pessimist in me is saying they're doing it for the views. Either way it's got people talking, I 'spose.

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I really think since Zepla posted her video it just has made these opinions have more of a light shone on them. Xeno has been complaining about some of this stuff forever. In Arthars' case he is just kind of speaking off the cuff in the middle of a stream moreso than sitting down and creating a video on the whole thing. The bigger thing in my mind is how classically FF14 streamers seem to be spending a lot more time than usual playing other games and I think that tells me a lot of their current thoughts on FF14.

Something else to note is Arthars posted this video 2 months ago as well, long before Zeplas.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Amenara

I honestly think MMOs should shamelessly steal ideas from one another. WoW is starting to learn from mistakes and making DF a pretty good expansion. Content for all levels of players both in the open world and in instanced areas. World events with decent rewards. I would love to see SE take those ideas from WoW and put their own touch on them and implement them into DT.

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Companies have been doing this for decades. WoW itself is literally a long list of stuff they copied from other MMO's that came before it then packaged it into a Warcraft wrapper. Yoshi-P's initial rebuild of FF14 for ARR was primarily centered around making WoW in FF flavor but keeping it different enough to not be called out for it.

The main problem with CBU3 and FF14 is they've taken a JRPG franchise and over time chosen to cater to players that don't play JRPGs, some would even argue that the direction in more recent years doesn't even cater to actual gamers in general. It's pretty much the same direction they went with FF16 where they took the latest entry in the FF mainline series and chose to try and cater to fans of games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta with it instead of the existing FF fanbase.