Things going away in the x-pac

For people that are completionnists, even if it means doing past content, is there anything going away forever in the x-pac?

I mainly mean : dungeons, raids, achievements....

Anything you have until the 23rd to see and do?

Thanks

Nothing really is 'going away' - Heavensward is an expansion, meaning it just adds to the existing game and builds on existing content. Everything currently available in the game will continue to be so after Heavensward is released (including dungeons, raids and achievements).

This isn't like the changeover from the original version of FFXIV (version 1.0) to ARR, which was a literal replacement in every way and everything in 1.0 was literally gone forever.

So don't worry. Everything in ARR will still be available after Heavensward. :)

To be honest, I really don't know.

I don't remember reading about anything being removed and new players coming to the game still need to do ARR content to unlock Heavensward content so there shouldn't be any removals. https://youtu.be/fWg1GunhILc?t=4m19s Watch the video from here to see how stuff will change with ARR, but there is no real changes to stuff being removed from what I understand.

Nothing has been removed.

It may be somewhat more difficult to find players for certain content that was entirely optional; however, features are being added on to make it more reasonable to participate in the content (for instance, you'll be able to queue up for a 4-man dungeon with just a tank and healer at the new level cap with all that gear, if you want)

Awesome, thanks folks

Keep in mind, since the expansion is a separate purchase, not everyone is even going to have it. There will still be people playing ARR alone without Heavensward long after Heavensward is released.

As for things in ARR going away, nothing is completely going away, but some things may change. For instance, just as the i70 and i90 gear that was formerly purchasable using Tomestones of Philosophy and Mythology became dungeon drops or tradeable for dungeon drops once once those tiers of tomes were replaced by newer ones, the same may happen for the i100 gear currently purchasable with Tomestones of Soldiery. Another likely change is that some content could have its difficulty level nerfed somewhat, particularly parts that are required for unlocking access to the new HW regions.

This is one of the first MMO's I ever seen that keeps their old content still in play meaning the dungeon roulettes so new players can still experience the content many other mmo's completely ignore their old content once they expand I hope that they will put some reward into the lower lv dungeon roulettes to still make them viable to do even at 60

Which isn't necessarily a good thing, especially with SE's current implementation.
Instead of having the entire game World evolve as time passes, they're just introducing new areas.

I wish SE would implement individual phasing so we can actually experience the World change as we progress through our questline. Alas, they're just going to add more and more new zones and each zone in the game will actually be on a different timeline so to speak.

Maybe for the next expansion..

You go to Ishgard, they'll be talking about the dead Sultana, and you teleport back to Ul'dah NPCs talk like everything's normal and nothing happened.

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Originally Posted by GenJoe

Which isn't necessarily a good thing, especially with SE's current implementation.
Instead of having the entire game World evolve as time passes, they're just introducing new areas.

I wish SE would implement individual phasing so we can actually experience the World change as we progress through our questline. Alas, they're just going to add more and more new zones and each zone in the game will actually be on a different timeline so to speak.

Maybe for the next expansion..

You go to Ishgard, they'll be talking about the dead Sultana, and you teleport back to Ul'dah NPCs talk like everything's normal and nothing happened.

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That's the way SE handled expansions in FFXI though, so it's a way they're familiar with - expansions just, you know, expand the current game and don't replace it (with the exception of Rise of the Zilart, expansion storylines in FFXI were usually side stories to the main storyline, naturally that's different here).

Also as for the inconsistencies with story twists not seeming to match up, the development team already covered that by stating that certain quests take place in a specific chronological order which does not necessarily reflect how the player actually plays through the game (using the level 50 CUL quest and the 2.55 plot twist as an example). You might play one quest after another, but the way the narrative is written, the order is reversed. Some might consider that a cop out but its a simple way to address such an inconsistency.

Besides, during 2.55 it was already explained that

because of your actions leading up to that point doing fetch quests for people down on their luck, the common people aren't buying the Monetarists' lies - which has led to Lolorito clumsily covering up the whole thing while still ordering the Brass Blades and Crystal Braves to seek out any Scions and arrest them (which leads to many questioning exactly what the hells is going on).

Throughout the game players have complained about having to do endless fetch quests for people, doing trivial tasks and the like, things they felt were 'beneath' them as the Warrior of Light. Well, that's now well and truly paid off - because of your altruism and empathy for the less fortunate, people have remembered that and are now more than eager to stick by you in your darkest hour, and ignore the obvious lies and slander perpetrated by a few corrupt capitalists and mercenaries, and see your framing for the Sultana's assassination for what it is, a gross miscarriage of justice. And to say nothing of Kan-E-Senna and Merlwyb openly declaring that you're innocent and instructing their forces and guilds to continue to support you like they always have (this is also the reason why the Crystal Braves that were previously in these cities have mysteriously disappeared).

This is even the whole reason you're even allowed to shelter in Camp Dragonhead after the assassination - Haurchefant is more than eager to repay the debt to the player for clearing similar accusations against his friend Francel. It's all karma after all. ;)).

Yes but phasing is a relatively new trend and personally I think it's an amazing tool to have, and a game changer.
For example in WoW, lots of people complained about losing access to the Outlands as expansions rolled out and it changed the game World and while that was a valid concern for the people who never had the chance to experience it, the ever-changing World felt like we're making an actual impact on the World we play on. As well as, it gives a certain degree of badassness to the monsters we're fighting (they're decimating planets and we get to take them on!)

Phasing closes the gap nicely though in that, people who haven't progressed the story experience the original World as is and as they progress, the World around them changes. I'm not that huge into the lore tbh (it's the wall of text) but I do love experiencing the World through visuals, i.e. Cities being left in ruins after an invasion etc.

The change we get to witness in the Walking Sands, that was really the only moment I stopped skipping through the text to figure out what just happened because the visuals were so compelling! Imagine that same deal spread out all across the World, that would be awesome.

The trouble with that sort of idea though is that you permanently cut off certain content to a section of the community as the game develops - we've already seen this with the changeover from 1.0 and the amount of players complaining about everything that was lost in 1.0 and the constant demands to bring it all back in some form or another probably has dissuaded SE from considering such an idea with ARR.

And having said that, there has been minor changes to the game world as the game progresses (the addition of the friendly beastmen areas, and the gradual development of Revenant's Toll with each content patch, from the dingy glorified camp it was originally at launch through to the booming adventurer's city is it now at the end of 2.55. We'll continue to see things change and develop as the game progresses.

It would be too much to have separate instances of cities for new and old players...Say Limsa sinks beneath the waves..it no longer exists...that would be interesting but if it was actually implemented i wouldnt be able to join or help out any new people that start off in the city the player population would be completely split in half and that's not a good thing whatsoever. You would only get that in a single player RPG. I can deal with the shifting of NPC's but for a whole city to be left ruined (say limsa sinking or even Mor Dhona being attacked by the Garleans or some such) i think is a bit much for an mmo where there are thousands of individual players connected to one another on a single server.

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Originally Posted by Veral

It would be too much to have separate instances of cities for new and old players...Say Limsa sinks beneath the waves..it no longer exists...that would be interesting but if it was actually implemented i wouldnt be able to join or help out any new people that start off in the city the player population would be completely split in half and that's not a good thing whatsoever. You would only get that in a single player RPG. I can deal with the shifting of NPC's but for a whole city to be left ruined (say limsa sinking or even Mor Dhona being attacked by the Garleans or some such) i think is a bit much for an mmo where there are thousands of individual players connected to one another on a single server.

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Actually, phasing has already been done successfully in an MMORPG - World of Warcraft. It took them a few expansions to get it more or less right, but, at the least, it is functional and largely unobtrusive (largely - it's still off-putting when people in other phases just...disappear after crossing a zone border). The "can't play with people in other phases" problem can easily be solved (for the most part) by making the party leader's phase take precedence over any other members'.

That said, my point is only that it is both technologically possible and feasible for an MMO to implement a player-specific phasing feature. Whether its addition is an overall benefit or detriment is debatable.

Actually, hell, come to think of it, very mild phasing is already part of FFXIV! Consider Revenant's Toll throughout the main quest storyline. The number and variety of NPCs in the town slowly increase as the quest chain is worked through, on the basis of the individual player's progress. Where said NPC might be there for one person, it won't be there for another. That is phasing. I believe it's even inclusive phasing, where players with various differences in the town around them are all in the same "instance" of the town regardless, rather than exclusive phasing where players are segregated into different instances of the town depending on what NPCs are available to said player.

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Originally Posted by Hansem

For people that are completionnists, even if it means doing past content, is there anything going away forever in the x-pac?

I mainly mean : dungeons, raids, achievements....

Anything you have until the 23rd to see and do?

Thanks

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This isn't WOW or Blizzard so nothing is getting removed like in WOW

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Originally Posted by GenJoe

I wish SE would implement individual phasing so we can actually experience the World change as we progress through our questline. Alas, they're just going to add more and more new zones and each zone in the game will actually be on a different timeline so to speak.

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Like Revenant's Toll? RT has grown exponentially since ARR release. I hope they add more stuff like this in the future as well. It'll be cool to see some of the other outposts grow as well.

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Originally Posted by Woggers

Like Revenant's Toll?

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That isn't really phasing, since its changes have occurred without regard for what's going on in the story. The game does use phasing quite frequently with NPCs, who may or may not appear depending on where you are in the story. And at least after one particular incident the Waking Sands has phasing that goes beyond just which NPCs are there.

SE seems to be trying to avoid the type of phasing that splits players out into different instances, instead preferring the type where two players can be standing next to each other but see different surroundings. I think that's probably for the best, though it might limit them from making larger sweeping changes between different phases of the storyline.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

As a simple example, they cannot change traversable paths with inclusive phasing. That, of course, means that things like city destruction can't be phased inclusively unless they suspiciously left all traversable paths exactly the same - what kind of ruined city has perfectly unblocked streets?

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Real destruction (or construction, for that matter) would be limited, but they could still show major damage to a city if they wanted to. They could do things like having a few buildings (ones we couldn't enter anyway, but were part of the scenery) having collapsed into ruins, while others have boarded up windows, big cracks in the walls, and maybe a hole in the roof or something. Add in a few carefully placed bits of rubble where other non-traversable scenery had been, and they could create changes more dramatic than we've seen so far.

When they do a temporary change that occurs only during a single quest, like wagons or a crashed airship or something appearing in what's normally a road or open field, they've done it visually but without any collision detection, so you can walk right through such obstacles. That can be pretty immersion breaking unless you just deliberately avoid walking through it, though, so isn't really suited to anything that's going to remain in place any longer than a single quick quest. (Conditionally-appearing NPCs aren't quite as distracting, since the game lacks collision detection between characters anyway, but when larger pieces of scenery that you'd normally expect to block the path don't, it creates a bigger reminder of that bit of unreality.) But maybe this technique could be used if rubble in the streets appeared only during the first quest after a city went through a major destructive event. Have that quest be to clear rubble from the streets or recruit NPCs to do so, and once that quest is done the rubble that would have blocked paths (if it had collision detection) is no longer present, though damage to buildings remains longer.

So yeah, it could be done, but would have to be set up pretty carefully to keep the same area usable both by players who have passed that point in the story and others who haven't.

Phasing can be tricky for several reasons. One of the biggest ones though is that it can lead to a divided playerbase. You could have 20 people in a town in 5 different phases but due to the fact that the players are out of sinc with each other they only see 4 or 5 at the most. This can make the world feel a lot more empty and also cause problems with people playing together if they are 'out of sync' on certain content.

It also requires more server space and processing and tends to have a higher risk of bugs the more its used.

In short, Technology like Phasing is best used in moderation.

Thanks for telling this WOW fan boy y this "Phasing" whop suck, I have a real friend who may play this MMO cause they like FF games and I wouldn't be able to say get to lvl 30 then we can play together will I leave up a new Job if they Phased me out of place due to my completion of the ARR Story or oh look I can't do class/job/crafting guild quest cause I am out of phase with the city state as of current

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Originally Posted by Belhi

Phasing can be tricky for several reasons. One of the biggest ones though is that it can lead to a divided playerbase. You could have 20 people in a town in 5 different phases but due to the fact that the players are out of sinc with each other they only see 4 or 5 at the most. This can make the world feel a lot more empty and also cause problems with people playing together if they are 'out of sync' on certain content.

It also requires more server space and processing and tends to have a higher risk of bugs the more its used.

In short, Technology like Phasing is best used in moderation.

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I call phasing that segregates players based on criteria "exclusive phasing", and this player separation is definitely an issue on MMOs as they are inherently social-based games. I much prefer the "inclusive phasing" that FFXIV is currently using, despite the limitations.

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Originally Posted by DmgAtton

Thanks for telling this WOW fan boy y this "Phasing" whop suck, I have a real friend who may play this MMO cause they like FF games and I wouldn't be able to say get to lvl 30 then we can play together will I leave up a new Job if they Phased me out of place due to my completion of the ARR Story or oh look I can't do class/job/crafting guild quest cause I am out of phase with the city state as of current

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I was fully aware of the issues that phasing can cause. I'm a game designer/programmer in training; I pretty much need to know all about this sort of thing. But you do realize, I hope, that I never once said that they should add phasing to FFXIV, right? In fact, I never even said I liked phasing. All I said in my initial post where you misguidedly labeled me as a "WOW fan boy" was that (exclusive) phasing had been done properly in the past in an MMO, meaning that it is both possible and feasible given today's technology.

I then went on to explain that FFXIV is actually already using (inclusive) phasing in a cleverly unobtrusive way.

So, remind me again why you're on my back over this?

As long as phasing only prevent you to "see" other people, it's not such a big deal.
You could keep a universal chatlog to be able to hear them, you could still invite them for dungeons, etc...or they could also give them a "phase" cursor, like the CS or levequest one.

Besides, "open world" quests already use some form of phasing with quest objectives, and "instanced" quests don't require you to move to your location, so you wouldn't even have to see the world.