FF14 is in a content lul but super popular? Here is why.

Some FF14 players might be confused. Technically we are in a content lul in between expansions and the super popular expansion came out in 2019 so what in the world is going on. Below is a video to a WoW content creator explaining just how many RNG systems and grinds are being added into the next WoW patch. If you took a shot everytime he said grind you would be dead by 6 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW1ijyX3W4g

This is why FF14 is seemingly so popular out of nowhere. Massive content delays in WoW to create these systems just so your character to feel strong then that content is locked behind insane grinds and extremely complicated systems that stack.

Now IMAGINE every single system and RNG grind he just listed but you want to play a different job so you have to repeat most of it on an alternate character.

This is a nightmare of MMO design that I am SOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY that Square Enix does not embrace because it is insanity.

As I see it, both games are in a content lull at the moment. If you're a brand new player to either game then there's plenty of content to get through because everything is fresh and exciting - whereas a veteran player is going to struggle to have things to do that interest them as they've probably gone through a lot of what they wanted to do already.

What I miss about WoW and envy about ESO, however, is that the open world matters much more than it does in FFXIV. There's many reasons to go out and explore in both of those games whereas most of FFXIV's content is entirely instanced.

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

The one thing that I could never give up in this game is the gearing system.

I like the fact it doesn't take hundreds of hours on my part alone, by myself to get the best gear in the game only to be able to participate in end game content and it'll all be irrelevant in 6 months anyway(tera).

Instead it takes about 10-30h total for an entire group of 8 people and then you're free.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

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You have no idea how bad I want archaeology in FF14. A LITERAL MMO with 7 disasters throughout its history that buried multiple civilizations. If any mmo was made for archaeology it is FF14.

Archeology was tremendous fun.

Disclaimer: This thread includes paid promotion from SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.

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Originally Posted by Drakonic

Disclaimer: This thread includes paid promotion from SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.

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Preach is known in the WoW Mythic community and attracts that community. Go look at that comment section and tell me if those seem like happy players. You can call me a shill but my post history clearly shows I have no issue pointing out FF14's issues. Go see the Tank forums if you want to see how I really feel about Role Quest.

The point I am making is this MASSIVE flood of sprouts we have right now is for a good reason and it is going to accelerate.

FFXIV is still doing advertising, campaigns, it's got expansion trailer hype and it's benefitted a lot from expanding the free trial, all in addition to the issues with that game. FFXIV suspended their planned large-scale advertising too, so that it doesn't look like they are taking advantage of COVID.

Despite its current population, it will increase even more when Endwalker actually releases because there is no shortage of people who login only at expansion launches and catch up all in one go.

It’s only a content lull if you’ve been playing for a while. If you’re just starting or coming back, you probably have a ways to go and a lot of stuff to farm.

ESO just dropped a new expansion. But many WoW players dont like ESO so they are coming here which will last until november. Plus FFXIV has a good system to where you dont feel forced to play every day, week or month.

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Originally Posted by Derio

ESO just dropped a new expansion. But many WoW players dont like ESO so they are coming here which will last until november. Plus FFXIV has a good system to where you dont feel forced to play every day, week or month.

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ESO is likely what I would be playing if FFXIV didn't exist. It has a lot of things I like, especially in regards to how the game world can be interacted with. The character models are arguably in uncanny valley territory, though. Furthermore a lot of ESO's open world bosses are bullet sponges and the cash shop is pretty invasive. At least FFXIV's cash shop doesn't take things off of its store in an effort to encourage people to buy things for fear of missing out.

At the moment, FFXIV wins out for me but I'd definitely appreciate more competition where the MMO market is concerned.

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Originally Posted by Puremallace

Preach is known in the WoW Mythic community and attracts that community. Go look at that comment section and tell me if those seem like happy players. You can call me a shill but my post history clearly shows I have no issue pointing out FF14's issues. Go see the Tank forums if you want to see how I really feel about Role Quest.

The point I am making is this MASSIVE flood of sprouts we have right now is for a good reason and it is going to accelerate.

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I am SOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY that Square Enix does not seem to disclose its paid promotions.

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Originally Posted by Drakonic

I am SOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY that Square Enix does not seem to disclose its paid promotions.

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I mean I guess full disclosure I do own shares in EWJ an ETF focused on Japanese companies that has a 1% exposure to Square Enix so I guess there is that but that is 0.5% of my overall portfolio.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As I see it, both games are in a content lull at the moment. If you're a brand new player to either game then there's plenty of content to get through because everything is fresh and exciting - whereas a veteran player is going to struggle to have things to do that interest them as they've probably gone through a lot of what they wanted to do already.

What I miss about WoW and envy about ESO, however, is that the open world matters much more than it does in FFXIV. There's many reasons to go out and explore in both of those games whereas most of FFXIV's content is entirely instanced.

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

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My dream MMO has the story, visual flourish, enthusiasm, vertical progression, and activities of Final Fantasy XIV, the glamour system, mount system, snappiness, rotations and raid design of World of WarCraft and the crafting, gathering and open world content of Elder Scrolls Online.

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Originally Posted by Ayuhra

My dream MMO has the story, visual flourish, enthusiasm, vertical progression, and activities of Final Fantasy XIV, the glamour system, mount system, snappiness, rotations and raid design of World of WarCraft and the crafting, gathering and open world content of Elder Scrolls Online.

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Then you can go ahead and keep dreaming. American game developers will never do what FF14 has done and Japanese game developers will never do what the American ones do. Too many conflicting priorities. I have that same dream also btw.

It's also not a content lull if you pace yourself. I'm still 17 #$%&ing crystals short of the x180 item step of the relic quest. I've finished the first two chunks, at least.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

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Archaeologist for next gatherer class!

Archaeologist already exists in xiv. Qiqrn beast tribe obviously. The most important beast tribe.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

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I want archaeology content, so to speak, but no archaeology system. Let me explain.

Essentially, any leveling system is just going to be a series of lock-outs. You cannot do thing #44 until you've done sufficient prior things to unlock thing #44. Certain lockout procedures may be more rigid or more flexible, and may ultimately seem a good thing in that their constraints create a more curated course through which to progress, but at the end of the day they are only restrictions.

I don't want to have to care about the lore of Cutter's Cry or Qarn or the areas around Qarn, etc., just to be allowed to find out more about Sharlayan. And given that leveling progression systems in XIV tend to be far less flexible than in WoW or the like, that's all I can imagine an archaeology "system" really doing -- giving me "must do"s before I can access my "want to do"s.

All that would be far, far worse, even, if Archaeologist were made a gathering class, as it'd remove any possibilities for progression from otherwise lore-rich dungeons and require a whole separate gear set just to use for those who want to just go Indiana Jones (combat + archaeology).

14 just has the best laid out and designed endgame rotational gameplay. ESO is like playing a chimp smashing a keyboard, and WoW isn't much better. This is why, I hope, it maintaining its popularity.

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Originally Posted by Puremallace

Then you can go ahead and keep dreaming. American game developers will never do what FF14 has done and Japanese game developers will never do what the American ones do.

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...Except XIV did exactly that. ARR was a deliberate imitation of WoW, according to its own producer/director.

It just apparently lacks more capable coders and/or software engineering foresight, hence the vast difference in systems polish.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I want archaeology content, so to speak, but no archaeology system. Let me explain.

Essentially, any leveling system is just going to be a series of lock-outs. You cannot do thing #44 until you've done sufficient prior things to unlock thing #44. Certain lockout procedures may be more rigid or more flexible, and may ultimately seem a good thing in that their constraints create a more curated course through which to progress, but at the end of the day they are only restrictions.

I don't want to have to care about the lore of Cutter's Cry or Qarn or the areas around Qarn, etc., just to be allowed to find out more about Sharlayan. And given that leveling progression systems in XIV tend to be far less flexible than in WoW or the like, that's all I can imagine an archaeology "system" really doing -- giving me "must do"s before I can access my "want to do"s.

All that would be far, far worse, even, if Archaeologist were made a gathering class, as it'd remove any possibilities for progression from otherwise lore-rich dungeons and require a whole separate gear set just to use for those who want to just go Indiana Jones (combat + archaeology).

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I would personally like something more along the lines of ESO's antiquarian system over WoW's archaeology.

It's not its own job, so you can do it while you do other things. You can level it wherever you want. Bosses, dungeons, certain enemies in the overworld drop "leads" that give you an easter egg hunt to a big dig with a valuable item. Smaller digs drop less valuable but still interesting items. It'd be a fun way to get glamour/pets/mounts and all of the digging could happen in the overworld which would give FFXIV's overworld some much needed additional content.

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Originally Posted by Ayuhra

I would personally like something more along the lines of ESO's antiquarian system over WoW's archaeology.

It's not its own job, so you can do it while you do other things. You can level it wherever you want. Bosses, dungeons, certain enemies in the overworld drop "leads" that give you an easter egg hunt to a big dig with a valuable item. Smaller digs drop less valuable but still interesting items. It'd be a fun way to get glamour/pets/mounts and all of the digging could happen in the overworld which would give FFXIV's overworld some much needed additional content.

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Hmm, that's actually really similar to how I'd hoped Hunts would work, back in the day. And yeah, that sounds great, so long as it's primarily intrinsically rewarding and established cohesively and comprehensively, rather than being just another reward system by which to push people back towards otherwise undesirable content.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...Except XIV did exactly that. ARR was a deliberate imitation of WoW, according to its own producer/director.

It just apparently lacks more capable coders and/or software engineering foresight, hence the vast difference in systems polish.

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Not to mention xi did exactly that with Everquest. Square has a history similar to blizzard, in that they find a popular game on the market and release a similar game inspired and enhanced by that template.

FFXIV... sorta has an extremely basic version of this with Sightseeing Logs. Really if they just expand on that and maybe add in some other requirements (ride a certain mount, be a certain job, use a certain emote, have a certain pet out, if you wanna go real nutty have it be "use an AoE skill at this area at this time of day" or something) to unlock little bits of lore and maybe some basic items, that could be a fun way of getting you back into the world. Heck the emote one is exactly how the sightseeing logs works already!

So the framework is there, SE could do it, it's just whether or not enough people really care.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As I see it, both games are in a content lull at the moment. If you're a brand new player to either game then there's plenty of content to get through because everything is fresh and exciting - whereas a veteran player is going to struggle to have things to do that interest them as they've probably gone through a lot of what they wanted to do already.

What I miss about WoW and envy about ESO, however, is that the open world matters much more than it does in FFXIV. There's many reasons to go out and explore in both of those games whereas most of FFXIV's content is entirely instanced.

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

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CHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOCOOOOOBOOOO CONTENNTT!! lol

To rephrase, I feel chocobo could do WoW's archaeology but better - it already takes the mount unmount mount unmount pattern out of it and potentially could replace that with a bit more of a fun mini game. Both repeatable content and non-repeatable one time lore (and other item) adventures.

Also I think we could utilize an adventurer's guild w/ museum. Can't remember the thread title atm, but if I can find it I might revive it, well and another on codex. Depending on the depth it could be really quite something, including a really nice marriage to archaeology. Something that has players being able to go out and collect information and wonders in the world, build up a museum, organize their knowledge, for example if they took some of their Bozja ideas this might be the codex for the game. Certainly, potentially, a huge undertaking, but you've got codex in many sRPG that are pretty cool (like most Bioware games, or Witchers).

Definitely some more open world stuff could be cool, I feel besides the games you mentioned taking some of the best GW2 had thought of might be a good reference too.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

CHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOCOOOOOBOOOO CONTENNTT!! lol

To rephrase, I feel chocobo could do WoW's archaeology but better - it already takes the mount unmount mount unmount pattern out of it and potentially could replace that with a bit more of a fun mini game. Both repeatable content and non-repeatable one time lore (and other item) adventures.

Also I think we could utilize an adventurer's guild w/ museum. Can't remember the thread title atm, but if I can find it I might revive it, well and another on codex. Depending on the depth it could be really quite something, including a really nice marriage to archaeology. Something that has players being able to go out and collect information and wonders in the world, build up a museum, organize their knowledge, for example if they took some of their Bozja ideas this might be the codex for the game. Certainly, potentially, a huge undertaking, but you've got codex in many sRPG that are pretty cool (like most Bioware games, or Witchers).

Definitely some more open world stuff could be cool, I feel besides the games you mentioned taking some of the best GW2 had thought of might be a good reference too.

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Chocobo digging. It existed in XI. And 8 come to think of it.

We may be in a content lull, but we will never run out of Brothels to explore on the aether datacenter.

Did I say Brothels? No I didn't say Brothels, I said hangouts.

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Originally Posted by Derio

ESO just dropped a new expansion.

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Those are DLCs. Which are basically one zone with a story. Not traditional kind of expansions where is multiple zones and hundreds of hours worth of content.

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Originally Posted by Jin-

Those are DLCs. Which are basically one zone with a story. Not traditional kind of expansions where is multiple zones and hundreds of hours worth of content.

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DLCs are something else if we're gonna be nitpicky, Blackwood is a chapter

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...Except XIV did exactly that. ARR was a deliberate imitation of WoW, according to its own producer/director.

It just apparently lacks more capable coders and/or software engineering foresight, hence the vast difference in systems polish.

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Not exactly. True, Yoshi P did point out the success of WoW as something to aim for, and had developers play the game to get a feel for what might have led to that success. FFXIV is still a Japanese MMORPG, and utilizes different code and assets - many of them brought from 1.0. The battle system is different, the glamour system was built long before WoW started using 'collections'.

This game is story driven, with the Warrior of Light (us) in the center of things. When someone like Emet-Selch dies, WE are responsible -- unlike WoW, where story doesn't matter, we aren't the main character and every. single. major. enemy. is killed by long-standing characters who are not us (Can you tell that I am still bitter about Garosh's death ... and don't get me started on the Redemption Arc for Sylvanus "I burned down Teldrassil and enjoyed every minute of it".)

Despite the '[lack of] more capable coders', this game still manages to pump out content at 3 month intervals during an expansion (pandemic schedule aside). The charge of '[lack of] software engineering foresight' is pretty funny considering that Blizzard wasn't handing out information to competitors on what and when, exactly, they were releasing new features. The polish you see in Blizzard might just be due to the fact that the company wasn't trying to recover from a major downturn with a failed game that they were trying to resurrect on a shoestring budget.

I would argue that the game you appear to think a piece of brilliant software engineering is still stuck in the 'grind is good, they'll stick with us despite our 9-month content drought' mindset that is so endearing to those who are now looking for some other MMORPG to call home.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

DLCs are something else if we're gonna be nitpicky, Blackwood is a chapter

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Yea in Elder Scrollish words but difference between expansion and dlc has traditionally been the amount of content you get. Expansions have been pricier but rich in content compared to DLCs. However as we progress further on the horizon game companies more often than not release DLCs instead and increasing their prices. 40€ for ESO DLC (chapter) and its only half of the whole thing, ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Jin-

Yea in Elder Scrollish words but difference between expansion and dlc has traditionally been the amount of content you get. Expansions have been pricier but rich in content compared to DLCs. However as we progress further on the horizon game companies more often than not release DLCs instead and increasing their prices. 40€ for ESO DLC (chapter) and its only half of the whole thing, ridiculous.

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Chapter is their word for expansion.

I mean even Bethesda labels it's expansions for Yes and Fallout as DLC. They haven't been expansion sets since Shivering Isles.

There's technically a difference. You get access to DLCs via subscription without buying them. Chapters must be bought, like expansions. They're just like expansions with less content. They can't add more without expanding the leveling system imo. And they won't, they're pretty proud of their One Tamriel abomination.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Chocobo digging. It existed in XI. And 8 come to think of it.

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And FFIX (which was where I was pulling the idea from). With the chocographs and hot and cold w/ forest, lagoon, garden, paradise.

Yes, started in 8 with that pocket thingy, I think at least. Dunno how it would work here but it was a cool idea.

I see things like this and think people vastly overestimate ffxivs popularity honestly..

They see all the new players coming in and they're like yay the population is growing.butbtheu don't see players leaving just as quickly because there bored.

Say for example in April the game had a a million players. And throughout the month pulled iin 100k new ones. You look a that and think great... but throughout the month 100k players also got bored dropped there subs. So in May the population is still a million.

In May another 100k new players come in. Great. Cool. But another 100k also get bored and leave... so in June the population is still a million its not gaining popularity at all. As quick as it pulls players in it bleeds them out.

If you were to research things like census data they'd show the population is actually in slow decline I believe.. it follows similar trends every expansion and every patch but the population never really grows much.

Arguably it is a little higher over the last 12months or so but you could hypothesise that to be largely due to the global pandemic and everyone being stuck at home.. similar to how the pandemic has been great for companies like netflix.

It's like someone made a post about how ffxivnis now bigger than wow. And they got there statistics based on users of a sub reddit. Not exactly a credible source but it sounds good so people believe it.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Yes, started in 8 with that pocket thingy, I think at least. Dunno how it would work here but it was a cool idea.

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I didn't even know 8 had it, but I played it for a little bit and loathed the magic system lol.

Here they could keep it simple, though I think it would be neat if they ensured to had some extra elements of /fun/ gameplay (not made more complex just for the sake of it or slow players down, intentionally trying to make it fun rather than "I haz extra systems becuz can").

I mean if you look at WoW's it's in some ways just like FFIX's hot and cold, so you could pretty much straight port FFIX to here and it would be, imo, automatically a bit better than WoW's since in this situation you'd not have to unmount / mount (as your detector is your mount lol).

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

I would argue that the game you appear to think a piece of brilliant software engineering is still stuck in the 'grind is good, they'll stick with us despite our 9-month content drought' mindset that is so endearing to those who are now looking for some other MMORPG to call home.

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Mate, levels of grind has absolutely nothing to do with quality of code.

When I refer to lack of code quality and related design, I refer to things like

• certain skills arbitrarily not being queueable,
• certain UI components locking any and all actions and many another UI component,
• interactable attempting to interact before they've reached interaction range,
• ground-targeting skills accepting/delineating button-holds, thereby causing movement over the selected area (as common when you, yourself, are moving) to prevent any actual click,
• target selection being dependent on collision boxes and the enemy's nameplate, rather than on on-screen vision of the enemy (thereby preventing you from tabbing to enemies too tall for their nameplate to fit on your screen, which can be a considerable issue in narrow spaces as melee, or especially on Ultrawide monitors),
• the range and facing detection being so terrible that for over a year even at 40 ms many a player were forced to turbo their Face Target key in order to hit other sprinting melee players as melee,
• it literally being faster for the team to remake every 1-handed primal caster weapon into a two-hander than for the team to figure out how to code main-hand glamours simply as main-hand weapons that additionally allowed or prevented shield use, instead of definitively 1h or 2h,
• glamours in PvP being "impossible", and not to ever be expected... until 6 months later when the coders finally learned how to retain appearance tags in cross-server content to the extent that WoW had launched their transmogs with.

Now, let's briefly address your strawman. Avoiding the above does not make a game's code "a piece of brilliant software engineering". It just makes it far less terrible at its job.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I see things like this and think people vastly overestimate ffxivs popularity honestly..

They see all the new players coming in and they're like yay the population is growing.butbtheu don't see players leaving just as quickly because there bored.

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Zepla and other creators have confirmed they are seeing a wave of new people in their own analytics on Youtube and Twitch. There is definitely a wave and I doubt it is accidental it happened after Belluar out that video slamming Blizzard for treating WoW like a paid beta test.

Yoshi P threw wide the gates with the lvl 60 free trial.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As I see it, both games are in a content lull at the moment. If you're a brand new player to either game then there's plenty of content to get through because everything is fresh and exciting - whereas a veteran player is going to struggle to have things to do that interest them as they've probably gone through a lot of what they wanted to do already.

What I miss about WoW and envy about ESO, however, is that the open world matters much more than it does in FFXIV. There's many reasons to go out and explore in both of those games whereas most of FFXIV's content is entirely instanced.

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

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Kind of a recommendation if you just want something to scratch that itch is try out Guildwars 2. It has a lot of flaws, but it’s non subscription and a great game to have in the background when a main game gets a little stale.

FFXIV is a game I can mess with everyday for like an hour or two doing things. But… it gets pretty mundane around this point in the dev cycle.

Guildwars I can jump in and play pretty heavy for as long as it’s fun and then just not touch it for months. It’s just genuinely fun to play around in the over world and always something to do outside of MSQing.

It feels like a platformer game with the Diablo loot system and various game genres all mixed in.