From another site: `Endwalker is the last expansion where the FF14’s “Formula” works`

Just thought this is a topic worth discussing here on the OF:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ast_expansion/

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I swear this is not an attempt at doomposting, but I wanted to share some opinions I have about the game and maybe spark some discussion.

I think FF14 is hitting a point where it can no longer sustain its content release formula. Every single expansion must include, for example:

· 10 additional levels for players to achieve, in battle and crafting content alike.

· 2 or 5 new abilities that HAVE to be earned in that 10 level gap, and one of them has to be reserved for max level. Moreover, the jobs are mostly tuned to that specific level, with little to no regard to how the Job plays on lower level.

· At the same time, every single job has to stay in the limits of around 25 to 35 actions to neatly fit onto a player’s hotbar, so abilities get pruned or consolidated.

· The usual batch of initial release and post-release content (i.e. an exact amount of raids, dungeons, an exploration zone, etc).

· A new Job or two that must draw players in to play them or at least try them out.

The list goes on, you know the drill. New content secures its popularity by the virtue of being new, while most of the old content is supposed to be supplemented by duty roulette bonuses. Every new expansion is essentially a soft reset, where old ideas get a new coat of paint.

The problem here is that, as the time goes on and new expansions get released following the same formula, too much of the game’s content becomes ‘shelved’, while the newer content is becoming rarer by a large margin.

To put this into perspective, in HW about 40% of the game’s content was in the actual endgame and 60% was ARR (this is an estimate, not an accurate number). With each expansion, that discrepancy becomes larger and larger in favor of old content (for obvious reasons). In other words, you wouldn’t feel that there’s an inherent issue with how the game tackles its outdated duties earlier in the game’s lifespan.

As a result, several problems arise:

· The players end up not using their shiny new kit that is balanced and works at max level in the majority of the game. What is the point of getting that sweet and cool looking Communio or Pneuma, if in the end that ability gets taken away from you as soon as the game takes away even 1 level off of you?

· In a lot of cases, the lower you go, the less coherent a job’s design becomes, and more often than not less fun. As an example: Reaper. Below level 70 its kit is so barebones its kind of amazing, actually, and may put one to sleep due to its absent design. Conversely, at lvl 90 it feels like one of the most active jobs out there due to Enshroud.

· It is very easy for parts of the game to die if they are not a part of the duty roulette system. Who runs Delubrum Reginae normal without a premade right now, I wonder?

Let’s imagine that 5 years from now, SE keeps the formula and we enter 8.0, and reach a lvl cap of 110. Keeping in mind that they need to keep the same release format they established, they will need to spread out jobs’ abilities like the last piece of butter on dry bread. This would reflect negatively on the levelling process in general if gaps between getting abilities is too huge, as well as willingness to participate in synced outdated content.

One fairly recent-ish example that comes to mind is the Augmented Law’s Order relic step in ShB. For this step, not only did they have to farm fates in old zones to revitalize them for a brief period of time, but also run Crystal Tower raids to get the relic step done in a most reasonable way, as doing it in Bozja was too unreliable due to RNG drops.

This prompted a negative response from players to the chosen approach for the relic step. Crystal Tower was probably the biggest offender – not only is it already incentivized heavily and did NOT need the boost in players, but everyone running the raid was forced to play with a lvl 50 kit, which is notably less fun than max lvl. I believe this was the fastest relic step nerf I’ve ever seen.

The biggest issue here is probably the fact that this game offers so much content, but it becomes outdated and shelved once a new expansion launches, and in my opinion it will soon become too much.

I sincerely hope that SE recognizes that there is an issue and plans to tackle it one way or another in the future and does not elect to do nothing about it, as it may lead to players losing interest in the game.

I personally think that allowing players to keep their max level abilities in all content and just syncing stats is one of the better solutions, but there are a lot of opinions that exist on this topic in particular.

TL;DR: New expansions get released, old content becomes irrelevant outside of Duty Roulette. Jobs kit become too spread out across levels and do often have to be synced down, diminishing the importancd of reaching max level in the first place. This is becoming very problematic and I hope the devs recognize this and plan to approach this issue.

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This is kind of something I've harped on for a bit - when the vast majority of the game's content puts you under level sync, it feels terrible. Of course, people here are typically very against this poster's suggestion of allowing players to retain their kit while level sync'd.

Nonetheless, consider for a moment, using Deep Dungeon as an example since we might get one this expac. The original Deep Dungeon syncs you to level 60 at most, which feels pretty terrible and makes it hard to get people. Now the new one? Typically SE introduces it towards the very end of the expansion.

Meaning, we'll be lucky to have it for 6 months before level sync kicks in, disrupting rotations and resulting in wonky sub-max-level balance.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Again, I know those on this forum are very against removing ability locks from level sync (which wouldn't help with the bad balance below max level true enough, but it'd at least feel better to play). But I do feel like it should be talked about and something should be done.

As the post also notes, given that levels are just going to keep going up and up but that there's a max limit of what we can have on our hotbars, abilities are just going to get further and further spread out too.

Give me 6.08 Samurai and I will continue to spam " ALL CONTENT " endlessly.

• Dungeons
• Fates
• MSQ reruns
• Redoing my Samurai job quest for funzies
• Every yellow quests
• Beast tribes
• Community service Extreme's spam
• Community service Raiding spam
• Striking Dummy spam

Everything under the sun of combat gameplay I will spam it to the ground... because I loved doing that, simply cause of my Job. If I had my Kaiten not removed and if I had my Tenka Goken not being a darn Circle and kept a cone, if Samurai wasn't ruined by 6.1, i'd spam everything still cause it was fun and now its not.

I could give a rats ass about content, the job I love overnight got ruined. NO amount of content will be worth doing now for me. Except Housing.

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

Give me 6.08 Samurai and I will continue to spam " ALL CONTENT " endlessly.

• Dungeons
• Fates
• MSQ reruns
• Redoing my Samurai job quest for funzies
• Every yellow quests
• Beast tribes
• Community service Extreme's spam
• Community service Raiding spam
• Striking Dummy spam

Everything under the sun of combat gameplay I will spam it to the ground... if I had my Kaiten not removed and if I had my Tenka Goken not being a darn Circle and kept a cone, if Samurai wasn't ruined by 6.1. I could give a rats ass about content, the job I love overnight got ruined. NO amount of content will be worth doing now for me. Except Housing.

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What about Crystal Tower?

Even if SE gives you 6.08 samurai back, no Kaiten for you.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

What about Crystal Tower?

Even if SE gives you 6.08 samurai back, no Kaiten for you.

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But at that point we'd still be playing the same game we were 2 months ago.

I skimmed OP post, but I agree that playing anything below 60 for most jobs is extremely lacking. For instance, I loved playing SAM, but only at 65 or above due to the kenki generation. But at 50, it's still OK. Without kenki to use, I'm not nearly as annoyed about my kit being slow.

Same goes for most jobs I play. GNB? Gotta be 70 for that Continuation. I'll also say I think any ability tied to Continuation should already be available upon unlocking Continuation at 70. Looking at you, Hypervelocity. And if Fated Circle gets a follow-up, I'll say that should be available too even though Fated Circle doesn't unlock until 72 which is also weird. I think it should be a few levels after Burst Strike, but I digress.

Abilities on a lot of jobs unlock at weird levels and in the vast majority of gameplay they're usually unavailable. But in favor of not wanting the game made any worse, I think it's at least bearable for now.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

What about Crystal Tower?

Even if SE gives you 6.08 samurai back, no Kaiten for you.

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My point on my post is about that I enjoy FFXIV simply cause my Job is enjoyable. Then any content you throw at me is probably going to be fun. If you give me content with jobs that aren't fun? and by fun I do mean what I personally enjoy, which happens to be Samurai, then yes - I care not what Square produces.

• Anything AoE related is really braindead and ruined
• Anything Single target is now less think Raiding
• Anything I want to farm think Extreme's or Fates or anything that requires combat is even more dull

The only thing I enjoy now is Housing, helping friends and parties clear content and that's kinda it? so whatever new content they produce? I could care not. They could come with a new entire world with entire reflections, and probably a re-vomitted beast tribe yet again with new fates yet again and probably with a new job that probably has a lot of what we used to enjoy from other jobs rehashed, it would not even surprise me I could not care... if they didn't ruin Samurai.

So you might think I am demanding? I think I am the least demanding player. Too please me you dont need to write a new story or make 10 new raids or 20 new dungeons or 30 more NPC stories or 100 more glamours or even a 1000 more items to farm or 10.000 new furnitures or the infinite new amount of mogstation attires and emotes you wanna buy... I asked the bare minimum of unF'king a job I loved that made me play this game.

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

-wall of text snip-

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Frankly, I think you need your own thread on samurai. While your points may have varying degrees of validity, they are wildly off topic and putting words in mouths that haven't been said because... again, completely different topic.

So, if you love level 50 samurai - which doesn't have kaiten before or after 6.1 so not much has changed there - good for you. But this topic is, basically, that many jobs feel lacking and unfun when level sync'd.

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Originally Posted by xAFROx

Abilities on a lot of jobs unlock at weird levels and in the vast majority of gameplay they're usually unavailable. But in favor of not wanting the game made any worse, I think it's at least bearable for now.

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Is there a point where it becomes unbearable? Level 100? Level 110? As the kits become more toploaded towards those levels? As the ratio of max level vs sync'd content becomes even more and more towards said sync'd content?

I'm not expecting a solution next month, and I don't think the original poster is either. SE doesn't really move on those timescales, for one. But if you want something done by maybe next expac, it's good to talk about it now.

I wonder if for synced content if they couldn't just keep your max level rotation as is and just downscale the damage. The Unreal trials are a lot of fun to do, even if they feel much easier now than they did at original launch.

One thing that I have noticed with Endwalker is that there has been a move towards simply upgrading old actions with a new animation and some extra effects. This is probably the first expansion since Heavensward where we haven't seen a ton of old actions get discarded and replaced. It's a smart move, because players always get extremely emotional over seeing old actions get removed. It also means that there's less adjustments that you need to make to acquisition levels, as you're only changing the animation to a progressively bigger rock to hurl at your opponents. The downside is that you'll probably see a lot less variation in a job's rotation from expansion to expansion. Players will eventually start complaining about how their only new abilities are Inner Release 7 and Glare 12 and how they've been effectively doing the same rotation for the past five years, but this seems to be what the community wants for now.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Frankly, I think you need your own thread on samurai. While your points may have varying degrees of validity, they are wildly off topic and putting words in mouths that haven't been said because... again, completely different topic.

So, if you love level 50 samurai - which doesn't have kaiten before or after 6.1 so not much has changed there - good for you. But this topic is, basically, that many jobs feel lacking and unfun when level sync'd.



Is there a point where it becomes unbearable? Level 100? Level 110? As the kits become more toploaded towards those levels? As the ratio of max level vs sync'd content becomes even more and more towards said sync'd content?

I'm not expecting a solution next month, and I don't think the original poster is either. SE doesn't really move on those timescales, for one. But if you want something done by maybe next expac, it's good to talk about it now.

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It'd definitely be interesting if jobs were more front loaded, but it would require a fine line. New SMN is basically already there because it's exactly the same from 50 to 90, though, so if that's the future they're going towards, I don't know if that's actually better.

Just keeping actions scaled down would be the easiest solution probably. They already have that working for role actions, so I don't see why that can't work for job actions.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

So, if you love level 50 samurai - which doesn't have kaiten before or after 6.1 so not much has changed there

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Quote me properly on where I said Lv50 specifically before putting words into mine.
I said " ALL CONTENT ".

This includes Lv80/70/60 synced content as well. Not just Lv50. You care enough about un-synced content, even to post a thread about it, but suddenly these levels of synced content doesn't exist to you? Not to mention Tenka Goken at Lv40 feeling like crap that's pre Lv50 for that Non-Kaiten Crystal Tower argument point of yours.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

But this topic is, basically, that many jobs feel lacking and unfun when level sync'd.

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True, of which you're posting it in the DPS section expecting a non DPS take on it? To reword what I posted before, " Job-Satisfaction is crucial to enjoying content ". This includes skills and rotation changes that might affect lower level synced content as well yes. Not just from level 90. That to me is important, and the recent changes made the more horrible.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

As the post also notes, given that levels are just going to keep going up and up but that there's a max limit of what we can have on our hotbars, abilities are just going to get further and further spread out too.

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Square can solve Button Bloat issues by fusing a lot of buttons together with good procs and removing a lot of skills that aren't as meaningful if they really really desperately need to make room for better skills yes. Or they could also just not break what isn't broken. I personally don't see a button bloat issue for my job at least that can't be solved easily to make room for 4 more new skills.

But heck, my apology if that's a Samurai's take on the DPS section of the forum


Lastly, your reddit post goes on to state about older content becoming irrelevant. That's what un-syncing does, farmable glamour/rewards/titles/mounts etc, are all made less valuable due to it. And it will only get easier with higher levels. To care about the relevancy of synced level content, is to tackle the ability to unsync it for rewards. I couldn't care less they ruined my job so, knock yourself out with this. That's how I view it.

They should free Blue Mage from Prison.

Also I don't think they will change their formula at all. The game isn't going to change. Hasn't changed since Stormblood. The game hit it's peak in Heavensward and hasn't been better since. It just gets progressively dumbed down.

Not being critical it's just a fact.

The only thing I'll say is WRT buttons/abilities in old expansions:

SE has a tendency to take old abilities, and remove them, to create space for a new max-level ability for a job or whatever. This makes sense, since you want your players to feel like they're getting something new as they level up in the new expansion. But I think they go about the pruning poorly, because it ends up with (for example) 1-80 content being pruned similarly, so while 80-90 gets the new stuff, 1-80 gets a uniform amount of abilities pruned. So, importantly, levels 1-50 suffer because now they have less abilities than they did when 50 was the actual level cap in ARR. It ends up with some jobs feeling incomplete at low levels. I would suggest that SE attempts to fill out 1-50 rotations more, to give newer players opportunities to see fuller/busier rotations, and then relegate the 50-80 leveling range more to just trait / supplemental ability additions. It would make the leveling process a bit more boring, but I think the largest issue XIV has atm is likely the retention of new players, which I would think is in part due to how the new player leveling experience goes.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

They should free Blue Mage from Prison.

Also I don't think they will change their formula at all. The game isn't going to change. Hasn't changed since Stormblood. The game hit it's peak in Heavensward and hasn't been better since. It just gets progressively dumbed down.

Not being critical it's just a fact.

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you're not wrong, granted i never raided back in the HW days, got to endgame around a month before SB was released and the 1st tier of omega was my 1st savage raid experience (good experience though)
it's what i've been saying for a while and my static calls be a boomer for it, jobs are becoming easier and easier, look at how summoner used to be, it used to be an complicated puzzle, but once you got the pieces figured out it was an good and easy job, now it's just "dreadworm stance > any original primal you want (probably bahamut at some point, don't play this itteration of summoner) and then phoenix, repeat till victory or wipe"
granted i despise positionals (mostly because it's inconcistent with how the game work and lore wise, since i could get behind hitting harder from the back/side, but then wouldn't chakrams/arrows/bullets do the same? the same for magic, i get that it would ruin the ranged vibe, but i just hate that as an melee you have to dance around, while the ones with real range can stand still in the back of the arena)

just hope they finally stop thinking they need to make things easier for the casuals, most changes won't even affect them, removing some buttons won't change the fact that if an controller player isn't using the double tapping L2/R2 for an extra hotbar he/she will still run out of space instantly, unless they manage to dumb it down to 16 buttons in total, which would likely kill the game outright for most.
granted, some jobs like summoner are basically there already, i kept some buttons in the same area as i had them in SHB ... and damn i literally got entire sections just empty because of it.

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Originally Posted by xAFROx

It'd definitely be interesting if jobs were more front loaded, but it would require a fine line. New SMN is basically already there because it's exactly the same from 50 to 90, though, so if that's the future they're going towards, I don't know if that's actually better.

Just keeping actions scaled down would be the easiest solution probably. They already have that working for role actions, so I don't see why that can't work for job actions.

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I think if they front loaded most of the kits to 1-50 and then used traits to change the usage of abilities akin to what happens to 3 of the tanks short mitigation CDs that would be where to start. You can add more flavor to the rotations as you level up but you shouldn't have to wait until past level 60 to feel like a fully fleshed out job, especially since the 52-60 job skills are locked behind getting to HW and your level 70 skill still requires you to do a quest to get. I think if they had weaker versions of skills that got better as you leveled up it would feel a hell of a lot better than not getting anything until a higher level and then getting a new skill which completely changes the rotation you have been using for the last 50 levels. The main reason I advocate for this over just down syncing skills is the 1-50 experience is already pretty terrible job-wise and they need to do something to make it more interesting so new players get hooked and stay playing the game vs something like wanting to play rogue and hitting literally 2 buttons and a two minute ogcd for 26 levels... Kinda like dpsing as healer for about 86 levels...

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Originally Posted by darkdyllon

you're not wrong, granted i never raided back in the HW days, got to endgame around a month before SB was released and the 1st tier of omega was my 1st savage raid experience (good experience though)
it's what i've been saying for a while and my static calls be a boomer for it, jobs are becoming easier and easier, look at how summoner used to be, it used to be an complicated puzzle, but once you got the pieces figured out it was an good and easy job, now it's just "dreadworm stance > any original primal you want (probably bahamut at some point, don't play this itteration of summoner) and then phoenix, repeat till victory or wipe"
granted i despise positionals (mostly because it's inconcistent with how the game work and lore wise, since i could get behind hitting harder from the back/side, but then wouldn't chakrams/arrows/bullets do the same? the same for magic, i get that it would ruin the ranged vibe, but i just hate that as an melee you have to dance around, while the ones with real range can stand still in the back of the arena)

just hope they finally stop thinking they need to make things easier for the casuals, most changes won't even affect them, removing some buttons won't change the fact that if an controller player isn't using the double tapping L2/R2 for an extra hotbar he/she will still run out of space instantly, unless they manage to dumb it down to 16 buttons in total, which would likely kill the game outright for most.
granted, some jobs like summoner are basically there already, i kept some buttons in the same area as i had them in SHB ... and damn i literally got entire sections just empty because of it.

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Well yeah it gets easier and I still think the stat squish overall was a mistake. My mindset now is that since the grind formula isn't really rewarding or engaging enough I think it's far better to only come back and play the game for it's MSQ at the beginning of a expansion's launch and enjoy everything they had padded out across 2 years while at the same time instead of grinding months for tomestone gear and weapons you can get all that stuff for multiple jobs in a few days to a week with just Poetics.

The MSQ really just takes you through these artistic setpieces and after that that's about it. The game is very heavily instanced and is all about farming gear to do this 8 man content beyond that there isn't much to do other then level jobs and fight the market board as a crafter.

I can see the benefit of removing buttons but it could be done so much better if they just implemented their PvP combo system and it would be fine and without sacrificing a job's complexity or engaging playstyle. Or even if it's remove buttons to add more buttons.

And you know right now a lot of jobs are very easy to play and I see a lot of complaints that jobs are braindead which they are but I think YoshiP has dug himself this hole and this is the direction we are headed.

Yoshida stated that he plans to continue the game for at least another decade, but I really can't see myself sticking around for another 10 years doing the same old FATE's, roulettes, tomes, farming the same bland gear that isn't really needed for anything with the same old jobs with almost the same toolkit. Especially when they continue simplifying it and removing challenge or long term value.

It's a nice game, don't get me wrong. Story is decent, raids have been fun, aesthetically it looks good. But I'm just bored of the same safe formula. There's absolutely no chance I'm going to last 10 years. I'm basically just using ff14 as a waiting room for a decent new MMO right now.

This is the third time I've seen this topic brought up; and i still don't get this whole "Formula" discussion; as if there really is one to begin with, and the game couldn't possibly survive change or creative evolution.

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Originally Posted by Neoyoshi

This is the third time I've seen this topic brought up; and i still don't get this whole "Formula" discussion; as if there really is one to begin with, and the game couldn't possibly survive change or creative evolution.

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You must be new here. Yes there's a formula. We know when all of our major combat content is coming, with the exception being Ultimates as we've not had any pattern to them other than it was intended to have two every expansion as of Stormblood, but that doesn't always work out.

We also know that very few combat overhauls happen during an expansion life, so what you end up with in the x.0 patch is likely what you're going to keep, with a few exceptions.

Job balance/enjoyment aside, I was speaking of this just today about the content release formula with someone else. It's pretty mundane as it is (as all things become with predictability.) I find I get more enjoyment out of the side content like eureka/bozja because it's different from the standard releases and the difficulty level isn't completely floor level. The problem with it currently is how relevant it remains when new xpacs release.
Would really like to see more random content that doesn't get thrown to the side as the game grows.

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Originally Posted by Neoyoshi

This is the third time I've seen this topic brought up; and i still don't get this whole "Formula" discussion; as if there really is one to begin with, and the game couldn't possibly survive change or creative evolution.

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Sorry but your pattern recognition ability leaves a lot to be desired if you can't see there's a very rigid formula.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Just thought this is a topic worth discussing here on the OF:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ast_expansion/



This is kind of something I've harped on for a bit - when the vast majority of the game's content puts you under level sync, it feels terrible. Of course, people here are typically very against this poster's suggestion of allowing players to retain their kit while level sync'd.

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Depends on the content and why you are running it. Why are you doing Roulette? Most its for leveling so an entire tool kit doesn't matter because they don't have one to begin with. Deep Dungeon? You most likely have your whole tool kit after the 50th floor so it become a moot point since the goal it get past 200th floor. When you run level 90 content you have a level 90 tool kit. It's just the way the game is designed.

In regards to BLU.......XI's BLU minus the stupid occult NPC is probably the best version of BLU in FF.

Very flexible; a strong magic user and melee. Could arrange spells to give yourself powerful Job Traits.

Crappy ones become Flayers. So good ones must become morphers.
https://64.media.tumblr.com/0702ac32...opdo1_500.gifv

XIV is a mmo I play(Otherwise I would not be here typing this), but it is far from the main rotation mostly because there are not many jobs I like. So I just come around during events like the current MGP one.

I guess I'll just say the obvious: MMO RPGs that are tab target action MMOs are known to break apart from constant growth. The reason is that all content is additive and team sizes are finite, so while the game is young it can get lots of attention from the team and people are generally pretty active about fixes, but when the game ages and expansions are loaded on, as well as new game systems, things start to break and they don't get fixed. Also in FFXIV's case, level sync is absolutely broken because of the growing requirements on developer time to deal with jobs. The entire reason they are simplifying jobs is because they have no hope of keeping more complicated and nuanced jobs alive and functioning over the next 10 years.