ARR often feels very contradictory in its design (long)

[Taruranto]

It's basically because the took WoW Theme-Park mentality and slapped it on Tanaka more "open-world" view.

[Shurrikhan]

Does any of this make sense? Does anyone agree? Am I the only one that feels ARR's design comes off as incredibly backwards? I'm open to discussion and appreciate any civil comments whether they agree with me or not.

I'm having trouble finding any part in this that I don't agree with. Excellent post.

The forums I used to hang out on actually had a surprising accuracy rate to their predictions, so much so that I feel like I came to accept these things even before going into the Beta. The only surprises I've gotten along the way were the use of Impulse Drive pre-2.1 as Monk, the old 247 piety plateau and quick-flare rotation for BLM, knowing how to squeeze buffs out to an extra ability with faint GCD reductions (Fracture w/ Jump opening at ~2.4 for DRG, extra ID for Monk at ~2.42), etc. Little things like that keep me going, for the moment, along with the all the new 2.1 content that I'm slowly getting through (and in no rush to complete). And if the problems I feel the game has were less than fundamental, it would probably be hard to get me off the forums, even long after I were to stop playing. Sadly, that's just what they are, and it's hard to even pick a road to improvement given how fundamental each issue is, especially when we each have our own priorities. Somehow it must serve those various wants and remain cohesive. And I can't even decide truly whether the present game is even cohesive or not. For better or worse, 1.2 felt cohesive to me. Here the combat system feels like it has its own consistent design, fairly streamlined and minimalistic (I mean these both neutrally, or even positively), and the world has a consistent style to it (though I just don't personally care for that style), but everything between and around the two feels unattached and ill-designed.

Well, I've spent far too many words saying nearly nothing...

By the way, does anyone have any thorough ideas on how they might like to see crafting better integrated into the other aspects of the game?

[Shurrikhan]

Not everything in the game needs to be a raid encounter.
I fail to understand this mentality, FATEs are a tool for leveling, exp parties and questing doesn't requires any strategy either.

That doesn't mean that they need to be mindless. I love open-world fight encounters. But I'd like FATEs a whole lot more if they actually did require some coordination, preferably of a very different type than that of standard raids.

[Ri_ri]

You fail to understand that for most fates you can run up to the boss, engage, walk to the fridge to get something to drink, walk back hit one or two keys, watch some tv and get gold? Engage and fire off a skill or two and get gold. There is no stragegy, there is no team work. Whack something for 1-3 minutes and win.

That is only possible in a group. And leeching off the contribution of your party is not cool. You can also go auto-attack in CT and get loot for it... doesn't means you should do it.

As for "whacking something for 3 minutes", I still don't see how that's worse than having someone exp-tap mobs or talking to NPCs and getting levels for it.

[Maudieu]

The game hasn't fully fleshed out, we barely have half of the total jobs meant for the game. Give it some time, sheesh.

How many expansions will that take?

[SolArisa]

I mean, with enough gil, anyone can max out all crafts in 2 days without ever actually crafting anything

You don't even need much gil. Alchemy, for example. You can buy the exp, 6500 exp cost you less than 200 gil at level 15. Because our poor director decided to sell the levequest items by NPCs extremely cheap, and reward you with gil in addition to the exp you get by spamming it (for example; "Kiss of Life", ALC 15). When I saw these things, I realized that the ruining of the crafting and the economy is not being done by mistake, but by purpose.
Not to mention how I feel when I look at my crafting levels and luminary tools. Feels like I helped SE through a rough time with my patience, assistance and money for nearly 4 years now, and now we legacy players being kicked like rabid dogs. Yoshi-P shows his true face.

[frostmagemari]

The game hasn't fully fleshed out, we barely have half of the total jobs meant for the game. Give it some time, sheesh.

Can't tell if troll, but will treat as serious.

The game isn't fully 'fleshed out' because it's obvious they rushed the release. You can tell this because all of the features they grabbed out attention with (housing, addons, etc) and content they promised for release (Crystal Tower, pvp) was not there for release; We still don't have all the features they sang the praises of yet. This game needed at least a few more months in development, and they needed to operate a proper beta, not the gong show they had going on last summer.

SQE doesn't get anymore chances though, this is crunch time... They have a game, they have to make it work and can't expect the community to keep waiting from patch to patch, only to hear apologies from the Devs and then more promises for the next patch.

Honestly, this is counter-intuitive I think. I wouldn't say that Yoshi doesn't know what we want from the game, so therefore I'm going to sub to fund new content. Not paying a sub to prove a point is smart for one, but dumb for all.

As long as the company does not see a drop in subscriptions, they will continue to ship content as if it has the communities full backing. No one would change direction on a project if your base is still handing you money to keep doing what you're done.

As for SE needing money to fund new content.. They should take all of that out of pocket rather expect to take it completely out of revenue; Especially with how they're making decisions lately.

[Feilina]

The OP deserves every single Like of the 100+ he got atm.
This well written and constructive post has to be shown to Yoshi.

I would be happy if I was shown some kind of roadmap, especially for crafting and gathering.
Combat content is well done and in a good shape. Economy got heavily hit with the last patch, work as intend or is it, well, being afraid of RMT?

[Doki]

Here's some to add to the list:

Your character can swap between all jobs at will, as long as your are outside of battle
Your chocobo companion is forever locked into the role you choose for them, with no option to level each tree individually. WAT.

My character has a legacy mark since she survived 1.0
My account is not legacy

Place item level restrictions on instances so people that are undergeared do not cause duty finder to be unreliable.
Item level restrictions seriously too low for many player's taste.

Developers totally against RMT
Developers hype, and then release content with currency costs absurdly high for the majority of the server population.

[Colt47]

I actually tried several times to write something in the suggestions forum on this subject, but I agree that the issues are so deep rooted it is pretty hard to suggest anything. The best suggestion possible is for them to support the systems we originally tested and liked during the summer beta months such as the crafting, Dying, and Armory System, instead of focusing on building challenge modes and a gear progression.