ARR often feels very contradictory in its design (long)

[OldGeezer]

I'll give some examples:

The biggest is the Armory System. One of the game's major selling points. The idea is (at least how it's described on the main website) that, one, you can play every role on a single character, and two, can mix and match skills. But as we've seen at every point, they're intent on designing content lockouts (Coil once a week, Crystal Tower once a week, Extreme Primals once a week, treasure maps once a day, beastmen camps once a day) around individual characters. Not role based as would compliment this design choice. You're actually punished in a sense for making use of the Armory System in that having alt characters per class avoids the lockouts.

Just because you can choose to play every class doesn't mean you get to end-game raid every class simultaneously. That's not how it works. SE gives you the choice to choose-so choose...and live with the choice. So you can't have your cake at eat it too. It's not a design flaw. If you want to do CT os a WHM you can, if you want to run coil the same week as a BRD you can. You just can't powergear them at the same time in both. You have the easy option to gear up every role in Darklight gear, and then you have to choose.

Additionally, the idea that classes can 'cross class' skills from other classes is greatly stunted in numerous ways. For one, classes are built around a very central rotation. It makes it hard for cross class skills to function beyond fairly generic buffs like Raging Strikes because you can never differ from the core idea of the class. In 1.0, ignoring the critical reception for a moment, the class design was built around the idea of cross classing skills. People felt that characters became too samey and ended up not caring for it, but the point is they had a vision and designed around it. In ARR, it feels like they simply disliked the armory system but felt obligated to keep it. It doesn't mesh with the game well at all.

Trust me as a BRD I wish I had more options to put in my rotation and I love invigorate as a cross-class skill. I use it all the itme. But I don't use the melee stuff because I'm ranged. There is s a limit to what you can do with these cross-class abilities and that doesn't even consider balance between the classes. Just think if Monks could use the straight shot and put a perpetual +10% crit chance ontop of their skill and strength enhancements in their rotations. People would scream injustice because they'd be too OP. Balance is always a ticky subject and SE could definitely improve in this area but developing special abilites for one class that wouldn't be exploited by another is a tricky subject.

And then you have crafting and gathering. Compared to most MMO's, these systems are really fleshed out in ARR. There's a lot of depth there. There's almost more crafting classes than battle classes, they have their own skill sets, their own gear, hundreds of recipes and materials... yet they are intent on making crafting and gathering have no place within the game. They don't want players forced into it, they feel as if they don't want players to avoid running dungeons for gear, they feel as if a strong player market promotes RMT abuse, so they've made it completely arbitrary and bypassable. Why put all of this effort into their crafting and gathering systems if they don't intend people to take full advantage of it? In my own world, if I were directing ARR, I would take this massive strength and roll with it. I would push the game heavily around crafting and gathering and player economy, simply because, hey, I have this really well done crafting and gathering aspect of my game.

Because they don't want to screw the players even more. People are ok interacting with a system with fixed costs and prices. They aren't with a system that fluctuates. Gatherers jack craft crafters, who in turn jack customers. The prices are way out of sync with SE price menu. Thanks to the beast quests I can buy velveteen cloth for 169 gil, but the cheapest diremite web it costs to make it was 220 gil/ea on the auction house-and you need 2! If gear progression was dependent on crafters you'd have the chaos we had at the beginning where people are charging 1 million gil for 2-star gear when the average person making it to level 50 has 250k via the main storyline. How does one raid legitimately under such conditions. The answer is that most will not be alble to. If crafters charged reasonable prices for items you cnould build a progression system around them, but the simple fact is they don't. They jack the customer and making player-crafting the vehicle for game progression would be a disaster.

However, that does not mean crafting does not have a place in this game. It's market is a secondary market, alt-gear and housing supplies. Lots of people are still grinding alts and since you can't FATE grind to 50 in your birthday suit anymore people will need gear on the way to 50. Lots of people claim that housing supplies are wortthless today because FC already have crafters in guild to make their items. That is true, but when the individual housing opens up in a few months, the sky will be the limit because all of those people who "skipped" crafting are going to need their wares unless they want their new house to be 1 empty room.

And taking that further, I'll bring up Dye and Materia. Both systems that form the game's biggest fountain of potential depth and customization, both visually and mechanically. They designed these systems and advertised them heavily...but pigeonholed them into an aspect of the game they clearly don't want people to use. Both dye and materia only apply to gear that is crafted (Mostly), and since they don't want people to progress their characters with crafting and gathering, both systems are doomed to go widely unused. Why take the time to develop three massive concepts and purposely build them to be unusable? Crating, materia, and Dye together have such a massive pool of depth. The game could be designed around crafting and materia with the systems they've built and could truly work. But they didn't.

And are completely superficial. Whether i have a pink, jet-black, or orange Artemis bow, you still have an Artemis bow. HQ crafted gear has the same primary stats as green dungeon gear and you have materia slots and dye to customize it. So if you really want it that badly you can get it, it's just that you'd have to make it yourself or pay someone gil for it. It just doesn't drop in a dungeon. That's the real grievance here. It's not as easy or cheap as a 30-minute dungeon grind. Could they revamp gear sets and put a dye slot and remove the pre-assigned materia contribution? Maybe, maybe it will come in a forhtcoming patch. The option to customize stats and color exist and you can use it on gear at any level sub ilevel 80.. All it takes is a a little effort.

And finally I'll talk about the open world. The biggest, or second biggest complaint about the game's original release was its world design. How there wasn't much to see or do and it was visually uninteresting. So they literally made a new one...and then decided they didn't want people to play in it. They don't want players 'monopolizing' open world content, so they want everything instanced. The open world loses all meaning once you finish the story by design. I adore the open world in this game, but from mounts and teleporting, to cramped maps and numerous camps, and the complete lack of threat from mobs, the entire game's world comes off as even more sterile then its predecessor. While 1.0 was heavily copied and pasted, there were elements in its design that made it a tangible experience. Mobs were dangerous, there were rare things to hunt, you had to travel it to reach content. Why, why take the effort of making something as visually rich as ARR's open world when you don't want players to spend time in it?

And this is where we differ. I was totally disenchanted with the 4 minutes of running it took to go from Grindaria to Brentbranch or the 15 minute run to Quarry mill. Sure it was big, but it shouldn't be big just for big's sake. Also, let's be honest here, the graphics for these extended areas sucked. SE chose to go condensed and pretty and I'm glad they did. Sure the monsters aren't that challenging, but then again 1.0 wasn't that challenging either. Some people think open worlds give some tangible benefit to the MMOs experience. Personally, I think it's just an excuse for crappy coding.

[OSUBuckeye4]

I agree with most of the OP's concerns.

The one thing I will add is SE's very silent stance on bot's that are blatently abusing the market boards and running around the open world on a very consistant basis.

SE has been very vocal in going after RMT (which is good), but, they have been very quiet about going after gathering bots that are destroying the in-game economy.

[Zeno_McDohl]

Someone mentioned a roadmap. A roadmap (like FFXI has, a feature roadmap) isn't really the solution. Throwing a bunch of features in is great, but that isn't the same thing as having direction.

[Axidrain]

snip

whats the point of the armory system then? when u have to ultimately choose which one to play in the end? its just dumb.

[Bita]

We need to keep this on top until we hear a response from SE. Satisfying or not it will help allot of people understand their intentions with the future of this game.

+1 daily bump to usher in better fleshed out open world content and meaningful crafting. I'm not excited at all to explore, there is no danger i am practically invincible in every corner of the open realm.

[OldGeezer]

whats the point of the armory system then? when u have to ultimately choose which one to play in the end? its just dumb.

You can run CT with all of them, and get tombs for all of them. You just can't get gear drops for all of them during the same week. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Ri_ri]

You can run CT with all of them, and get tombs for all of them. You just can't get gear drops for all of them during the same week. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I've been noticing a trend where everyone who says this only has one job at level cap/endgame...

[Vandark]

It's sOoooooooooooooooooooo True and it's all Soooooooooooooooooo Bad.

Funny story the last 14 didn't have these problems LOL

SE just went from a great game that just lacked content and had many technical problems but the actual game it'self was fine to me, everything in the old game worked and made perfect sense in the world and everything had a purpose.

to ARR, a game that has way too many game breaking flaws for my liking and almost all the things the game offers have no real purpose or use to them.

[OldGeezer]

I've been noticing a trend where everyone who says this only has one job at level cap/endgame...

Doesn't change the fact that it's true.

[Ri_ri]

Doesn't change the fact that it's true.

I think we all agree on that.

Hence the title of the thread. It's contradictory to have a feature, then gimp the ones who use that feature.