Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Xatsh]

FFXIV ARR has only been out for a year. This is a very short amount of time for an MMORPG, especially in its first year. I think a lot of the problems and gripes people (including me! I've done my share of critical posting on these forums) have will be fixed with time.

the gripes and alot of people quitting is because of the responses and Yoshida's vision statements. Like the following:

Cannot be complex game mechanics because it might confuse new people to genre.

Cannot have guild based endgame, because people without guilds cannot do it.

Cannot have randomized attacks because it will be too hard.

Cannot have unique stats and gear because it will be harder to ballance.

Cannot add X because ps3 memory limitations.

Those are just some, and all are bad decisions on Yoshida's part. IT might make more money quick and get more newcomers, but it will not make for a lasting deep rich game.

People will give the devs time, the issue is many are not seeing a future anymore. The masses that are quitting do not want a gear treadmill every 3months. SE could add 100 raids, 5000 dungeons, 10000 instances, 50000 quest in the next expansion but if only 2 raids and 2 instances drop BIS gear none of the other content matters in terms of endgame. It will still have the same massive lack of content, that is why people are griping. SE needs to add new content without negating any old content. Meaning they need to find a way for the first raid in the new expansions to be relevant for top tier endgame for at least 2-3yrs. You know the whole horizontal development. If the first expansion is more of the same I see alot of people leaving. I know in my guild there will be so many are saying "I am waiting for the first expansion to decide".

[Mcshiggs]

IIRC, FFXIV 1.0 had something similar called "combos".

The 1.0 had a battle regimen system, and this was taken out either right before or right after Yoshi took over, and a system similar to it was promised, but never came through, unless that's what they say the limit break is. Combos were individual rotations that were used to maximize TP/MP, you started fights with 0 TP autoattack to raise, and certain moves cost TP, unless you combo'd them, then only the first took TP, and the rest of the chain was free. The elemental wheel was scrapped when they split the elemental spells, half given to conjurer, half to thaumaturge, they used to all belong to conjurer and thaumaturge dealt in astral/umbral, life/death, or light/dark spells. If they kept the elemental wheel in, then stuff like primal fights it would cause groups to favor certain classes over others, taking only the classes that had abilities they were weak too. This might be fine in some games, but again, they have their simplistic mindset, so everything has to be newbie friendly.

the gripes and alot of people quitting is because of the responses and Yoshida's vision statements.

Don't forget the one where he was talking about rare drops, he said by making rare drops (not vanity stuff), that it drives players to either quit or cheat, if it is rare and unsellable it frustrates players to the point where they quit, and if they make it rare and sellable, players will just buy gil. He treats the playerbase as if they have a 5 year old mind with stuff like this, but then he tosses out stuff like hunts and a ready check you can spam during combat and his response was that he though players would be more mature than that.

[Yukiko]

Nostalgic... seeing all those pictures... but ... somehow evil because, do i see there a glowing weapon?
Does that mean they already planed 2 years ahead at that time??

Well in last LIVE letter they said they already are working for 4.0, but still...

[Magis]

The elemental wheel was scrapped when they split the elemental spells, half given to conjurer, half to thaumaturge, they used to all belong to conjurer and thaumaturge dealt in astral/umbral, life/death, or light/dark spells. If they kept the elemental wheel in, then stuff like primal fights it would cause groups to favor certain classes over others, taking only the classes that had abilities they were weak too. This might be fine in some games, but again, they have their simplistic mindset, so everything has to be newbie friendly.

A pity, and made way more sense lore wise too. The favouring thing happens anyway... BLMs are favoured to all other DDs in speedruns, people take MNKs over DRGs, T7 a SMN or BRD is favoured over others for kiting ability, etc.

[Barimu]

I couldn't find who said it, I apologize, but whoever said they pretty much are focusing on the person thats not playing this game but they want them to come play it instead of its current playerbase is absolutely right. They only care about the quick cash grab they can get from the new players and not the long term subscriptions they can get from the people that want to play this game for the long run but can't because we're treated as new players every 3 months.

[SiriusCrescent]

As a new player, it's sad to see that many people see such a bleak future ahead of this game.

While I am new, I can already identify some of the issues brought up in this topic myself, which makes me think the words spoken here are mostly the truth...

As I am still one my first free month from buying the game, I think it might be a wise idea to wait a bit before actually buying a subscription to a game that will apparently end up like the last game that I left mainly because of the same reasons stated here :/

[Tupsi]

As a new player, it's sad to see that many people see such a bleak future ahead of this game.

While I am new, I can already identify some of the issues brought up in this topic myself, which makes me think the words spoken here are mostly the truth...

As I am still one my first free month from buying the game, I think it might be a wise idea to wait a bit before actually buying a subscription to a game that will apparently end up like the last game that I left mainly because of the same reasons stated here :/

It's not so much that it's a bleak future it's just...that's what people come to know and love whenever you decide your MMO should follow in WoW's footsteps 100% when not even WoW does anymore and is trying to lure people back because they got tired of WoW. As a new player and you already see these issues means that Yoshi failed in a way when his whole purpose for the current design is to attract people like you.

[reality_check]

FFXIV took it further... for example aldgoats would follow you around non-aggressively.

That happened in FFXI first. The happy goldfish in Al'Taieu would follow you around and link non-agressively.

[SiriusCrescent]

It's not so much that it's a bleak future it's just...that's what people come to know and love whenever you decide your MMO should follow in WoW's footsteps 100% when not even WoW does anymore and is trying to lure people back because they got tired of WoW. As a new player and you already see these issues means that Yoshi failed in a way when his whole purpose for the current design is to attract people like you.

Any game that gets treated like a "failed WoW clone" has the "bleak future"-sticker attached in my opinion, because many people want to play something that is not WoW, especially if it is marketed as a Final Fantasy Franchise - and that includes myself.

I like the diversity in classes and the easy way of switching them, but that you have to grind through the same map/guildhests/dungeon for every new class, with new class quests only being available every 5 levels makes it very repetive and boring. I would have liked it more if different classes had different quests, different stories that you could only do while being the specific class, but not limited to one every 5 levels.

The fact that you can't use your chocobo while queueing for a dungeon is such an oversight I don't even know how they managed to screw that up.

That Main Scenario fights require the DF is something I don't like either; Since I'm new and don't have a level 50 yet, I really want to watch the cutscenes that come up but I've got kicked out of primal fights for that alone. (The part that you get praised for defeating a primal alone - story wise - while you wiped at him with 4 people for multiple tries doesn't help either, immersion wise.)

I really like the concept of the Hunting Log, but the monsters vary too little and sometimes you have 5 groups of monsters on the same map and sometimes each monster is on a different map, it makes so little sense.

FATES could be interesting, if they weren't ignored like most of the FATES I've done so far (soloing a FATE, if at all possible, takes ages ~_~)

I can't share the sentiment of many people who don't like the Main Scenario, as I've enjoyed that quite a bit so far, although some of the quests in it really seem out of place (run to a, to b, to c, back to a, then to c again, etc.)

However, when I read about the same old "ilvl gear makes itself worthless" discussion and see the main developer say "we won't add anything that MIGHT proof difficult for "new players", I can't help but think that it's "WoW all over again" - something I want to get away from.

[Duelle]

From what I've read by the Legacy folks, the game was stepping in the right direction at 1.23. Note, every time you
read someone comparing this game back to the old days, they most of the time compare it to 1.23 and not much before that. Thing is, it was far too
late to do anything now, because they already had 2.0 coming anyways.

Depends. I like to think that I saw 1.23 for what it was - hold over content intentionally designed to be grindy and take forever because they had to keep you busy while they remade the game. Hence the shit drop rates in dungeons, hence failed material meldings having a high chance of destroying everything involved (gear and the materia involved), hence the RNG-reliant relic questline, and so on. I managed to put up with it because of the promise of what 2.0 was going to be, so unlike most people around here I am mostly pleased with what ARR has turned out like.

Not to say I don't have issues with some of the stuff they've done since 2.0's launch. Hunt implementation, reliance on FATEs, raid design, non-focus on 24-man content, lack of multiple raids for a single tier of content, RNG-fests like Atma grinds. That's just a couple of things I take issue with.

Glamour....not sure what the hell they were thinking to be honest with you. It's like they seriously band together to think on how to make this really annoying to go through.

They made the mistake of wanting to make crafters relevant. I think that's what their decisions with Glamours boiled down to.

And in no time flat, you're going to get Ilvl 100 from ST too if you want
then throw some soliders or myths for other stuff since we have a weekly lock.
CT is about damn dead. I tried to play just for fun because it's my favourite dungeon, as a healer, I am waiting 30mins +.
Oh well, this is what happens when you throw people gear like it's candy.

I'd blame it more on the fact the gap between CT gear and ilvl90+ gear is somewhat sizeable. It was and still would be a tough call to make because you lose on both sides.

Why is there no options to be different in this game? Again I say this game, when it comes to gear, is very one way street. Everyone does the same exact thing to get the same exact gear. At the end, there's very little you can do to be different.

If you mean the lack of multiple pieces of gear that have similar stats and in different combinations can still take you to your target stat caps, I'll point to the lack of multiple raids. I really hope they correct that moving forward.

Battle System is so kindergarten as well...I kinda am curious about that Elemental Wheel that was once used.

As mentioned, the elemental wheel had to go because you'd otherwise make BLMs useless in several encounters. They'd get sat out on Ifrit and Ramuh, for example.