Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Roris]

I feel like I've still been beta testing ARR for a year

It's funny because during the beta the main argument was "it's just a beta it's not finished, release will fix it", now the main argument is "it's just been a year, it doesn't even have an expansion yet, expansion will fix it". Can't wait for the argument to be "it's just been 2 years and only one expansion, 4.0 and dropping PS3 support will fix it" which will be partially true because the PS3 is holding back this game, maybe not sales wise but certainly with memory limitations and what not.

Am I the only one who feels like Yoshida is insulting our intelligence making this game so easy a caveman can do it?

In open world and quests that were nerfed down hard after beta by adding unneeded helper NPCs and overall lowering mob damage and difficulty? Still feel like we were treated like babies.

In harder content like Coil? All fights are just a linear track that loops around at certain points until you reach a certain HP %, then another looping track begins. There's no variation in boss attacks in general, Scylla will always use Topple at the exact same time, Nael will always jump at the exact same time, etc. The only variations come from the mechanics and that's the major mistake. The only difficulty, at least in Coil, comes from the game throwing a bunch of overlapped mechanics with random targets and random spawn points, back in 1.0 boss attacks were randomized but most mechanics stayed consistent, so you had to adapt differently.

A big example is Nael Hard in 1.23, all his attacks were randomized but mechanics like meteors, golems and him teleporting up always spawned on the same locations, even the final 10 meteors always spawned in the same place. Difficulty in ARR also comes from getting all those points in that linear track mostly right. This analogy has been made before and it's accurate, it's a track with a lot of jumps and if you or someone else fails a certain jump it gets harder to recover or just plainly leads to a wipe. If you want to "git gud" for real you have learn to time those jumps right and also adapt to the way the engine handles latency, the GCD and animation locks.

As a Monk if I want to keep my stacks in T9 I have to time everything exactly right, Shoulder Tackle just as Nael dives to a person then move in and get two attacks before he jumps back, if I have the marker on me I also have to time it just right to not die alone, time Snap Punch right before he jumps after Dynamo so I can refresh it after he jumps back down, etc. If lose just a second or the server skips I most likely will lose all my stacks, even with enough skillspeed. Sure you can call it skillful to adapt to all this and I'd agree because that's how a lot of videogames work, you adapt to their systems, but in ARR adapting to the linearity of boss attacks and the randomness of the mechanics personally isn't as enjoyable as adapting to the randomness of the boss attacks and having consistency in mechanics. It's not the same type of adaptability or battle flow like say the final boss of Stone Vigil Hard has, even if he's on the easier side, or most 1.0 bosses had.

In a way dealing with the randomness of the mechanics and the way the game handles latency and some of the stricter timing in the linear track also due to the GCD is about the same as dealing with 1.0 animation locks and the way the engine made most fights harder than they should be.

[Meier]

Team Jump Rope as they call it. It's not difficult content, it's content where if someone doesn't follow the script properly..that's the end for you.

It is a really poor way to design boss fights imho. In 1.0 the fights and battle system was MUCH better. The primals were actually fun, they had random mechanics. The 1.x Van Darnus fight was simply one of the best fights in any game I have ever played. What happened to this game? Giving it till the expansion to fix things, if things are not fixed..unsubbing, will move onto other things I suppose....

[Fendred]

Team Jump Rope as they call it. It's not difficult content, it's content where if someone doesn't follow the script properly..that's the end for you.

It isn't so much scripted fights that are the problem, but that they've taken scripted fights to the extreme. Too much of anything is bad, and in this case it leads to conveyor belt syndrome with PUGs. Player skill or mastery of class is rendered pointless by it. Unless the fight is done on a regular basis, it cannot be beat. Because it is entirely the same thing being done over and over, mastery entails boredom, so advanced players are less than enthusiastic of running new people through it. Its a catch-32.

[Barimu]

snip

You pretty much hit the nail on the head, you definitely got my point across better than I was able to lol. I feel like a child playing this memorization game.

[Magis]

?

lol, cool one raid as "hard content".

[Exstal]

But back on topic, only having one raid on a weekly lockout is poorly designed and offers no replayability when once a group does beat t9 they have 6-9 done in a day.

I believe it's been said, by me or someone else, it's reasonable when there are multiple raids. Which leads to the issue of FFXIV: needs more raids to justify the lockout.

[Fendred]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head, you definitely got my point across better than I was able to lol. I feel like a child playing this memorization game.

They start people off in this game with one ability... just one. Most games try to stimulate you by hinting at future complexity. This one? I stomached through it just for the story content. I can hardly stand playing paladin even though I love tanking because its too simplistic a job.

[Kaaylryn]

The basic problem I personally have is that I have ceased to care about some aspects of the game. The new DOL and DOH mainhands, simply don't care. Finishing my Novus, don't care. Increasing my Desynth skills, don't care. Maxing out my retainers, don't care. This is mostly due to the heavy RNG factor in almost everything, even vanity items for crying out loud.

I enjoyed furnishing my FC room, I enjoy the garden, I care about my gear because my static relies on me being able to pull my weight. I even enjoy leveling my chocobo. But, the vertical gear progression and the ungodly RNG is slowly sucking the life out of the game, at least for me.

The small details I notice and the beauty of the game is unquestionable, however, beauty is only skin deep.

[Themis]

I believe it's been said, by me or someone else, it's reasonable when there are multiple raids. Which leads to the issue of FFXIV: needs more raids to justify the lockout.

This is more accurate to say. It's not poor design to have only one raid for the current end game. That's got nothing to do with design itself, and Coil is very well designed. What they have done is decided to focus on really fine tuning one raid content per patch, and this alternates between Crystal Tower and Coil. That's a reasonable decision to make. But this isn't only what players want. They want variety and the ability to actually play the game without any restrictions on what they can and can't do. That's a different direction decision, not necessarily a design one.

There does need to more things to do, especially when it comes to high end content. The gear you get from the latest Coil does nothing for you until the next Coil comes out, which is 6 months. I would rather see an alternative where players can make use of the gear they obtain. That does involve bringing out some very challenging content. They have it right with the Savage version, but I do think people would appreciate a new battle or two, rather than a harder version of the same thing.

Which reminds me of another complaint people have on the topic of rehashed content. There is a difference of opinion on what "rehashed" means. To me, EX primals are somewhat rehashed, and so is Savage Coil. Hard Mode dungeons are not, though. Yes, they take place in the same dungeon, as a whole, but they are different experiences and different stories drive them. If they were "rehashed", they would be the same thing as the normal version except mobs would have more HP and hit harder. It's not rehashing to just simply reuse the location itself. But people need to understand that, if they did add in more new areas/content, they would have to increase the time between patches.

[Barimu]

snip

I agree a lot with you. However, dungeons in general are pointless at higher levels and all they really have is "glamour gear" whether its the hard modes or the one new dungeon they add. EX primals are a little rehashed i'll agree with you and again mainly pointless except for vanity. Crystal Tower in my eyes is not a raid but a chore. If they made Crystal tower on par difficulty wise with coil when they add pre made alliance then that'd be a step in the right direction.