SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[NefarioCall]

I don't even bother with endgame. I just focus on the horizontal progressions. Level up to 50 with all the classes. Beastman dailies etc etc...
Still, on the FFXI comparison, Rise of the Zilart ~ Heavensward.

[Meier]

I agree with OP and a lot of posts on this thread. I really, really hope they stop raising the ilvl , bring back 1.0 stats or something similar and give all jobs different gear options. Blm/smn and whm/sch should not be sharing gear imho...

[Dyvid]

No matter what SE does, RPGs are a grind. FFXI was a xp grind, SWG was a skill grind, WoW/SWTOR/FFXIV a gear grind. The trick is to mask the grind into something people enjoy. Let's assume they make job stat gear in 3.0, well then you have to collect even more gear which means more grind.

I played ffxi from 2004 to 2010 and you know what made that game great? There was always something fun to do with friends. The only thing you do in FFXIV is log in and grind armor and just when you get all your guys geared, they give you a new armor set.

The armor treadmill is getting old SE, please make the game more fun! I have had about all I can stand with the armor treadmill. I highly doubt that I am going to resub next month. There are so many great games coming out from now to well into the new year. More then enough to keep me busy over the winter!

Instead of blanket statements for feedback why don't you tell SE what you actually want? How are they suppose to fix the problem if they have no idea what you consider fun.

[Fayto]

People should stop using the term "horizontal progression" as it does not exist. Like choice and options, it is an illusion.

Edit: At least in RPGs.

[Verlyn]

Adding horizontal gear progression to learn different abilities and enhanced abilities is a horrible idea. SE should add horizontal character progression instead.

But...that's...exactly what horizontal character progression is.

[Edli]

Instead of blanket statements for feedback why don't you tell SE what you actually want? How are they suppose to fix the problem if they have no idea what you consider fun.

Yeah I love how op is so vague on what he liked from ffxi. Me and my friends did a lot of fun things, you know, things. How the hell does op have so many likes? He only states what he doesn't like but not a single suggestion on what must be implemented. Everyone can do that, complaining is easy.

[Avarghaladion]

I tend to believe that if the game didn't have "Final Fantasy" in the title, people wouldn't tolerate it once they get close to endgame. It feels like a P2P game with sub-F2P quality. I'm holding on in hopes the expansion fixes this but I'm not terribly optimistic.

Amongst other things, the game suffers from:

- Not enough production value for a P2P subscription based game with an additional game purchase fee. Eg. There are F2P games with smaller dev teams that manage to have more dialog, BETTER dialog, and 100% -QUALITY- VOICE ACTED DIALOG. There is no goddamn excuse for the lazy lack of voice acting in a) towns and the open world b) boss fights c) bloody everything. It is appaling, in this day and age, that SE can't be assed to quality voice-act at LEAST the like... 5-10 lines of dialog in class/story/primal fights.
- Slowest/laggiest/weakest servers I remember seeing in a MMO.
- Rewards are basically worthless and 100% completely replaced every few months. Nothing is unique, special, or actually valuable.
- VERY excessive use of antiquated RNG-gated model in almost all aspects of play.
- Endgame is uninspired Simon Says where it's more important to know the fights' mechanics than it is to be good at your job unless they throw in a DPS check.
- Patronizingly easy content. Like... easy easy EASY. Players routinely reach high ilvl while still being clueless about how to play their class. All difficulty is artifical in the form of team-jumprope + OHKO.
- World pretty aesthetically but bland, static, and plastic with no threat or adventure. Not even S rank hunt mobs can kill you if you don't let them since nothing chases you outside of it's pathetically small nest-area. Virtually impossible to die outside.
- No risks taken with design. New content often feels like triage-mode development, trying to keep people interested.
- Near perfect class balance but non-existant content/reward balance (eg. Hunts giving everyone a rocket-pack to i109+)
- Zero-accountability status-quo development in keeping with SE's "you will play our game our way" mentality.
- Even overwhelmingly negative feedback from community largely ignored until it becomes an obvious financial liability. Eg. only time SE has every listened to feedback was when 1.0 threatened curbstomped the company.
- Negligible customer service combined with a buggy lagfest of a glitched up gaming experience. GMs mostly powerless. Server-lag remains the most powerful of endgame bosses.
- Never anything surprising or unpredictable in any aspect of the game. Nothing cool or unexpected happens to make this feel like a real adventure. Nostalgia is the best thing XIV has going for it and the devs know it.
- Instances are 100% completely scripted. Fights are Identical every time you do it to the point you can run them with your eyes closed after one clear, or less if you watched a vid.
- Dying has zero consequences.
- Terrible, toxic community, likely thanks to all of the above.
- Virtually no character customizability. Truly only one "best" way to play every job in the game.
- Fastest way for players to get something they want is to not play the game thanks to SE's overnerfing everything constantly. Eg. having access to better gear AND getting absurd amounts of echo AND having mechanics watered down to the point your greatest risk of failing a run, no matter your ilvl, is of suffering a stroke in real life.
- Content and grind designed to eat up as much of people's time as possible while being just okay enough they won't get fed up. Even stuff as simple as the movement speed is -just- fast enough for most people to not get annoyed.
- Garbage expositional nightmare of a script. Limited voice acting. Noticeably worse presentation and plot than any of the 1.0+ writing/cutscenes.

- Vertical progression game with a quasi-tedious horizontal progression style grind.
- Not a lot separating the different classes compared to pretty much any other game I can think of.

Don't get me wrong... the game has potential... it's just not as good as I expect a AAA title to be. Nexus PLD with all beastmen tribes capped, 250+ member FC, large FC house I paid for myself, almost re-capped DoH/DoL gear, all jobs capped 50, choco capped 20, etc etc etc so on and so forth. Often play with irl friends. I've sampled pretty much everything the game has to offer and everything after low lever dungeons is downhill, entertainment wise. No.. I'm not bored because I've already done everything. This has been an ongoing, developing criticism of the game in that it was always like "heh... while this is kinda easy/boring/frustrating/annoying... oh well... I'll finish this grind soon and the next thing'll be fun" and now I'm just left wondering "so... which part's the fun part?"

I just log on now to cap Poetics, water the garden, fish my last few Big Game fish, and do I'xal dailies because apparently grinding still equates to content in 2014. Sure, I could grind coil but when the fights are the exact same every goddamn time it's just the most boring thing ever, even if you always win... ESPECIALLY if you always win... and the effort will be completely overwritten in the next patch or so. No, taking a break does not fix any of the above issues... in fact it exacerbates them in that it really makes it hit home that nothing we ever do in the game is an achievement when the stuff you slow-grind is insta-acquired by a player who "took a break" or even just started playing. Prescribing the "take a break" cure-all works because, as above, the easiest way to get anything is to not play... players take a break -> come back -> see "ooo I can grind again!" -> get handed everything -> instant gratification.

The best parts of the game are a) Hildebrande cuz... holy shit they're having fun and taking risks and it's unpredicatle b) fishing... cuz you put controller on vibrate, alt-tab and i) watch a movie/show ii) work on renaming files or something iii) browse the interwebs iv) play another game that's fun.

[Dyvid]

Snip.

With so many cons did you ever think that this might not be the game for you?

[KamikazeMan]

They keep slowly adding things to the game. What made XI so diverse was time, wasn't it? I too wish there was more to do, but with XIV only being out for little over than a year, you can't expect there to be much. Especially when it's trying to compete with other big name MMOs. Gold Saucer is coming with Chocobo racing, tripple triad, and other mini games. Hopefully we get more stuff though. What I would really love is some kind of rewarding grinding content...like maybe a bestiary that requires you to kill x amount of enemies for a book entry and a reward for it...maybe a picture frame of a monster or something...or a card for triple triad

[Avarghaladion]

With so many cons did you ever think that this might not be the game for you?

If you think I'm wrong about any of it, provide a counter-argument. Like I said, the game has potential and I'm holding out for the expansion, as MMOs typically get better with time. That being said, it doesn't take the sharpest eye to see the games many faults, especially for a AAA flagship title. Fanboyism is the primary reason the game is even competitive because you get people like me, who enjoy Final Fantasy and are nostalgic, willing to give it the benefit of the doubt while they, hopefully, sort their crap out.