Expansion is only temporarily enjoyable. Fails to fix all main flaws.

[Jandor]

We can't have varied builds because people will go on the internet and look at guides? Sounds just like what happens with every single piece of content currently in the game.

[Dererk]

Thing is guys ffxiv 1.0 almost destroyed SE so ya their going to be more careful when it comes to this game but just be patient I'm sure they will be puting in some risky content eventually we don't even know everything their putting into 3.1.

[Waliel]

This. There is always one correct choice. The only thing builds give you is the illusion of choice.

There's still something fun about seeing all those shiny buttons where you could dump your skill points and whatnot, even if realistically there's only one real way to do it.

I disagree with this. Other MMOs and games have been more flexible with respect to builds.

WoW had big enough skilltrees to dump all your points into one and not fill it completely. Know what happened? They scrapped all of that, because even the devs themselves said that there was only one real way to build your character depending on your spec and if you played pvp or pve, and called many of their talents "newbie traps". Those talents sounded good on paper, but were pretty much useless in any real scenario.

Sure, plenty of examples. Rift (before it went F2P) was everything I described in OP. Amazing character build system, multiple paths to obtain gear, challenging content and expansion launched with three raids. It was a WoW clone like FFXIV, but felt more like its true successor than FFXIV does. Too bad, they ditched the game and made it trash after F2P.

There was still only one optimal build for the role you wanted to do on you class shortly after launch when I played. For example, every single rogue ever went Saboteur or whatever the ranged spec was.

Correct me if I'm wrong but WoW has more raids in each patch but they also have multiple difficulties of those said raids for various types of players yes? Would the same system work here as well? From what I've seen they seem to add more raids/dungeons in general and in multiple difficulties. Then again I've never played it so I'm open for someone to enlighten me.

I think WoD had two raids at launch, but don't quote me on that. The 6.2 patch, after seven or eight months after launch, introduced the first and last raid after the launch and features 14 bosses. There will be no new raids until the next expansion, which will come no sooner than 2016 earliest.

[Aeyis]

WoW had big enough skilltrees to dump all your points into one and not fill it completely. Know what happened? They scrapped all of that, because even the devs themselves said that there was only one real way to build your character depending on your spec and if you played pvp or pve, and called many of their talents "newbie traps". Those talents sounded good on paper, but were pretty much useless in any real scenario.

Dual wielding elemental shamans would like a word with you.


WoW offered plenty of actual choice, but over the years it was more and more dumbed down for the sake of ''balance'' and ''making it easier to get into for all type of players, not just the hardcore''

[Wisekuma]

WoW had big enough skilltrees to dump all your points into one and not fill it completely. Those talents sounded good on paper, but were pretty much useless in any real scenario.

This shows you have no clue what you are talking about.

There was still only one optimal build for the role you wanted to do on you class shortly after launch when I played. For example, every single rogue ever went Saboteur or whatever the ranged spec was.

I was a Riftstalker, so no...not every rogue became a Sab. A lot of players were trying it out when it got buffed more for AoE, to get a feel for it, but that's different. There were plenty of Assassins, Nightblades, and Blademasters running around.


Your claims are quite laughable and I am beginning to understand why MMOs are becoming so boring and bland.

[Reinha]

I admit, it stung hard seeing people with Hive weapons and max geared while I wasn't. My competitive nature urged me to do the same shit again, but playing the story at my own pace made me see how free I was playing. People in my LS and free company were farming Ravana EX by like the 3rd day of early access. Now I see how SE played it real safe. No I am not calling them lazy. I know they worked their asses off, but I already got through the best part of the expansion in my eyes. Soon we will get a new Crystal Tower, Syrcus Tower, World of Darkness with more of the same formula, and a new relic weapon to go through hell with. There is no real fundamental change.

My experience is that the majority of people in MMOs want the best gear to come from challenging group content so I don't see FFXIV's model changing anytime soon. Adding ranked pvp would be one way of adding variety to group content but I believe a lot of competitive raiders would be unhappy about having to pvp to speed up gearing. Open world content would have to be competitive (tagged by 1 group, long respawn, changing location) to not be too easy and to not resemble the existing format of raids, and people already complain about the open-tag hunts being too exclusive... This is why I think that dungeons, trials and raids will remain the primary source of gear or currency in the future.

After playing during 4 different expansions of WoW, I've reached the same casual mindset as you. (This is a subjective feeling about the subject so don't take offense people!) It's exciting to be a part of the first wave of progress each time new group content is released, but after I witnessed a few gear resets i.e. expansions I realized how superficial the competition for the newest and best gear was. There will always be another raid, another dungeon, another trial and another gear vendor, and it's like a neverending treadmill of killing enemies for bounty which will eventually be rendered worthless. I ended up quitting my raid team in WoW and it felt really relieving to not have to make time for raiding and to keep my gear in shape.

Nowadays I don't mind taking my time leveling, reading quest text and doing things that don't advance my character, because in the end I pay to be entertained. I focus on lasting things like the story experience, titles, pets, mounts, class leveling and getting money for housing. I saw a fc message a few days back telling people to get ready for Alexander and I was genuinely happy I didn't have to hurry to finish questing and to get gear. It's hard to let go of the competitive attitude at first but in the end it's worth it to some people.

I'm very happy I found FFXIV as it offers a casual story based experience that I've enjoyed from the start. There's grinds, easy group content and world content but also challenging stuff for those days I'm in the mood for it. However, I understand that this might not be enough for the more competitive players. Those who would like bigger amounts of raid content might be better off looking for different games to play on the side. (WoW still makes top quality raids, for example.) The resources of the dev team are limited after all and they will probably continue creating a lot of casual content, just like they have for the past 2 years, in order to maintain their core audience. As a poster on the first page said, it's a conscious design choice made to attract a certain gamer crowd, not a flaw.

[Asierid]

Dual wielding elemental shamans would like a word with you.


WoW offered plenty of actual choice, but over the years it was more and more dumbed down for the sake of ''balance'' and ''making it easier to get into for all type of players, not just the hardcore''

There was no choice. The choice was useless flavor talents that did nothing but add single digits of HP/reduced damage, or made things more shiny. In the end they all accomplished the same goal, nothing important. Sure you could take more damage reduction; or you could be less bad, stop taking unnecessary damage and take the increased crit chance instead.

You ran one build and that was it. The "choice" you speak of was nothing but useless abilities or traps that new players fell into which did nothing but point them out as second rate.

You raided as Arcane in Wrath and you liked it. Frost was laughed at.

I was a Riftstalker, so no...not every rogue became a Sab. A lot of players were trying it out when it got buffed more for AoE, to get a feel for it, but that's different. There were plenty of Assassins, Nightblades, and Blademasters running around.

This makes no sense. Sab was the go to build until it was nerfed. Then it slowly shifted into Sabodancers as Bladedancer was buffed. Anything else was, again, second rate. You were nothing more than a hinderance to the raid as the sheer amount of DPS Sab/Sabdancer could put out was stupid compared to anything else.

You remember the balancing incorrectly.

[Wisekuma]

You remember the balancing incorrectly.

No. I do.

What year did you play Rift?

[Tuathaa]

You raided as Arcane in Wrath and you liked it. Frost was laughed at.

That was one class and after the started cutting the skill tree. The others (with the exception of Shaman) had more than one competitive build.
Balancing was done because of hybrids (panzerkin, slsl, etc) and pvp. If Blizzard controlled the skills the had better control of the damage.

[Lucidbro]

snip

Actually I suggest you read what you typed and more importantly what you responded to.
"So what you are saying is there isn't one, all the games you describe crashed and burned or had very small player bases. Sound like a good business plan, SE should get right on it." - your words. This is entirely incorrect. You can go play any of these games right now if you want to. They are currently among some of the most popular MMORPG games out there.
You are suggesting that it's erroneous to follow successful mechanics because the game itself in your (incorrect) opinion has crashed and burned.

There has never been a time WoW players didn't complain about something, but hard raids never used to be one of those things. Complaining in general happened in a much lesser volume than it does now.

Actually the downward spiral in WoW came from stupid design decisions and a year of gap between content patches...twice (going on three times now). Nice try at cherry picking though.

BC/Wrath were popular because it was the only game of its kind back in the day. Not because "raids were hard". There were no instanced raids even remotely close to what WoW did. We played it because there was nothing else like it.

Hey, nice cherry picking, though. I wonder what those stupid design decisions were, must not have been the simplification of content. You know it's very easy playing this game but what's tragic is that you completely missed the point. I'll just leave this post as it is, I'll help you figure it out if you don't get it after re-reading.