What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[Transmigration]

I really believe that most people, if it got to the point that they didn't care anymore and knew that they don't enjoy the game, and never will, would just quit and move on. But they still have hope that it can become the game they want, and that's why they're here talking (and complaining) about it.

How dare you come in to the official forums and not only ask questions, but even had the audacity to offer solutions and ideas and then... discuss them with other players! What has this world come to? Oh the humanity!

[DreameR7g]

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Because its actually unrealistic to cater to EVERY type of player all at once with a significant amount of content. You need to pick what your target audience is and go from there and if you get any additional, it is a bonus.

Plus, allocating 20% content increase for only a small percentage of players (I.E. in my hypothesis 5%, could be lower, could be higher but I imagine its still a one digit percent), is putting too much work in for little gain business-wise.

I will agree the hardcore content is a rehash of the same yet all raids typically boil down the same in any event and that is what a good chunk of hardcore players are focused on. It is really time consuming to come up with variety for hardcore players because, if its too easy, simply blow past the content then scream for more. If it's too hard, people quit because they give up and then the content won't be consumed.

It's a catch-22 for Square Enix.

[LunaHoshino]

It's funny how much more fun the game becomes when you stop treating "GOTTA GET THE HIGHEST ILVL GEAR GOTTA GET IT RIGHT NOW" as being the only thing worth doing.

[Vickii]

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It really isn't you I was talking about. Your feedback is really constructive. And I completely agree that feedback is important. So is venting and so is sharing opinions with others. i really don't want to come across wrong there, i totally understand, i used to bitch about warcraft a bit.

But when it got to the point where i wasn't enjoying that game at all, that i viewed the game 3 years beforehand through nostalgia goggles and where i just wasn't having any fun, i quit. And it's the best thing i did. They still have people there complaining that they haven't enjoyed the game since it's first expansion but they log on every day because they've been doing it for so long and it's part of their life. They've never been able to accept that their vision and the devs vision may differ.

It's just a game at the end of the day, the devs do their best, entertain most of us most of the time and I think people who get that upset are maybe using it as a life substitute, which isn't really good for them, or the community.

[Alipoprocks]

So since SE keeps raising the iLVL of each piece of content they add, why don't they raise the iLVL of the old content too. OMG, we would have so many things to do then!!!

[Shadowsun]

So since SE keeps raising the iLVL of each piece of content they add, why don't they raise the iLVL of the old content too. OMG, we would have so many things to do then!!!

They need to take a page from WoW - achievements, done right.
Special challenges for every boss of every dungeon at the highest difficulty and maybe even sync'd down to minimum iLVL achievements.

Ulduar, so many hard mode achievements - one which was a trio of bosses in the same room, the order you defeated them in had a separate achievement and if you avoided certain mechanics that was also an achievement and the order determined the difficulty due to the mechanics being added for the 1 or 2 still alive~

And Mimiron's "do not push" button to activate hard mode making the fight really challenging..

I want variety in the content we have to repeat countless times.

[Evtrai]

Because its actually unrealistic to cater to EVERY type of player all at once with a significant amount of content. You need to pick what your target audience is and go from there and if you get any additional, it is a bonus.

Plus, allocating 20% content increase for only a small percentage of players (I.E. in my hypothesis 5%, could be lower, could be higher but I imagine its still a one digit percent), is putting too much work in for little gain business-wise.

I will agree the hardcore content is a rehash of the same yet all raids typically boil down the same in any event and that is what a good chunk of hardcore players are focused on. It is really time consuming to come up with variety for hardcore players because, if its too easy, simply blow past the content then scream for more. If it's too hard, people quit because they give up and then the content won't be consumed.

It's a catch-22 for Square Enix.

It's not unrealistic, I hate to always use this example but FFXI catered ALL the audiences, the casuals were doing their own thing, midcores were doing their content, and hardcores were doing their super hard content, some that was even uncleared content and content that held prestige status that only a select people cleared. It's not impossible, SE did it, but like it's been told and said so many times, there's only two types of content in FFXIV as it is of now, faceroll content and extremely hardcore content. They had time to shape already the game, I'm sorry but the excuse of "it's not even the first expansion" is invalid, this is the first expansion, I'm not gonna wait another year to see and hope that it changes, and I made this thread with worry that after seeing the first live letter they seem to plan and do absolutely NOTHING about the matter, and I rather speak my mind about what I think when things are at a time, I don't want the game to die, and want the game to stay strong for a long time.

If things were nice and dandy, this thread would had been quickly be sweeped under the rug, but the amount of attention and discussion tells you that this is a relevant problem.

[DreameR7g]

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Actually, FFXI catered to the hardcore crowd and it quickly became an "old boys club". Unless you had friends on the inside, you had a devil of a time getting yourself up there. It's why new players joined at a crawl around 2008/2009. It was SE's first MMO and it was FAR from new player/casual friendly.

That is actually, exactly, what SE learned about XI. They needed to understand that new blood is vital to keeping an MMO running. They also needed to understand to establish a balance based on how many casual/midcore players there are compared to hardcore. It isn't a coincidence that only a certain small percentage of people have even stepped FOOT in Alexander Savage.


What you call faceroll can easily be casual/midcore content. Just faceroll to a certain group of people (like you and me) because we easily can problem solve, work with others, etc. It doesn't apply to everybody.

It IS unrealistic to try to cater to everybody. When you try to cater to everyone, you really cater to no-one because nobody will end up happy. According to the business numbers, they have to cater to the casual/midcore more than the hardcore. That's the way things are.

[Evtrai]

Actually, FFXI catered to the hardcore crowd and it quickly became an "old boys club". Unless you had friends on the inside, you had a devil of a time getting yourself up there. It's why new players joined at a crawl around 2008/2009. It was SE's first MMO and it was FAR from new player/casual friendly.

That is actually, exactly, what SE learned about XI. They needed to understand that new blood is vital to keeping an MMO running. They also needed to understand to establish a balance based on how many casual/midcore players there are compared to hardcore. It isn't a coincidence that only a certain small percentage of people have even stepped FOOT in Alexander Savage.


What you call faceroll can easily be casual/midcore content. Just faceroll to a certain group of people (like you and me) because we easily can problem solve, work with others, etc. It doesn't apply to everybody.

It IS unrealistic to try to cater to everybody. When you try to cater to everyone, you really cater to no-one because nobody will end up happy. According to the business numbers, they have to cater to the casual/midcore more than the hardcore. That's the way things are.

The dificulty due archaic comunication system making hard to search for groups and instead resorting to doing odd searches to party and level up was one thing, but it did not constitute it as being "hardcore" FFXI was a game that pushed you to socialize and establish bonds with other players, I pretty much knew everyone on my server, from either grouping with them when we were newbies and the progress onwards. Nowdays people seem to want to play an MMO and be Anti-social, they want to do everything alone, not talk to anyone, etc

[DreameR7g]

Snip

That was part of it. The difficulty of the game also made it non-player friendly. Losing exp when you die, leveling up seperate weapon skills in order to be proficient with a weapon, no map until you actually got the key item for it, etc. It required tons more work and in order to be a good player, you had to do TONS more grinding than in XIV. Definitely not new player friendly, especially later on when the content kept piling on and leaving new blood in the dust. It became a game where it was more attractive to the hardcore than new players.

You're right that people are more rebellious nowadays, untrusting towards their fellow player and why systems like the duty finder are required. Because of their change in policy, they are actually making more of a profit now than XI ever did.

Look at 1.0. That was done with the spirit of XI in mind and look how difficult it was for casual/midcore players. So much so that 1.0 flopped HARD.