How Cataclysm killed WoW is how Heavensward will kill FFXIV.

[ChocoFeru]

All my raiding set left. Yes, 7 people left the game a week ago because it's contentless, and 6 of them were legacy like me. I'm still playing because I'm a fanboy of the franchise, but I think the same as them; game's got a dead point and needs more DIFFERENT content.


I't ok to have a casual raid and a hardcore raid, but we need different content, different endgames. Focusing endgame on raiding is a mistake.


We need a different gear system. It's ok to have your gear outdated every 3-6 months, but still, we need different stats or EFFECTS/COMBO EFFECTS.

Let's say Alexander gives one set of equipement with some specific buffs, like on Scholar "2/5 gear combo: +10% healing, 5/5 gear: +10% crit" and then we would have a different endgame content like the isle exploration with the same ilvl, with a different gear giving different buffs, as scholar for example "2/5 gear combo: +20% Fey healing, 5/5 +1 Aetherflow".
Then people who has less time would just farm ONE content to get good gear, and people who had more time to invest would farm all the gear to perfect his class, or have access to both gears so they can switch it between content (more fey power on an specific boss, more self healing for another one etc...)

Basing the endgame on raiding and leaving the rest as cosmetics (craft, gold saucer, Void Ark...) is a mistake. We need more ways to do endgame.


Remember FFXI? We could choose to do Sky endgame, NM/HNM, Sea, Assaults, BCNM, Dynamis, high end quests etc... and EVERYTHING mattered! All the gear mattered and was important/useful. People with less time could do few content but still be useful for hardcore players, who would be just a little bit stronger because they had more gear for specific stuff.

Here in FFXIV we could have something similar, endgame content giving ilv210 gear with different stats and combo effects such as:
Alexander Savage
Isle Exploration
Hamlets (just like 1.0)
NM/HNM (farm and pop, for example)

So hardcore players would be busy, while casuals would pick any of the endgame and still feel useful/strong.

Sorry for my English D:

[razzgrizz3]

I find it funny you focused on raiding so much because not only is the amount of raid content in ff14 generaly tiny but this raid tier is absolute shit as well...

[T2teddy]

I simply cannot understand why anyone calls Alexander 'endgame.' We just got the expansion three months ago. We're not even to the first content patch. There will likely be 4 more content patches after that one. Talk about endgame when we get to it, please. Which may take years!

The only thing that concerns me about FFXIV has nothing to do with Heavensward. I am worried about 2.0 - 2.55 because hardly anyone is running any of that content anymore which is going to mean fewer and fewer new players coming to and sticking with the game.

For example, I was helping a friend who had just started, with Sastasha. It took 4 hours for it to pop. On one of my alts I needed to do AV for the Grand Company...took 6 hours to pop. Even guildhests are taking ages in queue.

This is not a good thing...

[Sekundessounet]

May come from your World, I'm on Moogle and except dungeons in High Level Roulette, everything pop faster than 2.x, even on DPS.

[ChocoFeru]

Here in FFXIV we could have something similar, endgame content giving ilv210 gear with different stats and combo effects such as:
Alexander Savage
Isle Exploration
Hamlets (just like 1.0)
NM/HNM (farm and pop, for example)

We could add more stuff on that list, like make Materias important, letting us add them on all endgame gear, make more stats, or materias to personalize our jobs, like adding more damage to a specific skill, or add a completely new one etc... making it look more FF7-like.

There are many ways to improve the current game without breaking it, and making it fun and enjoyable for everyone, and I want it to be successful.

[magdahmhara]

Actually it was WoTLK that gave everyone what they wanted. The raiders complained about welfare epics because it was so easy to get them from farming 5 mans all day. People started leaving WoW when Cata came out because it was too difficult. The forums were flooded with people who couldn't finish the new 5 mans because mobs hit harder and did more damage. It was a nightmare to try to heal because most were so used to no crowd control and standing in stupid. The easy mode of Wrath lulled people into a false sense of security. When the reality of having to cc and using situational awareness reared it's head in Cata people whined and complained and quit because they had to actually 'work' for their gear. The worst part was, the instances weren't so bad if you were careful, went slow, used cc and paid attention. Yes the mobs hit harder and did more damage but it took real effort and people knowing how to play their class in a group environment.

In short, WoW had the highest player base in easy mode Wrath and started to bleed subscribers when the dev team listened to the one percent and made content too hard for the average masses. Wrath baically had it all. There was easy 5 man content with the ability to get epics for those who couldn't raid and difficult raids for people who could. Everyone got what they wanted.

[Stanelis]

In short, WoW had the highest player base in easy mode Wrath and started to bleed subscribers when the dev team listened to the one percent and made content too hard for the average masses.

It is a bit more complex.

Before WOTLK (and the 3.0 patch) the game mechanics were very different than those post 3.0.

The new mechanics did put less emphasis on teamwork than the previous ones, and made things which were hard to perform before easier, resulting in the feeling that the content of wotlk was easier than what was previously released. However, the content wasn't easier, the players were merely given more potent tools to do their job.

At the beginning of cata, the players were nerfed and it once again became harder to do stuff in the game. However, the game wasn't reverted to how it was before pre 3.0, resulting in a pretty much unfun and unplayable game for the average player.

But the issue wasn't that the game was hard, the issue was that the difficulty wasn't where it should be (pretty much like current FFXIV). The fact that a game is easy or hard isn't the only factor which make it good or bad.

[Kedo]

Variety is what this game really lacks, if they want to stay with the grind format of getting tomes for gear OK but at least spice it up. XI in hindsight was pretty bad, but I think they did endgame right. Now I am not asking for horizontal progression, but what I would like to see are multiple ways of acquiring End Game gear, or ways to acquire tomes a different way aside from just experts and the like, XI had Dynamis, Limbus, Sky, Sea, ZNM, Nyzul Isle, Assault, Salvage, Einherjar, Kings, BCNMs, KSNMs, all which offered different gear, items to sell, and they weren't all the same really. I am hoping that this air ship exploration will breathe some new life into end-game but I won't hold my breath.

[magdahmhara]

Yes but the 'average' player is only concerned with easy or hard. If things are too difficult most people will just give up and quit. When I first started playing mmos people didn't quit after wiping once or twice or even three times. They stayed and worked harder to get it done. But nowdays people quit if a group wipes once. Those that prefer more challenging content are very, very few. If a company wants to make a large profit they need to appeal to a wider audience. Still, that's no excuse for being lazy with development.

[Synestra]

Are "Raid only" types of players ever going to learn that they make up less than a third of the player population? OP is invalid.

Even when my main focus has always been battle content(a.k.a raiding)that doesnt mean i dont do anything else, hell i actually devour all content MMO's offer even those "boring" ones because why not? It seems these "dont have anything to do" comments/topics comes from "raid only"/"cap tomes only" players, with that mentality its no wonder they run out of content in days. So why not try and think outside of the box and try everything this game has to offer? even those "boring" grinds can be fun if you make it fun, i learned this back in TBC when WoW still had grind in it(Mote and Arcane Tome farming <3)