The game is more dead than it was pre-3.1

[RiceisNice]

unlike their gathering where it was the norm. I have a natural desire to reduce the potential for players to wreck someone else's day though.

It prevents the player-run economy from being flooded though; said resource items are in constant demand across the realms, especially in a game where you're limited in what professions you can take (versus FFXIV that allows you to take all).

Of course, it doesn't stop them from having other means of procuring said materials; it's a very, very large world and they don't necessarily have ores/herbs that fill 7-8 different inventory slots per expansion cycle. MoP (and I believe WoD) also have other means of obtaining said resources that don't require gathering.

FFXIV's shards/crystals run in a similar sense where it's a constant demand, but everyone can gather it, there's no limit to how much it can be gathered in one given time, and the market gets flooded by it.

The broken foundation of the game is really starting to catch up to them.

This entire process of releasing content then releasing content with better rewards for "catch-up" purposes is the core of the problem.

I would not say it's the case, at l;east not the primary one as of now. Even motivation to do A3s has been at an all time low before 3.1 came out. It'sj ust way overtuned to expect a typical static to clear, let alone have the patience to slam their heads in it for the past few months.

The other side of things is their homogenized game design means they are pretty much out of new mechanics options. The fights are just getting to be downright boring because they all have to be designed with a 2 tank, 2 healer, 6 DPS composition in mind. And beyond the mechanics are all dead simple and similar simply because they refuse to give jobs defining abilities that could be designed around because of this silly fear that you might have to bring a BLM to one encounter and a SMN to another.

This is exactly what they want to avoid though. You saw what happened with Paladin for Savage in general, it's a piss poor choice compared to a DRK who is essentially better in every aspect. Homogenizing the utility of a job isn't a problem, and realistically fights should not be tuned to cater a specific party composition outside of the norm (it should be perfectly capable of being cleared with 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps and not have outrageous outliers for taking one job over another)

The biggest defining feature of FF14, the Armoury System, is completely pointless because of the silly lockouts and limitations of consuming most of the game content on a single job. No repeatable quests to help other jobs level up, stupid alternative path gear that is always weaker than the best stuff making it difficult to raid with secondary jobs until the restrictions are lifted and making all of that pointless again because a new set of better, locked content is available.

Until they make job exclusive acessories (RIP ring armory), this is going to be the case to prevent players from gearing faster than others. And even then, the armory system is a farshot better from other MMOs that require you to create an entirely new character to play a different job. I honestly think it's fine as is; players shouldn't feel the pressuring need from the game to gear up all of their jobs. And even then, that's what the catch up patches are for, for players whom have geared up their mains already through eso and raids.

[Teryaani]

It prevents the player-run economy from being flooded though; said resource items are in constant demand across the realms, especially in a game where you're limited in what professions you can take (versus FFXIV that allows you to take all).

Granted, but enough players aren't completists like us that the market for materials and gear is still okay. I know they regret the decision to allow us to have all classes, but it was the selling point for this game for me. I never would have picked it up otherwise. You can see that regret in the inclusion of the specialist system that they're testing the waters with. I can see that there will be more and more specialist recipes as this expansion cycle rolls on.

This entire process of releasing content then releasing content with better rewards for "catch-up" purposes is the core of the problem. Stat progression is so linear and so simplistic that they simply design half there content out of existence with new patches which is just ridiculous. Not only that but they spend so much time and effort on designing redundant "alternate" progression that basically isn't used by a chunk of the population one way or the other. Then on top of this Yoshida is starting to complain that his team doesn't have enough resources. I mean, no sh*t? You push everyone to a tiny bit of new content every few months. Then to make content relevant they have to pull terrible design decisions like putting the best gear in Diadem to actually draw people to the content. Again this core of this issue is the terrible progression plaguing the game.

You're not a fan of vertical progression I take it. I get that. The treadmill gets tiresome. I'm not a fan of the treadmill, but I'm also not a fan of horizontal progression entirely either. There is a feeling of accomplishment and advancement in upgrades. This patch was a bit...odd...in how they did it and hopefully they'll learn from it.

Yoshi is complaining, I think, because his team did a huge amount of work in salvaging a failing product and bringing a nice chunk of revenue to SE and they're not getting the team they need to keep it up. That's corporate culture and has nothing to do with the foundation of the game. His patch cycle is aggressive but it's what's needed to keep players interested, at least in the short term.

The other side of things is their homogenized game design means they are pretty much out of new mechanics options. The fights are just getting to be downright boring because they all have to be designed with a 2 tank, 2 healer, 6 DPS composition in mind. And beyond the mechanics are all dead simple and similar simply because they refuse to give jobs defining abilities that could be designed around because of this silly fear that you might have to bring a BLM to one encounter and a SMN to another.

That's not a silly fear. That's a fear that you can see played out in other MMOs.

[Colorful]

I liked crafting in this game, up until it became a chore to even craft because of the favors (esp when it was an hour of gathering minimum to make a piece of material, and you needed 3-5 for one craft). By the time I could even get to the crafting steps, I felt so exhausted and burned out that I just didn't want to do it a second time. As well as the lack of provisions (until 3.1 for the glamour aspect) toward combat and gathering classes at level 60.

Heh, I meant gathering, I should really start checking over my posts but I never do. Never enjoyed crafting or gathering in this game myself, 2.x or 3.x, the concept of having to be an omni crafter or be close to useless bothers me.

I fear if they do implement minion battles it would be a huge grind with crappy rules, aka Triple Triad.

What I'd personally like to see:

• No level grinding, 5-10 levels for each minion at most with 30-60 minutes at most to level it.
• Scrap the LoV rock paper scissor system in favour of an element system.
• Each minion has their own unique set of abilities, obviously meaning a lot of minions won't be usable unless the add a moveset. I believe it's for the best as 10+ minions sharing the same moveset will get boring quickly.
• Something like the Elite Four but difficult due to well crafted battles and not RNG/awful rules.
• Some mounts usable as "Legendary minions", or just really large minions only usable in minion battles.

No other awful grind SE can think of that they seem to manage any possible form of fun content with.

[Cidel]

I agree with majority of the observations here about what kind of "content" we've been getting and how its really starting to make me feel disillusioned with the future of the game, which is a problem for me, because I've been here since the launch of 1.0 and have never spent any significant time "away" from the game.

It's pretty bad when the playerbase often has cynical expectations of the next up-and-coming patches, but the predictability and simplicity of the nature of content that frequently gets regurgitated back at us with a different color paint job is getting old and more and more people are (thankfully) calling them out on it in these forums. A couple friends of mine and I were talking about the state of the game, and we feel that its just lacking in community and most new content lacks any real "staying power;" and as Ladon (as well as countless other posters in assorted threads) pointed out, they invalidate and kill their content that they spend patch cycles designing at such an alarmingly fast rate. Free companies are mostly glorified social channels with perks if you throw enough money into it; since nearly everything midcore is best off done repeatedly with the same 8 people you're comfortable memorizing fights with. Anything that puts you with more than 8 people either turns into a zergfest or a extended game of "run out of the lights on the floor."

There's just so much wasted potential and questionable design choices in nearly everything.

[RazeLandale]

3.1 didn't fix the problem, but it couldn't. It's a good patch. Problem being the expansion didn't start with enough max level content and they didn't add content fast enough. You can't really churn out content faster than people can play it, but it still needs to be faster. I think a lot had already given up before 3.1. I was expecting to see people return for the patch day...and they didn't. That's just my guild of course, but the towns certainly don't look as lively. 3.2 can't be 4 months from now. You'll just lose more people that way, gotta keep the content coming.

[RiceisNice]

I know they regret the decision to allow us to have all classes, but it was the selling point for this game for me. I never would have picked it up otherwise. You can see that regret in the inclusion of the specialist system that they're testing the waters with. I can see that there will be more and more specialist recipes as this expansion cycle rolls on.

I don;t get the vibe that they regret the armory system, but rather the fact they had to carry so many 1.0 relics like the class/job and multi jobbing (arcanist, scholar and summoner). Ideally new jobs should justbe a standalone job without a base class, or rework the base classes and have their abilities be dynamic (to the soul crystals) to encourage multi roles or dps with entirely different dynamics/gameplay

The specialist system has it's own problems with it's implementation...the same as 3.0 in general. Initially there was absolutely no reason to take it since its arguably a detriment to even use specialistw acitons.

[Lewtskie]

This community, and others like it, told people that were unhappy they should "take a break and go play other games." Well, maybe that wasn't the hottest advice. When people go play other games, some of them never come back.

I cannot abide by that sort of thinking and would tell people to do the same, because it simply is the most selfish mindset. You are basically saying "Don't tell people to go do something they might have more fun with, they need to stay and not be as happy so we can be happy."

If people weren't having fun, then they needed to go find something more fun to do. When you get people who are in that position staying because they feel compelled or obligated to stay, they are just gonna get so salty and disgruntled over time. They'll lose patience, start acting more aggressive, and just start thinking very pessimistically and that brings everyone else down. Eventually they'll just split out of frustration and then they definitely won't ever come back because their experience has just been destroyed.

[Teryaani]

I don;t get the vibe that they regret the armory system, but rather the fact they had to carry so many 1.0 relics like the class/job and multi jobbing (arcanist, scholar and summoner). Ideally new jobs should justbe a standalone job without a base class, or rework the base classes and have their abilities be dynamic (to the soul crystals) to encourage multi roles or dps with entirely different dynamics/gameplay

The specialist system has it's own problems with it's implementation...the same as 3.0 in general. Initially there was absolutely no reason to take it since its arguably a detriment to even use specialistw acitons.

Fair point. Maybe not the armory system as a whole, but the crafting system certainly and the job/class divide. For 2.0, Omnicrafter was required (and still is). While specialist is badly implemented and I sure as heck don't use the actions, I get the feeling that they're sticking with it.


I'm expecting/hoping to see a do-over on Arcanist/Summoner/Scholar in 4.0. Maybe not the elimination of the class system, but....maybe?

[KitingGenbu]

Someone please explain to me why they dont just implement more XI styles of content? 13 years of content right there....Only reason I can think of is that they are trying to pace it out over each level increase. Honestly XI wasn't good until 70~ anyway, but it did release 25 levels all at once versus the 5 to 10 levels every expansion that you see in most games over the last few years. The open-world is zone bland in this game activity option wise. I still feel one way to fix this is to make it so you're earning something more than gear when you hit cap cause honestly most of us are not stupid. We already know their cycle and many of us (well at least I) will unsub until maybe 2-3 patches. Capacity point/Merit point system, get to it SE.

[RiceisNice]

Fair point. Maybe not the armory system as a whole, but the crafting system certainly and the job/class divide. For 2.0, Omnicrafter was required (and still is). While specialist is badly implemented and I sure as heck don't use the actions, I get the feeling that they're sticking with it.

My personal problem with it is not necessarily because of the armory mechanic itself, but rather the design of jobs and how they wanted it to branch off. Looking at 2.0, SCH and SMN share the same foundation of arcanist, and it wasn't until 3.0 (which gave summoners more abilties) that their gameplay of DPS largely differentiated from each other. And heck, that's one of my complaints with 3.0 in regards to MCH/BRD, they don't even share a base job but they managed to make those two have extremely homogenized gameplay because they gave them both abilties that are functionally exactly the same, while being different jobs.

If they wanted multi-jobs to branch off from a single class, it needs to be done sooner than 30 (so they have more abilties), or have the pre-3.0 abilities change retro-actively so it suits their new job or even role (such as changing Bio to Regen or something that acts an HoT), but no matter how yotu slice it ,it's a lot of work to redo a job from scratch (though honestly speaking, they're gonna have to for BRD/MCH if they want to dehemogenize their gameplay. Same in regards ot summoner if they want them to be a DoT-oriented spell dps, or a spell dps that utilizes pets.