FFXIV is in a Prime Position to Make Some Drastic Changes

[Krylo]

1. The Relic Grind.

It is a lot of grinding for what you're getting, yes. Too much, probably, even, but this is a complaint that was already mentioned in the live letter. Their excise was to make it a similar amount of effort as the raid weapons, and with the raid being as inaccessible s it was this time, that resulted in a stupid grind.

Whether you accept that excuse or not (it's a bit half-baked, in my opinion), the fact remains that they plan on cutting down the grind (and raid difficulty) for the next tier.

2. Player choice in both gear and progression is basically nonexistent.

Have you played any of the games you're listing?

Rift did it 'right', sure. There's so many builds that finding the 'best' ones is difficult and, usually, isn't widely known until near the end of a balance cycle. Which means there's some meaningful choices! Great, right? Well sure, except that it couldn't maintain a subscriber base. Why? Most common complaint was that it was inaccessible for most people. There were too many choices, and no elitistjerks, or whatever site/group to give people their builds for them with any kind of authority. And so it went F2P and added the option of having your build decided for you by the game.

SWtOR streamlined theirs, and they did it because the old system was a complete mess with drastic rebalances coming almost every patch--relearning how to play my character over and over again during these times is a big part of why I quit (despite the fact I was playing a class they kept buffing). And, from what I understand (I've played a few times since, but not for long), their new system is still a mess leaving certain classes extremely undertuned. It also went F2P and is clearly struggling, if you ever play it.

ESO only has a couple viable builds per class, and they are, for the most part, the difference between a tank, heal, and DPS tree. Further, it's an action mmo, akin to Tera, and can't really be compared to a straight hotbar mmo. Same with BnS.

I haven't played the others but there's one other important point to be made:

As you said, they are all niche MMOs. FFXIV is not. And there's a reason for that, and part of that reason is that it is accessible. Part of it is you don't have to carry five gear sets for every class and build macros to swap items in combat for every attack. Part of it is the fact that you don't have to relearn your entire class every month when the developers realize a couple talents synergize in an unexpected way and redo your entire talent tree. Part of it is the fact you don't have to go searching online every other level to make sure you aren't breaking your character, only to find out that your choice at this level is meaningless and will never affect your play.

Asking FFXIV to implement mechanics that main stream titles avoid, after having had them and finding they don't work well, and that only niche games have, is asking FFXIV to become a niche game. Maybe you'd like it more, but the majority of people won't.

3. Competition should not be shied away from.

PvE competition looks like hunts. A bunch of people fighting over limited resources with nothing really mattering other than who gets there first. Or PvE contested areas in many games where everyone ignores it and no one cares (SWtOR, WoW, and others I've played have done this and I've never, in my decades of gaming, seen anyone actually participate in these mechanics other than incidentally while moving through the areas for other reasons). PvP requires development time and rebalancing of classes to work in a PvP environment, which is never the same as PvE balance, and also trends to be for a smaller portion of the player base, as PvPers tend to gravitate toward more PvP based games.

And I actually like open world PvP. I played almost exclusively on an open PvP server in Rift (I had a PvE server character to play with family that disliked PvP). I loved it.

However, I've seen many games go to absolute garbage trying to balance the two, and either breaking one for the other, or just having an unsatisfactory experience all around. It's best to focus on one or the other.

And again, PvE competition tends to either be ignored or just frustrating with no reason to improve.

If you really want to compete go download a parser and try to have the highest DPS, or whatever, in every dungeon you run. Just don't be a dick about it to the other people in the run.

[Alberel]

This game is a success at the moment. Everything is the way it is because it is what makes people pay to play this game. Like you mentioned how awesome Rift was, and all those other games. You know what happened to cool innovative games like that? Flops! Wildstar? Please, we all know what happened to that game. Don't get me started on rift though, I loved that game... but it probably was too unapproachable for some. Easy MMOs sell! That's the difference. If this game swapped up the elements so much, we'd have another Rift or Wildstar and it would just die a horrible death like those and probably go free to play.

This game is fine. Official forums always say their MMOs suck. I frequented Rift and WoW forums, same deal. Once they start going into death throes by putting the relics on the cash shop or something, I'll get worried. People don't want innovation, they want the things they like copied from other games. They want it to be easy and require little effort or thinking. Just look at how first person shooters or football games work (rehashed over and over)! :P Hey, FFXI went on for what, 12+ years? These guys have incredible drive and willingness to make this MMO their life's work. I think it's in good hands.

Those games did not fail because they were innovative, they failed because players got bored. Do you know why they got bored? Because there wasn't enough to do...

Do you know why players are moaning about FFXIV? Because they are bored because they have very little to do.

The game is not fine. It was great during the 2.x cycle because the content releases were fresh and interesting and regular. It's been going steadily downhill since the expansion launched and this can be easily traced by just looking at the delays to patches and the shrinking amount of content in each. Couple that with everything still following the same formula as the 2.x cycle and most of the new content already feels stale when we get it.

If easy sells then why are so many people complaining that everything is too easy? The devs even acknowledged in the latest live letter that there's no difficulty curve at the moment; the game just jumps from stupidly easy to insanely hard (savage) with little in between. That is why we're seeing so many players bored at the moment. If savage is too hard for you but everything else is too easy then you're screwed at the moment, and unfortunately a LOT of players fall into that bracket.

The OP isn't even asking for anything drastic. It's a request for some ability to allow us to customise our playstyle in some way. This is a basic feature of pretty much every MMO out there and is one of the best ways to help players keep the experience fresh and interesting. Right now once you hit the level cap your gameplay NEVER changes until the next expansion. That's a huge flaw in my opinion.

[Shyle]

I agree that skill trees for the abilities (such as what Blade and Soul uses) could be a good way to inject some personalization (sp) to each player/class/character. For instance, in BnS, my force master has several skills, each offensive (and some defensive) skills have their own tree that can change the ability to maybe do spash damage, or add a 10s DOT or just do more damage if the enemy has a certain debuff etc. But in order for something like that to work, I think the hard-code rotation combat system would need to be altered too.

I think the only way that this game is going to get a breath of fresh air, is for the new content patch (which will only sustain the player based for 1-2 months until the next content patch, as it is with theme-park MMO's), as they've already dug themselves in with the antiquated systems and concepts they took from WoW. It would require a LOT of work to implement many things that are suggested.


Edit to add to this quote:

Asking FFXIV to implement mechanics that main stream titles avoid, after having had them and finding they don't work well, and that only niche games have, is asking FFXIV to become a niche game. Maybe you'd like it more, but the majority of people won't.

Sorry, but FFXIV is a niche game, it's niche for FF players/fans, what you're meaning to say is "casual", it's a casual game, it's accessible and easy to learn and play, but it's definitely niche. Also, mainstream MMO's definitely are *not* avoiding talent trees, some actually have gone REALLY deep into them (see path of exile). While I agree that there's always the optimal builds etc, that doesn't mean that talent systems are worthless or detract from the game. Some games like WoW and wildstar support multiple build sets that allow players to change on the fly to accommodate the encounter. Then I mentioned blade and soul that does it a bit differently (modifying the skills/abilities rather than building the skillset). GW2 just had their first expansion, and seems to have expanded on the skill builds and such. There have always been multiple builds that were considered the Meta for encounters for each class (dependent on play style and what activity/encounter they were doing).

[Awful]

Why feel sorry for me? Please feel sorry for the losers of competition instead, especially IRL, where competition over ressources causes death, pain and destruction galore.

I'm not the one being worked to literal death.

I don't know why this was brought up but having competition isn't going to ruin this game honestly they give everyone trophies at the end of the day so everyone goes home happy. Yes it's fine, but for someone like me who does enjoy PvP it's about bringing my friends and FC mates and having a lot of fun, which is why i'm really excited for ranked PvP.

The only real competition was/is Alex Savage which people didn't like because of the appeal/difficulty if it was more rewarding for the time and effort people put in then it would indeed be competition you could look forward too. I welcome 3.2 with the PvP season and new raids it'll give a reason to PvP/raid with my FC again and give players more rewards rather than a "thanks for playing!" sticker at the end of the day.

[Valoiz]

Everything about this game is vertical, and streamlined -- It's a huge problem, that needs to be addressed.

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Agree 100%

[Roth_Trailfinder]

I want to use an example of why I think this topic is important: Red Mage.

We all want it. Yoshida even teased us with the idea this past Rising. After thinking about it though, I wonder how it could even function in this current system...

Now, I've thought long and hard about how it *could* work, but I want to focus on one point, that Red Mage is really supposed to be a swiss-army knife class, say like Druid in WoW, and such like it. But such a class only works in a system with horizontal progression, where you can modify/self-personalize your job's path. We don't currently have that...how's that going to work?!

RDM could work, in terms of being a blend of WHM and BLM, able to use medium weight weapons and armor. Jack of all trades, yes - but MASTER OF NONE.

It would not be able to heal as well as a Healing job. It would not tank as well as a Tank job. ITs DPS output would be comparable to, but lower than, a Bard.

The thing that makes it generally unworkable, in my mind, is not a question of what abilities it has. Its not a question of how well a hybrid job works in vertical progression (it can work very well). Rather, it's a question of queues.

What would a RDM queue as? Healer? Who would want a RDM healer over a WHM, SCH, or AST, when those three are designed to be better healers? Tank? Similar question with PLD, DRK, WAR. DPS? Lol?

Vertical progression is a good thing. Horizontal, not so much. The main issue I see is the difference between acquisition rate and provision rate. How quickly is new power offered to the player base, compared to how quickly does the player base seize that new power?

FF14 is one of the fastest games I've ever played, in terms of gaining player power. That is both a blessing and a curse. It helps keep people interested (no one wants to grind for 10 hours only to gain 4% of a level) but it gets people to max, bored and gone, that much faster. The only real solution is to add more power at a higher rate, to try to keep people interested. This whole thing about "horizontal progression" (as far as I can tell) is less about providing options than it is about sneaking in more player power when SE is determined to adhere to its own schedule that gets people bored. A new ability is going to add to that job's power in some way shape or form - give people a choice of two such ways and they will invariably choose the one that offers the greatest vertical advantage.

[myahele]

The fact that we can meld materia into Tomestone gear in 3.2 will be nice addition in terms of optional customization,so I am looking forward to that.

But with how quickly things get outdated in game (which then means it'll be needed for relics in the future) I am getting rather bored with it.

[Iromi]

It is..but it won't. Plenty of people quit and left for good when they saw how 3.0 was rehash of 2.0 with the tomes, and low and behold..we are getting tomes again in 3.2 lol. They don't really listen to the players...

[SchalaZeal]

What would a RDM queue as? Healer? Who would want a RDM healer over a WHM, SCH, or AST, when those three are designed to be better healers? Tank? Similar question with PLD, DRK, WAR. DPS? Lol?

Tons of content has 1 healer healing and one dpsing the entire time. Tons of content has 1 tank tanking, and one dpsing the entire time. I don't see your point except for very tight "we need 2 super good tanks" or "we need 2 super good healers" content. And they will ease dps checks so that having a Bard doesn't mean you fail. So a RDM would be the same.

[UBERHAXED]

The problem with giving the relic weapons a unique trait is that it would be difficult for the dev team to balance it with the raid weapons, especially if they maintain the two at the same item level. They've already mentioned that they will be having the raid drop weapons be a higher item level similar to how it was done in 2.0 where Binding Coil weapons were i95, and the relic at the time could be as high as i90. They continued that trend through Second and Final coil with weapons at item levels 115 and 135 respectively, while the relics were at 110 and 130 respectively, until the Zeta stage came around late into 2.55 and allowed relics to be equal to raid weapons at i135. Secondary stats aside...

I'm sure there are plenty of ways that the devs could work through the issue of weapon balance and maintaining raid weapons as still being desirable. Unfortunately, I have not the creative mind to come up with solutions to this issue. I see what has worked in the past, and what has worked in other games. Specifically, the weapons in WoW comes to mind. The legendary weapons (orange names) that were obtainable by different jobs (Thunderfury, for Warriors; and that staff for Druids/Shaman) were much more desirable than most raid weapons, but the quest chains associated with them required raid drops to even complete the weapon. That solidified to me that the intent was not for the "casual" crowd to obtain, and their normal Dungeon weapons, which were parts of a set with their tier gear on occasions, satisfied them well enough.

The issue still remains with the fact that the "casual" crowd still demand having a weapon of the same or similar item level to those clearing the most difficult raids, even though they are certainly capable of doing everything they could hope to do with a base-level tomestone weapon. Personally, I haven't bothered with savage except for a few early week clears of A1S and some practice on A2S. I still blaze through dungeons and the other content perfectly fine with an i200 weapon. I'm not so audacious to demand I have the same weapon of those who have cleared A4S. I also haven't been so blind to notice the significant lack of Gordian weapons being carried around. I'm sure SE isn't that blind either.



Good catch, Alahra. I failed to mention that one as well.

Not sure you were playing in 2.0 (you mentioned some incorrect information) but it might be worth mentioning that in 2.0 raid weapons were ilvl90, along side relic. Because people could obtain tome gear including weapon at max ilvl, people felt there was no need to do raiding since it offered no rewards that you could get buy just capping tomes by running AK and WP. It was in 2.1 that they mentioned this in a live letter and bumped the ilvl of allagan weapons to 95. They's stuck with this for the next 2 tiers to avoid the same issue. I supposed they tried to not do that again in 3.0 so they kept it the same way they had it with launch. But at the time of the most recent live letter people had already acquired anima weapon so I guess they realized that they either have to keep the disparity like in the 2.1+ patches where the raid weapon is higher than anything else, or simply release the new tier of relic so late in the patch cycle that it wouldn't affect the raid scene. They already published what choice they made, but that is the reasoning.

Also they pointed out in the live letter (to the misconception of players) that the relic (anima) weapons were not for casual players. They were for players with time (i.e. not casual) but not the skill for doing raids. Players may make it seem like it's an insane grind that will take months or something to get the anima weapon, but there are already plenty of player from (I'm guessing) every server who already have them. My server is pretty small and I know of at least 50 players who already have their anima weapons. The problem now is that these players will now not bother completing savage since there's nothing left to get from there.