FFXIV is becoming a grind fest with little enjoyment.

[Nalien]

They can do polls if they wanted

I know. The 1.0 polls are likely a major factor in why A Realm Reborn was a success, they can clearly do polls and do them well. The point is, they haven't been doing them right since. Both of your examples are completely unimportant; A vanity contest and the location for a FanFest... They're for fun, and I'm not saying they shouldn't do stuff like that, but they in no way improve the game or inform the developers what kind of content their player base wants. There is no poll asking what kind of content we want. What Jobs we want. What races. Our opinion on the current paradigm, and so on. There is no poll asking why people are leaving. What would bring them back. What game/s people are leaving for. As a result, the developers don't know what is putting us off, what would bring more players in, what other MMOs to look out for. All they know is what hairstyles "we" want.

The excuse given was that they listen to the forums, but as I said, that's a fairly stupid stance to take. The forums are a tiny fraction of the player base. They're also a mess of conflicting opinions, most of the time. Wading through the forums is not an effective way to gather feedback. To top it all off, they seemingly only listen when they want to. The fact that, despite the numerous threads complaining about Atma and the Zodiak questline, we've got the exact same thing with Anima, is proof enough that they're either not listening to all feedback, or are missing important feedback. Clearly "listening to the forums" isn't working. If you make a poll detailing opinions on the Zodiak questline, you would get a crystal clear picture of what people want, and there would be no real reason for Anima to fall into the same pitfalls. They'd know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the majority didn't like X, but they liked Y, then they could focus on a new quest expanding upon the concepts in Y. Only a poll gives them that information, people shouting on the forum wont.

That's not to say they should do a poll and ignore the forums. They should do both, there is certainly value in listening to the forums, but only listening to the forums? A recipe for disaster, as evident by, well, Heavensward. The loudest kid isn't necessarily the one who knows what's best.

[Zeonx]

Sorry to break it to you, final fantasy has always been a grind fest, since old and new final fantasy games and I hope it never changes it worked for them back then it has worked for them now and the saying goes if it works don't change it. I seen other change it on some of the series I loved, suikoden, breath of fire and look at those games now oh right what games they died and are gone unless you wanna count that new breath of fire mmo which looks nothing like it.

Sorry it isn't easy like WoW where it take little effort to kill anything in that game and level 80+ handed to you, matter of fact everything is handed to you in WoW.

that is how easy it is why they started to try and make things a bit stronger with that new expansion but its too late they give people easy route that game is dead to me.

[Callback]

I and others are NOT side tracking. To you a video game is clearly only about the combat. You made the claim "WoW clone" we are just calling you out on that. I play only games where I feel I get cool combat AND story etc along side. irl I get enough combat, I want other stuff to distract me so maybe I see the rest of the game where you do not. You all but admit here that your issue is with a point and click interface. That one similarity does not make a clone... it makes you first line I bolded and underlined. That is it.

But my only claim IS that the combat system is a clone. Which you agree that it is. If you can look past that, great for you. For many people, tho, combat is the defining feature of an MMO. It's the part of the game you most repeat, and effectively makes up the entirety of the endgame. Your argument about quests works if your desire is to play through this once to the end of MSQ and then quit (which I admit I did on TSW, playing through every green and yellow quest, plus MSQ then quit because endgame was just dungeons and pvp.)

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Or are some of the systems implemented in Heavensward just terrible?
The fact that your Crafters and Gatherers have this... aweful Red Scrip system, arbitrary limits on what you can craft via Specializations, layers upon layers of Lockouts for combat classes compared to normal (Seriously, whoever came up with the Alexander Normal loot system... I disagree strongly with you, good sir), overtuned content that makes it even more of a grind to complete than usual (There's a sort of curve to be met where people need to feel like they're 'able to progress' and if their tolerance for bashing their head against the content), the leveling being just... more of the same 50-60.

As a developing omnicrafter, this in particular irritated me. Instead of an interesting series of mechanics and/or events to further influx crafting, we were given arbitrary limitations and old content rendered a dead market-- all in the name of discouraging people from omnicrafting. What this actually accomplished is to drive those players to new market haunt grounds, while effectively destroying an easier path for newer crafters.

And I believe this failed experiment iron marks a great deal of Heavensward.

While I certainly appreciate the devs attempting to provide new content, they seem shortsighted at times with its actual implementation. Lord of Verminion isn't necessarily a bad addition-- and the content itself is surprisingly well developed. But it isn't something that should be released following a five month delay, especially when the prior patch lacks content to begin with.

3.2 looks promising, and a direct deviation from last year. Granted, we'll have to wait and see if the new craft recipes get gated between specialists.

[RiceisNice]

As a developing omnicrafter, this in particular irritated me. Instead of an interesting series of mechanics and/or events to further influx crafting, we were given arbitrary limitations and old content rendered a dead market-- all in the name of discouraging people from omnicrafting. What this actually accomplished is to drive those players to new market haunt grounds, while effectively destroying an easier path for newer crafters..

Omnicrafting in it's own discourages players from being communal outside of the market board. There's nothing inherently wrong with having collaborative projects in making crafts, something that FC crafting should have been and failed to do so in a very spectacular way. At the same time, it's essential to have all your crafts to at least level 50 for cross skills to have a reasonable chance of succeeding an HQ on your craft.

Red scrips on the other hand, feel like an utter mess. I don't particularly have a problem with limiting how much goods we can get (tomestones have done that previously), but getting said red scrips, or even spending it, irritates me. Even getting ready to craft a single material has become a chore because of favor materials, yet at the same time the crafters can't necessarily make anything for other gatherers or combat classes (excluding glamour, but they failed spectacularly at even that), only other crafters.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Omnicrafting in it's own discourages players from being communal outside of the market board. There's nothing inherently wrong with having collaborative projects in making crafts, something that FC crafting should have been and failed to do so in a very spectacular way. At the same time, it's essential to have all your crafts to at least level 50 for cross skills to have a reasonable chance of succeeding an HQ on your craft.


Red scrips on the other hand, feel like an utter mess. I don't particularly have a problem with limiting how much goods we can get (tomestones have done that previously), but getting said red scrips, or even spending it, irritates me. Even getting ready to craft a single material has become a chore because of favor materials, yet at the same time the crafters can't necessarily make anything for other gatherers or combat classes (excluding glamour, but they failed spectacularly at even that), only other crafters.

The problem is this game prides itself on allowing you to accomplish everything from a leveling perspective on a single character. Arbitrarily forcing crafters to rely on multiple people contradicts the aforementioned system. It only incentivizes hardcore players to seek loopholes. To use myself as an example, I could level an alt to 60 and have it specialist in three different classes within a month by exploiting leves. That impacts casual or newly almost exclusively, since few will have the availability or desire to grind to that extent.

A more efficient system would be to make it easier to craft and/or level.

I do, if only because artificial caps aren't interesting. Even if we believe the devs weren't purposely trying to force monthly subscriptions (and I don't necessarily believe they were), cap limits removes rewarding a player for sheer dedication or skill. Getting all the craft gear is devalues into "I've been subbed longer than you." Which further separates new crafters from old ones.

But on the subject of red scripts specifically. Oh, do we ever agree. They already irk me about I'm only just getting to lvl60 crafting.

[RiceisNice]

I mean having access to the recipes isn't part of the leveling process. You don't need master recipes from other jobs to max out your crafters. It's generally the same with pve where you need a group of other players to accomplish a raid. I mean it's an mmo; being able to do everything is not the same as being able to do everything by yourself.

[Lorielle]

Snip

Having things readily available at a moment's notice is a much better concept than looking for a specific person to create this craft. ESPECIALLY when you are fully capable of doing it yourself. It irks me when someone asks me can I make this item and I have to say I can't because it's a Specialist Recipe. The only way for me to even do anything remotely close is have Souls on stand by, but two weeks for just one specialist change is stupid by itself. Forced collaboration is expected on the combat side of things because that's just MMO in general. By extending that into a system of item creation? Was there really a reason to? Right. I guess everyone has to get along. Can't really fight each other. Not like Omnicrafting is easy to obtain these days.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I mean having access to the recipes isn't part of the leveling process. You don't need master recipes from other jobs to max out your crafters. It's generally the same with pve where you need a group of other players to accomplish a raid. I mean it's an mmo; being able to do everything is not the same as being able to do everything by yourself.

Raids are a group effort from the word go. You cannot defeat bosses without a group helping you DPS, heal and tank. Poking someone on my friends list to make me an item isn't the equivalent of a battle. I'm literally standing around until they pop over, give me the item and go about whatever they were doing beforehand. It's essentially like having a pizza delivered. We're not a team, Domino's is just doing what I asked in exchange for money.

Except being unable to do everything yourself is exactly what hinders new crafters. I outlined an example of what hardcore crafters will likely do if the devs attempt to force arbitrary restrictions like specialist recipes on us. They will just level alts (or have already done so) and continue about their omnicrafting business while casuals gaze up at the ever increasing mountain they have to climb.

[Molic]

I know. The 1.0 polls are likely a major factor in why A Realm Reborn was a success, they can clearly do polls and do them well.... -snip-

Should make a single thread devoted to bringing back Polls, maybe they will implement it then SE will actual read what people are saying.