The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Alahra]

December 8th, patch 2.45:
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...cf56b933b99601
Final coil was unlocked. Final coil was moved to the DF at this point to remove lockout. What you are referring to is when you can queue solo. I specifically stated uncapped. Yes, coil was uncapped more than 2 months before zeta was released.

That's still incorrect. The change in 2.45 was to allow players to enter FCOB more than once per week, in order to facilitate groups helping others and the like (Savage worked like this from the start, by the way). It wasn't added to the Duty Finder in 2.45. I was off by a patch, though: FCOB was added to the DF for full-party queuing on 3/31, in patch 2.55. That's still a full month after Zeta was released (and actually makes it line up basically just like Nexus did for SCOB).

[Dzian]

Just blow up Eorzea again and make it horizontal !

should have made it more horizontal in the first place.

[Velhart]

should have made it more horizontal in the first place.

Sounds like trading a problem for another problem, not a solution.

[Mycow8me]

I think alot of the problems in this game stems from ilvlgear and formulas/calculations for stats. Just my 2cents. Obviously that can't be fixed without major reworkings though.

I remember a time when gear augmented your abilities and improved your performance while your character level determined what you were capable of... Now its both determines what your capable of.

[Velhart]

I think alot of the problems in this game stems from ilvlgear and formulas/calculations for stats. Just my 2cents. Obviously that can't be fixed without major reworkings though.

I remember a time when gear augmented your abilities and improved your performance while your character level determined what you were capable of... Now its both determines what your capable of.

Its not that ilvl gear is the problem as much as the developers who are not balancing it right. The system is fine, they just don't know how to balance it correctly. Then again, horizontal gear was not exactly balanced either. Look to FFXI and FFXIV 1.0 for proof of that. People think going in the other direction is some magic fairy land where its always balanced and unique stats are always balanced also. You are actually asking for a bigger mess. If the developers are having a hard enough time balancing a vertical based system (which is hard to screw up), what makes you think they would be able to balance a horizontal system?

[silentwindfr]

the trouble is only why care soo much for hardcore raiding? instead to offer more option in the endgame content... one make only one content revelant for endgame?
we all know that only a really small part of the community really partake into this hardcore raiding version.... that nice and all.... but don't this time and money will not be more well invested into create now new alternative to endgame content that later can get an increase of difficulty?

[Kaurie]

Its not that ilvl gear is the problem as much as the developers who are not balancing it right. The system is fine, they just don't know how to balance it correctly. Then again, horizontal gear was not exactly balanced either. Look to FFXI and FFXIV 1.0 for proof of that. People think going in the other direction is some magic fairy land where its always balanced and unique stats are always balanced also. You are actually asking for a bigger mess. If the developers are having a hard enough time balancing a vertical based system (which is hard to screw up), what makes you think they would be able to balance a horizontal system?

I believe there is a spectrum from extremely unbalanced to everything is identical.

Personally, I'd rather have an interesting extremely unbalanced game than one where we all are the same with only 1 button to press. I know those are both the extremes, and I doubt we'd get either. The point still stands that I'd rather some imbalance if it meant we had more interesting stats to play with.

[Alahra]

Personally, I'd rather have an interesting extremely unbalanced game than one where we all are the same with only 1 button to press. I know those are both the extremes, and I doubt we'd get either. The point still stands that I'd rather some imbalance if it meant we had more interesting stats to play with.

I'm the same way. A controlled degree of imbalance is actually fun for a certain type of player, who enjoys finding efficient combinations and discovering the best way to do things. We can do that to some degree with rotations and priorities (BLMs are a great example of a class that gets a lot of experimentation, what with all the Flare rotations that were discovered in ARR), but with how linear and straightforward gear is here, there's very little room for it when it comes to gear choices. Once you know the stat priority for your class (hint: it's probably Crit > Det > Speed), you can typically look at an item and know if it's better than another one without much thought.

[FeliAiko]

Snip

'Hardcore raiding' is being given 4 bosses/encounters every 6 months. Compared to the variety of stuff casuals/non-raiders get, to imply that SE cares more about the forner crowd is ridiculous.

[Velhart]

snip

What happens when you are the one that no one wants? Its fun to preach that some imbalance could make things interesting, but how fun is it when your job you poured hours into for weeks and no one wants you because you lack a certain something that another job does? Lets go back to 1.xx when only BLM's were wanted for certain content. Lets go back to FFXI where certain jobs were dead on arrival. Again, where is this assumption that you create a system like this and the community, who is well known to take the slightest exploit and abuse it relentlessly, to not create chaos out of it? Your expectations do not match the reality of the situation.

It is funny that people give ideas like these and don't think of the consequences of adding that system in the long term. Everything sounds good on paper, it is execution that is key. Can call the vertical progression system boring all you like, but it has no where near the balancing issues that a game with horizontal and unique stats do.

'Hardcore raiding' is being given 4 bosses/encounters every 6 months. Compared to the variety of stuff casuals/non-raiders get, to imply that SE cares more about the forner crowd is ridiculous.

Pretty much. SE should be using easier content as a means to influence people to take on more challenging content. Instead they just dumb down the challenging content to meet the needs of the people who don't like pressing more than one button. It is very backwards thinking in the MMO genre. It is embarrassing honestly.