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

[Rowyne]

3. The devs have very clearly stated the entire Artifact system exists only for Legion and will be abandoned in the next expansion, returning to the original weapon system. There will be no follow up. As unsatisfying as the FF14 relic quests are to a lot of people, at least the continuation credited you for what you had done with relics in the past.

People have always complained in WoW that after the original game (pre-BC), they don't feel like they have enough class-specific quests and items that feel really epic and unique (like the Benediction/Anathema staff quest). They go back to trying to introduce meaningful weapons, and then completely abandon the idea after an expansion? Typical WoW gear disposal. What a shame.

I can't either. I've always felt that Metzen basically had one good idea: the rise and fall of Arthas. It was that story that cemented Warcraft as a modern fantasy powerhouse (and I've always felt, a huge part of why WoW's success was so meteoric up through Wrath of the Lich King). The story has been a mess ever since then (and it was honestly a mess at a lot of points prior to that, with the space pirate blood elves and shoehorning Draenei in, and so on).

I absolutely agree. In a game where so much of the story is a blatant ripoff of Lord of the Rings (yes, I realize much of our modern Western fantasy borrows from LotR, but WoW does little to hide it), the Arthas story is the only one that has ever given me goosebumps. And I realize it's just an anti-King Arthur tale (instead of a young king who takes up a blessed sword to save his people, this young prince takes up a cursed sword and destroys his people). And Icecrown is a snow-covered Mordor. Still, there's something so riveting about that story. Like many, my favorite expansion was WotLK.

[Aaliyahrose]

After finishing my animus 2 days ago and even a little before that, I began to realize something...this could have easily been easily achieved through helping newer players through 2.0 Trial based Duty Finder content.

A bonus of 60-75 poetics in no less than 8 minutes makes it speed up faster.
SE will not just tell you the fastest ways to get your tomes for Anima, It's simply being creative with party finder and the duty finder.

(Will run a newbie through Keeper of the Lake for progression) = 280 poetics if im not mistaken.

[Kaurie]

After finishing my animus 2 days ago and even a little before that, I began to realize something...this could have easily been easily achieved through helping newer players through 2.0 Trial based Duty Finder content.

A bonus of 60-75 poetics in no less than 8 minutes makes it speed up faster.
SE will not just tell you the fastest ways to get your tomes for Anima, It's simply being creative with party finder and the duty finder.

(Will run a newbie through Keeper of the Lake for progression) = 280 poetics if im not mistaken.

It was and is a pretty common strategy. Although, I've heard more about carrying people through Coil unsynced clears.

[EZ5902]

I hope the new raid is good with some better fights and not just dps checks where you have to basically have your 1 healer always dpsing and tanks using all str gear.

YES! More Steps of Faith type stuff please! xD

[MilesSaintboroguh]

YES! More Steps of Faith type stuff please! xD

Followed by a nerf please.

[FizzleofHyperion]

Now that we see what 3.2 has to provide its back to the forsaken hamsterwheel effect.

Game is still unrewarding with content.
People will barely enjoy their Thordian weapons for more than 2 months before they are crap lets just be honest with ourselves higher ilvl weapons are coming and they will be more than i205 or i205 with melding.

Wich leads me to ask you guys this:
Whats the point of learning anything that Thordian ex had to offer if you guys barely got to enjoy the stuff for more than 2 months? (this is one example of many endgame or "ex primals" that got offered to us that we barely got to enjoy anything from).
Same thing goes for all amazing players who did Alexander Savage who learned the dance and beat it. Congratulations in having all your effort beeing useless while you couldn't even enjoy your gears for more than tops 2-3 months?

Same repetative cycle of offering us only 2 dungeons that will burn us out as players for the new amazing currency that is going to be useless by summer anyways cause the new amazing bogus currency will get introduced taking us back to the same garbage we are doing right now. This isnt even getting creative anymore just sounds like people are really lazy.

This weekly cap has to go if the game wants to go this path but I guess no seems to actually listening to the players.
I doubt the majority is going yes SE you are amazing for always giving us 2 new dungeons so it becomes a repetative burden thats what we all want in this community thank you?
Atleast make sure we can farm the new currency so atleast by the time a new currency is introduced if we wished to cap all our gears with the new AF armor it should be an option not by the time for a new currency switchup giving us the feeling of whats the point of this now when new gears just got introduced again?
I've done the esoterics weekly now since the currency got introduced If I exclude buying accessories for my main character and job I could have barely geared up 5 jobs.
So the option of even bothering to be i210 on all jobs before next currency from weekly tomes isnt even possible if I want to go the casual route of doing my weekly.

When will this development team know that most of us signed up for a challenge. A challenge not beeing one ex primal and one raid dungeon beeing on a very hard level every 3 months with gears that are useless after this time. Remember some players might have finally started to clear AS now and received gears? Not everyone can catch up just as quick. What are you going to say to thoese players? Hey guys awesome that you did this but a new update is February 23rd so whatever you gained and acheived now was effortless aside from a silly acheivement and a mount saying you have completed something.

I know I sound extremly bitter at the moment but I'm not alone with this. The community is the only thing keeping me going other than that the game itself is reaching a level where most of the content is garbage and boring sitting there having nothing to do somedays just AFK. That is how a product should be?

Ofcourse casuals deserve their respect some people are just not as good as others but don't underestimate all casuals including myself since i know im a casual thinking we signed up beeing givin the exact same thing over and over and over again.
Release harder content in general so stuff feels rewarding not releasing content thats almost on a very easy difficulty involving a dynasty warriors button mash theme park mmo.
Alot of us joined because we thought Final fantasy would actually be hard. FFXI was unforgiving that was a bit too much but still FF11 has soo many better system in general than this (yea I opened the ffxi vs ff14 debate).

Not to babble too much about FFXI but remember a while back there was an live letter with Yoshi P saying these simplistic stats on gears is to make everyone understand the gears and make it easier to get into.
I just don't understand wich healer is so damn dumb that they can't understand what 10% cure potency would mean on a piece of armor or for a Tank what a -10% damage taken would be on a piece of armor even for a summoner where certain gears affect the potency of your summons or gears for bards that would effect certain skills used etc.
This game had so much potential to make gears and attributes unique for each job turning it into something personal.
Here we are now 3 years later with gears that pretty much have the same stats do nothing that stick out more than the other tanking or healing jobs that pretty much look and feel the same (all 3 tank jobs for example have a do less damage and have 20% more defense) making them all way to similiar just looking different with silly names.

Yet we all are accepting this and the only arguement people are complaining about is oh you can't do that because the game isnt built like such and such. I'm not a programmer I don't know anything about that but It is not rocketscience to figure out that whatever we have now has become a repetative nightmare.

I said this in previous posts I will gladly post this again aswell:

Make overral content harder.
Make use of crafters/gatherers to be able to craft of items obtain from dungeons by the dps/tank/mage classes to spawn bosses on the world map.
Eventhough duty finder is the death of this game because its so unpersonal we have to make use of what we have. Party X has to do dungeon x obtain item ex to give to crafter x and the crafter needs items from gatherer x then go to location x on the world map with part or alliance spawn the damn boss and have some fun. EXCEPT this is supposed to be HARD/TIME CONSUMING/REWARDING by that I mean the time it takes to this shouldnt feel like its an effortless waste because by summer/fall we are releasing bogus currency x with weekly cap that will turn whatever time gil invested in these world bosses usesless (not this is just ONE example).

Release bigger maps/dungeons in the openworld not dependent by duty finder where we can run into other parties and do the progression together cause for now the world map is VERY EMPTY most of us are just waiting in the cities or by fc houses or personal houses waiting for a duty finder to pop.

Duty finder is a very clustered envoirment that makes you feel limited and stressed due to the timer presented aswell.

None of these ideas have actually been put into test. People will probably complain and say something similiar was presented in 1.0 but we can push the limit here and actually give it a try. As long as the content is rewarding thats the only thing. People can't enjoy their gears or progress before stuff is useless again.

It would be way better if duty roulette or whatever you want to have in duty finder got presented with 10-15 dungeons right away with x amount of gears to use and don't release any gears for the rest of the year but focus on giving us storyline or bosses or whatever.

I'm sorry for this mega long post I keep watching the live letter and I am starting to get fed up with a product im putting my time effort and money in.

How will you explain to all the crafters who maybe don't know how to grind gil in the huge amount as some people do? People who invested almost 40-60m on getting all their crafters sets to finally try to attempt to earn any gil? I'm talking from experience now just people on my server who just know feel they acheived something by getting their first armorset to i180 as a crafter. You mean to tell me they can only enjoy it for 18 more days before the new gears are out making whatever time and effort they invested useless so fast? Thats justice to anyone because someone feels the need to have a balance in equality between casuals and elite players.

Be very cautious with these "trending hype casuals" that you guys are trying to cater to at SE. Clearly as you can see a big chunk left for Blades and Souls and will most likely just skip to the next MMORPG because its trending. Don't ruin the heart of this game for some temporary money. I want to contninue to play this game for another 5-8 years and enjoy it like I did the FFXI brand since I beleive in SE products.

We have waited almost 3.5 months for the 3.2 update that barely offers anything aswell wich just feels slackish imo.

[Seraphix2407]

^ You pretty much talk for a large majority here. At least for me. The weekly cap is lazy but also not rewarding, it takes alot of time to get the gear (full left and right side if you dont raid) and less time to make it useable. I find dungeons useless, because they are there only for the tomestones. I want content for myself(harder content) but I also want content for people who doesn't play the way I do and enjoy the game. I'm pretty sure by 100% People are tired of doing the same expert dungeons EVERYDAY! You either make more content, different gear, unique gear, better reward system or it will feel too much grind for no reward, which is the biggest problem in the game atm, along with the weekly stuff. If you want to lock people out from content, do it for 2-3 days. Do this with 4-5 different raid types, make them last for a while and not be useless the same time you get it.

[Velhart]

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You keep typing this, but the same response always comes back. This is not FFXI, it's foundation is vastly different from FFXIV's. Whenever something related to the game comes in, it comes with more issues than not at the start at least. You keep saying content needs to last longer, but what are you going to do with a community that gets bored of content really quick? Content doesn't need to be stretched out, it just needs to be fun, engaging, and rewarding each time to make it last at least two patches.

But yes, content should be challenging. The logic should be that someone should get better if they cannot take on certain content, not complain on the forums till SE dumbs down the next step of the content. At best SE should better curve the content to work you into harder content better, which they did a terrible job of in 3.0/3.1. Rather if you play casually or don't have time, doesn't mean the content has to be ridiculously easy. Should find ways to improve yourself and your team, not simply say it's too hard and demand SE make it easier. Savage was much harder, sure. The solution should of been making Alexander(Normal) harder. We have EX primals to work you into a Final Coil level of play, then after beating that, let Savage truly test your group out.

But we know how this turns out each time I bring out this argument:

[FizzleofHyperion]

Velhart: Thats not the turn out. Its because you said in previous posts that you wouldnt mind new content faster to keep you going. There are other ways to keep a player going than making them feel that their gaming experience is unrewarding and on this ridicilous hamsterwheel effect. Are you really trying to say you love enjoying spamming 2 ex roulette dungeons for 3 months and whatever you acheived from this is useless again? If you think thats fun then honestly you are part of the problem why this game will slowly die out. Players are getting burned out. That has nothing to do with eliteism casuals and hardcore players are getting burned out because they feel the game overrall is too much of a repetative cycle with a hamsterwheel effect.
The community is getting bored quick because of the current state of the game. When everything is on very easy mode what do you expect?
You already know this yourself yet you always angle ALL posts not just mine but almost everyones when it comes to wanting the rewarding aspect of FFXI and saying this isnt FFXI and FFXI content would never work here etc.
Why you seem to be so anti this I truly don't understand.
You have been served this hamsterwheel gamestyle with repeated currency and content coming out way too fast for almost 3 years now and you are actually saying this is awesome and this is how the game should continue?

Content can be stretched out if it becomes harder and it gives you more than 2 dungeons to do everyday. If 15 dungeons got released right away and they said this is the ex roulette dungeons. Items will be harder to obtain through this i promise you people will enjoy the challenge cause they will know the items from this are gonna be worth it for maybe 1 year if not more. This whole updating gears with 10-15 ilvl with each update is not the way to go cause it is burning the majority out.

The community of this game is getting bored easily because of the weekly lockouts, not feeling you have enough content to do because of the difficulty setting of everything except the new amazing primal x and hardcore raid dungeon x. Learn the pattners of this x primal and new hardcore dungeon but guess what its useless again by april cause I have a new thing.

I'm sorry but that is how the game is. How you seem to accept doing this day in day out I don't get you.

How to go forward with this game is adding a little bit of both and not giving the player a feeling that you are limited, can't gear your stuff the way you want before they are useless again. I've done Thordian ex once just do beat it cause I knew it was gonna be worthless so fast and guess what february 23rd was the new update. So what was the rewarding part again with Thordian? That I get a weapon that is just a silly glamour that I pretty much can't do with cause someone who did a few crystals and 7 dungeons has a weapon thats i200 and we both have access to the same things and can do the same content. This is what you enjoy?

You enjoy feeling that you can't do much on the world maps when you have hit 60 everything? Feeling forced to level alternativ jobs because the game itself cant provide you with enough content to do with your main job? You are really enjoying feeling that this empty content outside of duty finder is the way to go because we are mimmicking other MMORPGs instead of making something unique?

[BlaidePendragon]

I've played FFXIV, and beaten every content up to A4S. The point of listing my accomplishments? Just to back up that I'm a raider. And I FEEL LIKE GORDIAS WAS TOO HARD.Why? Why not want crushingly hard challenges to make me feel awesome? I'm 31 years old now, I have a 5 year old son. I wake up at 5:30am 7 days a week, make him his lunch, take him to school, go to the studio and work, pick him up, come home, time with him until bed, then get on and MMO my nerdy dad / musician heart out. And after the pure skull numbing progression of alexander gordias I found myself EXHAUSTED. I'm not the 18 year old fresh outta highschool game all night sleep all day kid i once was. But don't I deserve a say too? Don't we all.. POINT BEING: An MMO is a collective experience. It's impossible to make everyone happy. The closests i feel SE has been is with Normal/Hard/Savage. Normal for story. Hard for best gear. And savage for best gear + bragging/title. That's all that needs to be done.