Dungeons;
Name the key difference between Sastasha and Pharos Sirius (Hard). Answer; The wallpaper. Pull group of mobs, AoE them down, pull next set, do the same. Oh a boss. The only changes are purely superficial. How we explore dungeons, what we do in them, none of that has changed... If anything we've gone backwards. Sastasha had extra rooms, they were ignored because their rewards were crap, but it had them. It felt like a dungeon, not a treadmill. Two new dungeons in 3.2 is not going to add any variety to the game, not for a significant period of time. I'll run Antitower a couple of times, admire the new wallpaper and music, then it'll be old and the fact that I'm running the same treadmill as Fractal and Neverreap will kick in... No split paths, no puzzles, because we have to cater to speed runners exclusively, even though of all the demographics, they're going to be the ones yelling "Bored" first... It isn't hard to balance multiple paths or puzzles...
Trials;
Same problem with dungeons. Mechanically the bosses are different, for the most part, but at the end of the day I'm still fighting enemies in a static ring... Take Leviathan... Why not fight him in a cave? The DPS check phase could be escaping said cave as it floods, with Leviathan and Sahagin trying to block your path. Weak DPS, path is blocked and you drown. Nothing too big, of course, but that would be a better use of the current dungeon formula IMO, a quick sprint through the area to liven up the fight. Ironically we
nearly get this, with a bleedin' comic relief Greg fight... The vents in A4 were a welcome surprise in this regard at least... This is why I liked Steps of Faith so much, you know, until they nerfed it into the ground... Now it's just a sad reminder of how terrible the playerbase is, and why we can't have nice things...
Raids;
Alexander was a significant step back from Coil in just about every possible way. The story absolutely blows, but the mechanics are perhaps more important (I'd disagree, and the fact that you get the story (which is the real reward) for cheesing easy mode annoys me and kills all motivation for the real version). Take the introduction; ADS required team work, if you didn't Silence High Voltage, you died, and you needed to rotate Silences to achieve this. Now look at Faust, nothing but a mindless DPS check... To a degree there is the same problem as dungeons, too. More so with Void Ark, which takes the exact same "Here is three groups of trash, then a boss, then a split up trash, then a boss, then some more trash, etc." from Crystal Tower... The vents in A4 were a nice touch, but completely underdeveloped... Whole time I felt like I was fighting Gobbie trash, rather than Alexander, the vents being the only nod that I was fighting
in a Primal... Raid bosses still just feel like Trial bosses though...
Open World;
Underused. Hunts, which are horrible IMO, and Treasure Maps, which have a lengthy timer attached... What happened to Levequests? You could kill two birds with one stone here, give us endgame level Levequests that have a personalized Hunt attached... Can actually activate a Levequest with friends, feel like I'm hunting something, then kill Bune together, rather than watching the server zerg him down in seconds... FATEs are horrible and I hope we stop getting them... Go look at Besieged and Campaign in XI,
that is what you should have developed Hamlet Defense into, not these crappy FATEs...
PvP;
Good Job. No, really. Still some issues that could be dealt with, but this is perhaps the one aspect of the game (or rather, game play, I can't praise the story/music/etc. enough) that I feel has the developers listening and implementing solid additions to... Ironic, really...
Relics;
Absolutely awful... Not just Anima weapons, either (though I should lay on about how the only new thing developed for the Anima weapons was the weapons themselves, the entire quest is just a big "F*ck You!" to people who complained during Atma/etc.). The entire questline
rewards mediocrity... You do a bunch of old content to get a new weapon, when you really break that down... You're doing leveling content to get a relevant weapon... Dwell on that for a minute, please... The entire Anima weapon quest can be done without being Lv60, Lv60 is only a requirement because the quest says so, the quests content though... Don't need Lv60 for it... That's absurd... I'm not saying remove the grind and make it skill based, but at the very least keep some measure of skill in it... I get the problem with the original Relics, but Titan made it feel great to earn one of those weapons... Now? With
Stone, Sky, Sea you've got the perfect system in place to test skill without forcing people to rely on a group. Right now there is
nothing epic or worthwhile in the Relic quests, an epic solo trial, that tests a players skill would be the perfect solution. It makes the quest more interesting. It gives a skill check that doesn't rely on seven other people. Something like that would be worthy of a weapon like Excalibur, instead you're rewarding Excalibur for... Grinding FATEs? It's pathetic, either stop making these Relics "legendary" weapons, or start making the quest "legendary". Right now we should be getting
<Weapon> of Complete and Utter Mediocrity, because that's what the quest is rewarding...
Diadem;
Nice idea, awful implementation... You just slapped Hunts in an instance, ignored the fact that people grouped up to make Hunts a joke, were somehow surprised that happened in Diadem, then you slapped Gathering on top and completely ignored any implications that might have (Gatherer's not helping out in fights at all, but casting lot on rewards regardless)... It's awful... A claiming system. Just f*cking embrace it already. As for Gathering... You really need to make an attempt to meld it with the combat side of things; One complaint I have about the combat is the bullet sponge nature of the enemies, you could easily throw some temporary items into some chests that Gatherer's find, then Gathering in Diadem plays sort of like a true support role. You could also double down on the exploration aspect of Diadem, rather than having nodes spread all over, you could make use of those caves. Make them worth delving into, then just block the entrance with roots/rocks, and you've got the perfect excuse to give Botany/Miner a role in Diadem. Do you know why Fishing works in Diadem? Because they sit in one space and fish, a party could reasonably fight near a Fisher and take advantage of any Fresh Tracks the Fisher spawns, while Botany/Miner are stuck flying around the entire map all event long...
Gear;
I don't get why we still have stats on gear... Given how stats in this game work, I don't get why we don't just get stats boosts from clearing content, with gear being purely cosmetic... Sort of a play on the old Physical Level system, perhaps... It would really be no different than raising your item level, except it arguably keeps content more relevant, depending how you work it... Something like Crystal Tower could still be completely relevant, because people could still want the stat boosts applied from clearing it X times. Instead it is completely irrelevant, because nobody cares about the i90/i100/i120 stats earned from it. That gear does not help anyone, you can completely skip over that gear, where as a stat bonus cannot be skipped over, it's a bonus no matter what. You could ignore it and do endgame content without it, but why would you? A static extra +2 DEX for Ninja from clearing World of Darkness X times completely beats some i120 gear from clearing World of Darkness X times. One is always useful, the other is completely irrelevant these days.
Of course, the better solution is just to make the stats on gear worth a damn, but I can't see that happening ever... Plenty of systems you can work it with, especially with that whole materia on raid gear coming in 3.2, but I still can't see it happening...
Gold Saucer;
Is actually OK... People aren't there all the time? Good. It's a bleedin' casino, it's there to blow off steam when everything else gets a bit stale, I wouldn't expect it to be packed daily... Chocobo Racing is dead (it could do with a Tournament I think), but I actually enjoy giving it a go every now and then... Some issues with "cheating" for things like Triple Triad Tournaments, but overall Gold Saucer is a good addition to the game, just like Housing (and based off a few comments, it seems like Housing and Gold Saucer share a development team, so it isn't like Gold Saucer/Housing content takes away from dungeons/etc., they guys working on dungeons are their own team, the guys working on this are their own, same goes for PvP) Lord of Verminion is another matter, though... Triple Triad and Chocobo Racing work because there is a strong NPC presence there, no matter what you can enjoy them as a result. Verminion... From the ground up it is too complex... That means NPCs can't be involved, it means there is a steep barrier for entry on the players side, it means it was dead on arrival... Lord of
Vermilion works, because it is its own game, with a playerbase interested in it, they're dedicated to it, so they'll learn the ins and outs. Lord of Verminion fails because it has no such playerbase. Nobody in an MMO is going to dedicate that kind of time to what is essentially another game entirely, not unless it is absolutely amazing (and it's not). Chocobo Racing and Triple Triad work, because they start out simple enough and build complexity. That's the same reason Pokemans (the obvious other minion based fighting game) work, fire burns grass, grass absorbs water, water puts out fire. What's not to get at the start of Pokemans? Lords of Verminion doesn't do this, not in XIV at least. You have an entirely new control scheme to learn. The minion types are simple enough, but every minion has its own strengths and weaknesses and specials, and they're all thrust upon you at the onset, where as Pokemans would have you leveling your minions to slowly learn their strengths, weaknesses, and special skills. The whole thing was honestly doomed to failure from the onset... I'm sure some people enjoy it, but it really needs to be scraped and redesigned from the ground up... Something that complex is never going to work as a side attraction... Lords of Vermilion was its own game for a reason...
Grand Companies;
Well, this ties into a few things, and I've made this post before, so I'll just link it
here. At the very least I'd like some solid story attached to new ranks...
Originally Posted by Dyvid
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