Patch 3.2 Trailer is Up

[Kaurie]

I guess you could see the tank Vit stat change in 3.2 as an overhaul. I'm looking forward to not having to compete with DPS over gear that's often considered BiS if you're an aggressive tank..

Oh I do see that as a change. Even the upcoming materia change is something different. I was just pointing out that expecting FFXIV to change its formula is not far-fetched. That said, a certain sense of realism needs to be considered. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that we will have materia slots on gear (something I've seen proposed on threads in this forum prior to the announced change), while requesting a complete removal of vertical progression is probably less realistic.

I tend to provide requests that walk the line between realistic and not-realistic. I do this, because I feel that SE tends to want to take baby-steps in their adjustments, so if they are taking a baby step towards a big change, the baby step will be much bigger. Whereas if they take a baby-step towards a small change, then it may be effectively unnoticeable.

I also hope that some of the bigger changes are things they think about while they work on their next expansion - where larger changes are more accepted and expected.

The way we play our jobs has been completely changed with lv 60, we have flying, a crafting specialization system, FC workshops, and a casual tier to endgame raids, and then more of the things that were present in ARR (dungeons, primals, raid). I'm sorry, but I wouldn't call all that, as well as new zones, and the promise of adding more content over a steady basis "very little". Something I've noticed about the development team, however, is that they often have really cool ideas, but poor implementations of them, like hunts and the Diadem.

You and Alahra both pointed this out. It's a good point for sure, lots of stuff was added. The issue is that most of that new stuff goes largely unnoticed by end-game, combat focused players. With the way Relic was added, ARR hunts are better than FFXIV hunts - so I actually use my Shiva mount more than my flying mount. Specializations are great for crafters, I guess? I personally don't craft and have mostly heard complaints, but have no real idea. The casual tier to end-game raids merely made the challenging content less desirable - this helped a lot for the non raiding community but was a huge hit to the raiding community.

In terms of dungeons, with the level increase, we effectively lost more dungeons than we gained. Many dungeons became obsolete, and most of the new dungeons were between 51-59. We have 5 dungeons now for our end-game currency, vs the 17 we had at 50. This is to be expected, but we do have less in a sense.

The biggest addition would be the new skills obtained between 50 and 60, and this is debatable, but I find they again took away from the game. I went from enjoying the following jobs and worked to gear all of them in 2.x: BRD, BLM, PLD, SCH, WHM, SMN, NIN, DRG to enjoying the following jobs in 3.x: SMN, WHM, SCH. For me, the changes took away the fun of a lot of jobs, and now I have less reason to obtain tomestones for gearing, less reasons to run the 24-man to gear alts etc. etc. This, of course, is personal opinion and experiences will vary.

[Odett]

Oh I do see that as a change. Even the upcoming materia change is something different. I was just pointing out that expecting FFXIV to change its formula is not far-fetched. That said, a certain sense of realism needs to be considered. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that we will have materia slots on gear (something I've seen proposed on threads in this forum prior to the announced change), while requesting a complete removal of vertical progression is probably less realistic.

I tend to provide requests that walk the line between realistic and not-realistic. I do this, because I feel that SE tends to want to take baby-steps in their adjustments, so if they are taking a baby step towards a big change, the baby step will be much bigger. Whereas if they take a baby-step towards a small change, then it may be effectively unnoticeable.

I also hope that some of the bigger changes are things they think about while they work on their next expansion - where larger changes are more accepted and expected.


You and Alahra both pointed this out. It's a good point for sure, lots of stuff was added. The issue is that most of that new stuff goes largely unnoticed by end-game, combat focused players. With the way Relic was added, ARR hunts are better than FFXIV hunts - so I actually use my Shiva mount more than my flying mount. Specializations are great for crafters, I guess? I personally don't craft and have mostly heard complaints, but have no real idea. The casual tier to end-game raids merely made the challenging content less desirable - this helped a lot for the non raiding community but was a huge hit to the raiding community.

In terms of dungeons, with the level increase, we effectively lost more dungeons than we gained. Many dungeons became obsolete, and most of the new dungeons were between 51-59. We have 5 dungeons now for our end-game currency, vs the 17 we had at 50. This is to be expected, but we do have less in a sense.

The biggest addition would be the new skills obtained between 50 and 60, and this is debatable, but I find they again took away from the game. I went from enjoying the following jobs and worked to gear all of them in 2.x: BRD, BLM, PLD, SCH, WHM, SMN, NIN, DRG to enjoying the following jobs in 3.x: SMN, WHM, SCH. For me, the changes took away the fun of a lot of jobs, and now I have less reason to obtain tomestones for gearing, less reasons to run the 24-man to gear alts etc. etc. This, of course, is personal opinion and experiences will vary.

Right, it's true that it's a matter of opinion. I myself have enjoyed the lv 60 rotations of the jobs I've leveled to 60 so far (DRK, WAR, PLD, BLM, WHM, DRG, NIN) and I feel like they add more depth, but it's really a personal thing. The easiness of Alex Gordias Normal was something I was/am against when it came out, mostly because it doesn't have a "place". What I mean by this is that players that don't seek challenges at max level already have a "raid" for this (the towers and now void ark). Ideally, I feel like it should have functioned as a stepping stone for players that would like to get into raiding, but its difficulty difference compared to Alex Savage was much too big, so it ended up being content that was soon outclassed by the other casual raid (VA) in terms of rewards. I guess the only way to keep it relevant after that was to add it to the relic grind.

I feel like Alex Normal mode would have been best implemented if it was that of a difficulty of Coil, and kept Savage the way it was, that way appeasing players who don't seek challenges with like 90% of this game's other content, more midcore groups with Alex NM, and hardcore groups with Alex Savage. Right now, we basically have Thordan, A1S, and A2S at the difficulty of your average raid group, and A3S and A4S for the hardcore raiders, which is not a lot of content for raiders overall. I guess that Patch 3.2 is looking to remedy this by making Alex Midas Savage the difficulty of Coil content at the time of release, so that should appease many raiders that have been smashing their heads against A3S, or quit as a result, thereby bringing a healthy amount of players back to the raiding community, but it also means taking a bone away from the cutting-edge groups that pushed themselves to beat A3S and A4S when it was new content.