Why FFXIV endgame is flawed and how it could be great, one players opinion

[Stanelis]

Then it wouldn't be an MMORPG then. People would get everything done then unsub until next patch.

Generally, when you complete the content of a video game, you generally move on to another game while waiting for new content to be released, which is totally fine. But that can be avoided by providing replay value to the content (like, making something fun enough to be worth playing a large number of time, for example by making the players adapt to changes in the pattern of the content), which is sorely lacking in FFXIV, as the battle system is too simple and lacks depths and synergies (you basically only DPS and heal, as a class, and have minimal amounts of reactive utility spells).

Also, it is true that old MMORPG have an history of trying to make players stick to the game by implementing grinds, which isn't good game design (and the reason why MMORPG were not popular before WoW, a game which reduced the grind compared to older MMORPG).

[AeraLure]

I don't mind the farming. I've always been one to grind. I just don't find the grind in this game to be fun:

Stats are too simple. There's really not a lot of customization to do.

Elemental attributes are not used at all. Could have provided variation in choice of eq or weapon setup per area.

Eq is too linear. Pretty much just equip the highest iLvl thing. There could have been other weapon types for each job.

The tome/token system isn't really that exciting.

I wish it had some elements of PSO. That game still did a lot of heavy farm elements right imho. In every area you might encounter a rare version of a monster with a really rare drop. A reason going back to a low level area with a max character was still fun. You might also get a weapon with different elemental attributes. Or you could swap between a few weapon styles during combat.

I still find this game fun in different ways, but occasionally tedium gets to me and it's not the grinding. Love grinding. It's sort of more how it's done here. Stats need more depth. Need reasons to replay area that make it fun.

Also end game raiding would be better (to me) if it wasn't a boss in a box style. There's no atmosphere. No story. No sense of exploration. Just go slam yourself against a foe. It does get old.

[Alberel]

People wouldn't do more than half of what you're suggesting. Look at the Diadem. It died partially because people are not interested in a massive zone with annoying trash mobs and areas they have to explore. The current raid scene is popular because of its simplicity. Adding story and whatever else will only push them away. This is why we have Normal and Extreme/Savage. Those only looking for story have the 'easier' option while others have a challenge. If you question actual raiders, I suspect very few will complain beyond asking for more fights.

The diadem died because it was poorly implemented and extremely unrewarding. There are other MMOs with similar content where it is very popular, but in those games there's more structure, more of a purpose to going there, and it rewards you very nicely.

Honestly if there's any other form of endgame content I'd like to see it's Nyzul Isle from XI. XI had so much variety in its different forms of endgame content. I don't know why SE isn't adapting them for XIV.

[AnduinLynn]

Unrewarding? I make 100-200k a run with petros, and if I get 3 spools an extra 140k for a wind silk. The combat perhaps might be lacking, but there are still the eso and lore reward and I believe spools are obtainable from monsters as well.

[RhaegarFFXIFenrir]

I had this discussion in Teamspeak with some friends the other night. I mentioned that it would be nice to have something like dynamis/sky/sea in the game. Something where we could get a few people or a lot of people together and tackle content. They pointed out my error: that content was not fun. It was a chore you had to do if you wanted any decent gear. Each of them were hours of mindless content that you basically beat by throwing a lot of bodies at and praying to RNGesus for a drop.

The thing is, there's nothing inherently wrong with the raiding system of XIV. It's designed for smaller groups and places and emphasis on player skill rather than just overwhelming with numbers. It's a perfect fit for this game.

What I would like to see is even smaller raids. Something like a Nyzul Isle or Salvage designed for 4 players. The drops would all be tokens. Get enough of them together and you get a piece of almost top tier gear (i235 for example).

The Tower would be something with 100 random levels like Nyzul was and resets every week. You can only get 1 boss/zone clear drop each week, but put other items in there that as well that would have no weekly cap, or perhaps have the trash mobs drop some crafting materials that can only be found in that content.

The Salvage-like raid could consist of 2 parties of 4, each with their own loot tables. Completing instances of that would unlock a branching system of instances. Once a path is chosen, the player is stuck on that path until weekly reset. Each party would have their own loot tables and that loot would once again be tokens. The trade in for the drops would require several tokens plus some crafted goods. This gear would be top notch, but would take a lot of work/time investment to get those gears.

The point of these examples is that they are comprised of small teams rather than large raids. The mechanics are a bit different from the norm but a SKILLED semi-casual player could still get through this content. It would supply an alternative type of raid to those who are skilled enough to do savage alexander but can't find a static or can't commit to the time requirements a static requires.

[MicahZerrshia]

that content was not fun. It was a chore you had to do if you wanted any decent gear.

But that is the point, tome farming is not fun and after you do learn the bosses rotations you can mostly go into autopilot. As hard as titan ex was at i90, as soon as you learn it, autopilot and kill it 200 times, cross your fingers and repeat. It requires some skill and a lot of attention at first, then just muscle memory.

They could still give us mechanic heavy fights on bosses. Things that required skill and not just bodies. But it could be more than a room with a big pissed off whatever. They could implement it so the big boss room is fairly easy to access for those who like a simple, one shot boss. But they could do so much more that does take skill, cooperation and creates actual enjoyment.

And I think people are looking at it too much like diadem and thinking inside the same box that the devs do, which is why we are stuck in a cycle of uncreative endgame.

Think outside the boss in a box and the horribly implemented diadem/tome system.

[Amiaze]

In my opinion there is no depth or creativity to endgame in ffxiv...

What are your thoughts and ideas?

I can't say I disagree with your ideas, but I don't exactly agree with them, either. As someone else said, FFXIV is a theme park MMO. People often ask for the devs to change certain aspects of it, but they wanted it to be a theme park from the beginning of 2.0, so many of these things simply won't happen.


That being said, I do think that there is room for diversity in the raids still. Our final bout with ADS changed depending on our party composition and overall DPS output: you had more than one path and you could either go through the mechanics or go for a hard DPS check. Building upon this idea for future raids wouldn't be bad.

Diadem was a good attempt, but I think part of the reason it failed was because it tried to be too much at once. It tried to cater to disciples of war/magic, disciples of the hand, and disciples of the land while adding large and interesting exploration while having both trash mobs and bosses while implementing the broadest RNG-based loot system in the game...without making other dungeons and endgame raid gear-drops pointless.

My suggestion would be to focus on splitting some of the ideas presented in Diadem into future content within dungeons/raids without betraying the theme park ride that is FFXIV. The argument against multiple options is that players will always choose the option of least resistance, but making it so that there are varying paths based on your play style and party composition (again, like ADS) is much more interesting idea, in my opinion.

[mirta000]

That's only because, in FFXIV, everything revolves around repeating something a very large amount of time. Maybe people would be in less of a hurry if the replay value of the content was better and didn't require so much farm.

Wildstar adventures. You outgear them so fast that you're lucky to run them once. Still only a specific path is ever chosen (the only people to have ever seen all paths of Malgrave, either begged their guild, or were there at launch).
GW2 dungeons done for monetary rewards (before HoT when money was good enough). CoF P1 was spammed. CoF P3 was almost never touched, even though it did offer more rewards. Path of least resistance.
GW2 fractals (a dungeon made out of random instances). You would always RNG swamp first because it's fast. Now that they divided the fractals and you no longer have to do 3 connected ones, but rather just 1, swamp is the ONLY thing ever run.

In these games you not only not have to repeat this content a lot, but you can skip it entirely. Yet the same mentality persists.

[FoxyAreku]

So why play this one? It's built for a player to do everything themselves. Only dungeons and raiding require more people. Raiding is such a small portion of this game I don't even know why they bother with it, it's not fun content 90% of the time. Dungeons are nearly in the same boat because of fates, which can be quicker to level up with depending on certain circumstances. Honestly you beat one raid boss you beat them all given how badly they seem to follow the exact same format of burning adds and learning patterns. Give me more raids like Steps of Faith prenurf and then maybe I'll change my views.

Everything requires other people. The only thing you can do on your own is the open world junk (which is the same for all mmos).

They even made crafting require other people, I love it.

snip.

I guess I just don't understand why you have to have all this in one place.

I'd rather this stuff be spread out across the world like it currently is. If my understanding of your idea is correct you want a lot of stuff to do other than downing bosses, but we already have that with crafting, gold saucer, glamour farms, diadem, just to name a few. There's so much stuff to do in this game other than downing bosses it just seems like a waste of time to me to make the same stuff except putting them in the raid for some reason.

[Chasely]

Think of how awesome coil would have been, or Alex and regular dungeons could be, if you entered and had various tasks that you could complete but didn't necessarily have to depending on your objective. There could be a boss and a plethora of mini bosses in a zone, which could be a static maze, a maze that you could alter by completing objectives or an open field like Diadem. Trash mobs who are more than a way to lazily impede the speed of your progress, dropping minor tokens that could be used to purchase items to buy relic or crafting materials with. Minor bosses could give broken armor that could be used to make gear slightly lesser than big boss gear, glamour pieces, mounts, furnishings, the list could go on.

You could go in and get the win to open other zones or that big loot or you could go in and farm trash mob tokens and mini bosses. It would open a whole new world of content and stay relevant next month when the ilvl went up thanks to the abundance of other items that would still be in demand.

They could add challenges that didn't require 8 people of maximum ilvl at the peak of their skills and some that did. Sure it would still be grindy but show me an mmo that doesn't have grind to it in one way or another. Grind is a fundamental staple or mmo's that will likely never disappear.

FFXI had several of these types of raids. They were immensely popular, but then again, they didn't become worthless 3-6 months later.

Nyzul Isle was a 100 floor dungeon with bosses every 10 floors. Your progress was saved every 5. You got random objectives for mthe lamp at the start of the dungeon. They included killing specific mobs, wiping out all the trash in the zone, completing puzzles, etc. The floors also had random layouts. No two climbs were exactly the same.

Dynamis was a massive instance full of monsters where you and up to 63 of your friends could farm trash for gear and special currency, kill bosses for weapon upgrades, etc. there were special monsters which increased your max time in the zone so you could farm for longer periods.

Salvage was a dungeon with multiple paths which changed as you cleared objectives. You could get tokens and special slips which allowed you to get new gear and weapons.

There were also overworld events where you could join millitary divisions and fight back hordes of monsters to claim territories in the name of your kingdom. The rewards were large amounts of EXP, and points your could spend to buy new gear, teleport around for free, etc.

Those were just a few of the options we had in FFXI. all of which were rendered pointless when Yoshi-P took over, created an easy mode set of dungeons, and drove half the playerbase off. Massive server merges followed about 6 months later.