Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[Mugiawara]

Stuff.

For the Elemental Wheel to work, it would have to be with the entire games battle core replaced.
That being, how the battle system is, and all the jobs needs to be changed.
As for the Bard thing, well, some of us do like being supports...so yes? That's what a support is lol.
Might be boring for you, but it's just buffing/debuffing as a more focused job.
What I was trying to get was there to be more depth into the combat. We don't have any right now.
But, eh you're probably right. You asked me how I would fix it and that's what I'd thought.
Again, not a developer. So thank God I'm not one right? Lol.

@Iromi: It could just be me being below level 50 but you hardly need to be "social" in this game to progress anyway. I don't even understand that complaint.

It's always been this way. To be honest, I have made a single long time friend that I keep in contact because what point is there? I've played since the beginning of 2.0.
I mean I'm pretty social and all but they made where you don't have to, so why bother? I am fine with it.
That was a pro and con of the DF. I kinda like it so I can jump in and go but it's harder to make friends that way but no one wants to stand for hours trying to find a party.

[Shurrikhan]

For the Elemental Wheel to work, it would have to be with the entire games battle core replaced.

Replacing the battle systems isn't going to make the Elemental Wheel suddenly "work" as anything but a "use X only in Y encounter" system.
Replacing the concept of the Elemental Wheel, different from its use in all prior FFs, is the only thing that will make it worthwhile system.

[Iromi]

XI was VERY social dependent you needed a lot of time and friends to do stuff in the game, and I will admit I said before XIV came out that I hope it was more casual friendly then XI but not to the point of casual face roll friendly.

Yup..I met my boyfriend in FFXI for 6, almost 7 years now. I could never form a relationship like I did with him in XIV. I mean..I would never actively seek out romance in an online game.it just kind of happened. FFXI was very unique in its social aspects

That's actually a legit low-point, yeah. I have mixed feelings on it since I'm a pretty shy, introverted person both irl and in mmos and it at least gets the job done, but it doesn't help in building a sense of a community.
On the other hand I find this refreshing over the toxic bickering I've seen playing MOBAs these days.

Yeah...the MOBA chats scare me, and the way people lash out and act up when they can hide behind a computer is kind of frightening lol.

[ADVSS]

maybe with a blm charge/hold down for spell like dragons dogma, would make button bloat for the elemental wheel work, but thatd require a whole change in the battle system, though i thought wanderers minuet shouldve worked like that for bards(keep the mobility, charge boost attack and fire after moving) then a key/mouse player just said "keyboard users would hate that" and i realized that system would be bad for that.

[Velhart]

snip

Depth should be in the content itself, not simply what is on your bar. There is plenty enough depth in the combat. Both in knowing your rotation(also adjusting your rotation to said fight) and the mechanics of the boss. A lot more depth then simply going, "Ohh hey, Mizer's Mistress is weak to fire, lets just stack MNK's with Fist of Fire and BLM's and burn it down." I played both FFXI(prime) and FFXIV 1.0, the elemental wheel was used to exploit and segregate jobs.

[loreleidiangelo]

No forced grouping for me, thanks! I like knowing that my friends spend time with me because they like me, not because of some creepy totalitarian mutual co-dependency system. I'd hate "having" to bring someone along just because we needed a body, or because they have some class/role as their main that we really need to be able to do something. Didn't BRD, RDM, WHM and some others basically have their pick of the litter for groups? I'd hate to have to tolerate someone with too much sass simply because they're one of 10 guys with the job geared on my server. (You already kinda have to do this for Savage statics, with jobs like WAR and SCH...let's keep it out of everyday activities, shall we?)

If you're having trouble making connections in this game, "forcing" people to group with you isn't going to fix that. It might on the surface, but it'll be a connection totally devoid of any real meaning.

Incentives for grouping, like buffed exp for quest turn-ins or rare/more abundant drops from mobs? Sure, okay. More content revolved around flexible group sizes and low barriers of entry like Aquapolis? All for it. But as soon as this game forces me to play with some nyerk just to get even the most basic and tedious of things done...I'm outta here.

[dinnertime]

...

There's a lot more jerks from the Duty Finder though. More likely over there because they're people from another server and you'll probably never see again.

[Duelle]

Regardless of the game you play, MMO endgame at the very core is essentially the same. Run content repeatedly, obtain upgrades.

I wouldn't claim otherwise. Repetition is pretty much a given in endgame.

The issue with XIV's endgame is that it is incredibly limited and gets dull fast. Major patches generally brings us 2 dungeons, one 24-man raid, and one 8-man which are then put on farm-mode for your most current ilvl needs. While it is nice they even give us new content, it comes at the price of making almost everything else obsolete and forgotten. XIV boasts quite the selection of dungeons and raids, but there is very little reason to go back to them as a level 50 player outside of your daily roulettes.

I'll disagree.

The real problem with FFXIV's endgame structure is that there's not enough of it. For example, the first tier of Alexander should have been a large raid instance with 7 or 12 bosses that would take a raiding guild 2 or 3 raid nights to clear instead of four corridors with one boss a piece. EX Primals should have bigger loot pools instead of just weapons and contribute to endgame progression in some way (currently they're this weird side thing). And there really should be more than just the two current extremes for content (story-mode that's too easy for most groups, or savage that is a ridiculous jump in difficulty for same).

I drop something quicker than Doc Holliday can pull the trigger in Tombstone when it isn't something I enjoy. I can't speak for others.

I've been on both sides of that one. Hell, I stayed with FFXI for longer than I should have because of the people I knew there. It's easily proven that the more time spent on something, the more reluctant one is to leave.

And Vermillion is so much better than Pankration? How many people play that?

I never said that, and it certainly isn't the case. Pankration's issue was that it was reliant on RNG (soul plates and relevant abilities being random), it was limited to one place in the whole world (this is a flaw it shares with Verminion), and was abandoned instead of being adjusted.

On that note, Verminion was implemented as something no one asked for: a RTS minigame shackled to the Gold Saucer instead of the Pokemon-inspired system some people wanted.

The difference between campaign and fates is you played a role in an alliance vs beast war. Not just fought beast because they happened to be at a blue icon thing on the map with no story tied to their circumstance.

There are stories tied to FATEs, but unlike Campaign's singular objective, a lot of it is reliant on zone context (which helps in giving the world depth because it means stuff is happening even when you're not gracing everyone's lives with your presence). Giant slugs that want to eat the great tree, an Alla Mighan brigade that has turned to crime, assaulting a fort held by the dravanians, and so on. FATEs in concept are actually pretty good because it gives you an idea of what happens out in the zones without needing a questline to do so; the issue has been that the devs use them to try to stagger player progression by tying content to them (atmas, animus books, etc).

At least Besieged was an fugging actual public system for more than 20 players that you could see other players participating in from the server having varying level ranges from low level to the BiS people.

Besieged also succeeded in making it evident that MMO engines have limits that make such systems a pain. Besieged itself suffered from things like ridiculous lag, really pushed the number of objects and character models the game could display, often led to random disconnects and crashes. Basically what we saw here with Odin, but worse.

It was nice because it had few restrictions and was essentially free exp when everything went according to plan (specially for jobs that had a hard time getting parties), but there were issues.

[Ibi]

In FFXI sneaking around and pulling enemies was the actual gameplay(combat oriented versus quest hubs). And the big part of why people played the game in the first place was the "Open World".

Sounds like we played XI in very different ways and for very different reasons.

You didn't have to even touch sneak or invisible. You could strategically move around and weave between most enemies to pull amazing feats.

You could avoid using them if you felt like arbitrarily making it take longer to get where you're going, sure, but people very rarely did.

And I think you may be overselling things by describing "getting past mobs without aggro" as "amazing feats".

To me hundreds to thousands of quest littered throughout the world is more inconvenient than actually participating in events and combat. Should they remove quest givers to convenience people who feel as I do? It's the same issue I have with the combat in this game and gathering in Dragon Age Inquisition. Busy work(multiple thousands of button pushes versus strategic button presses in reacting or enacting) that takes me out of the core of an mmorpg which is combat. I am not saying crafting and other things are not important.

Like I already said, there's a stark difference between dealing with the inconveniences that are already present and requesting that additional inconveniences be added.

When you start playing the game, you're either already aware or quickly find out what the existing inconveniences are, and can make the decision to either keep playing in spite of them or, if they're too much for you, go play something else.

[Jonnycbad]

Wish there were more open world dungeons and not just dungeons you could just run through with there not being any point. I miss zones with dangerous high level enemies that you have to either sneak past or fight through, but mounts and aetherytes invalidates this. Think about trying to get to Cloister of Flames in Ifrit's Cauldron in FFXI. Chocobo from Kazham through Yuhtunga Jungle, through Yhotar which was like a damned labyrinth even with a map. Then get to Ifrit's Cauldron. Then you need to sneak/invis past high level Bombs/Elementals and Goblins to get there, and some enemies aggro magic and were tough as hell to a level 60ish player.