Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[BCRD]

Agreed and shocked at by how many players oppenly dont want a challenge. Maybe complainers are just wildly more vocal and thats what se reads into? The mmo gamers that appriciate long term rewards and community is being overrun by "want it now" group pretty hard in these forums. Felt like SE used ignored that group and just concentrated on making a great game with that ffxi feel. I lost hope hope that they will turn ffxiv around but maybe the next ff mmo will be the best of both worlds.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

1) The game should continue to add new content as it is now, but it SHOULD NOT negate old content. THE ITEM LEVEL SYSTEM SHOULD BE ABOLISHED COMPLETELY! Aka ARR endgame should still be valid today and should still be partially valid next expansion with some gear. (horizontalish growth - A slow replacement of gear and multiple paths and gear sets. Gear needs to be replaced but I would say once every 3yrs not every 3 months)

From a business perspective, this would be financial suicide. You need systems designed to keep people playing in an MMO. The developers can only create so much content, especially given the current rate of consumption. If gear progression is essentially nonexistent, you eliminate any purpose to maintaining your sub once you've beaten the content. We're no longer getting tomes or gear drops from it. Thus, once the novelty of the challenge wears off, people will simply move on.

You are attempting to adopt a fifteen year old model-- one that only garnered a niche audience I might add. For all the recent praise FFXI gets around here. It never once held a high subscription total, at least by comparison. Does that make it a bad game? No. Just a dated one.

2) The Stats in the game for weapons should be linear. Some Armor/Weapons should be Better in X fight or in X party composition. There should be unique stats on gear as well as negative attributes. Example tank Body Give it Physical Defense +5% Magic dmg taken +10%, or give it really high defense with - str and - attack. There should not be an item that is BIS for everything. Honestly SE right now could remove all stats and just have 1 universal stat now called Item Level which effects all attributes and it would not change the game 1 bit, this is bad... really balanced but really bad.

I have to wonder what short of challenge or interest comes from arbitrarily swapping gear for occasional fights. You know what I find annoying? Having to put on the Ixal gloves every day to do my dailies. So I set up a specific gearset with them equipped (or macro), toss it on my hotbat and never think about it again.

Guess what everyone else will do if we were ever required to constantly swap gear for bosses. I just don't see the point. Playing around with stats, I can at least see the merit in, though I maintain horizontal progression is fundamentally an illusion.

3) The open world areas need to be at least 2-3xs larger then currently... Heavensward is tons better then ARR but they are still small compared to other titles suck as WoW, FFXI, AA, Aion, and the rest.

This was attempted in 1.0... and widely complained about. Heavensward is arguably too large already. What purpose does tripling the size serve? It only makes open world travel a complete slog. Black Desert has some enormous maps and despite some nice scenery, it's boring. I don't want to waste an hour of my time traveling from point A to B, especially if it's going to be a frequent occurrence.

4) Non-Fate Open World Party Leveling should be incorporated. The mentality of only leveling through content is not a good one when it forces fate zergs and mindless quest grinding.

People are always going to find the most efficient way to level, and spam it. If the EXP gains for these open world parties aren't enough to surpass fate grinding, they'll be entirely ignored. Leveling, at this point, is easy.

5) Open world needs danger, meaning mobs the strength of stuff found in Weeping City currently in the open world (not just in fates). If you wonder pointlessly into the wilds solo and under geared, you should get your face stomped into the ground.

This would efficiently kill the game. And I'll preface it by saying it has little to do with instant gratification or those "terrible casuals." Being crushed by trash mobs isn't fun.

You have now turned the open world into a massive restricted piece of content wholly dependent on a person being able to readily find parties or have pre-existing friends to complete even mundane tasks. A fact compounded by your previous mention of tripling the map sizes. Simply unlocking new cities or doing side quests would turn into tedious bouts of boredom or be downright impossible should you not be able to find enough players willing to help you through. How many people complain about dungeon mobs being boring? This system essentially replicates it on a open world level.

I'll openly admit, I probably wouldn't continue playing myself, and I am hardly a "casual" player. Why? Because I do not find taking 5,000 damage from a toad mob's auto attack fun. It's boring, and devolve the entire game into a tedious grind merely going from city to city. There is a reason virtually no game of any genre has open world trash mobs that will annihilate the player-- but instead limits it to certain areas you probably aren't meant to explore for a while.

6) Game Needs to have a focus on guilds in terms of ENDGAME progression. Right now guilds have 0 use for anything other then social aspects, this is the main reason why guilds average 10ppl or less in ffxiv and people come and go like it is a revolving door. Yes people who do not join guilds or refuse to should have their progression hindered or just not have access to some content.... THIS IS A MMO, guilds are suppose to be a focal point of endgame.

I would like to see more guild activity, however they will always be primarily social hubs. The responsibility of organizing say, raids, falls on the respective leaders if that is what they want to do.

8) Groups need to be able to enter all content with any size up to max outside duty finder. Content is designed for 8 let them enter with 7 if they want. Or in terms of endgame allow a guild to take 5-30 people if they want just make the content designed for the max and increasingly harder to do as you get less people. (Aka doable with 25 but harder then 30, doable in 20 with good endgame gear, doable with 15 if you have top tier endgame gear)

... this would render Savage utterly pointless. Bringing even only four additional players would eliminate any challenge it had; a fact wholly contradictory to your arguments earlier about how easy the game is. Scaling the boss' stats based on arbitrary party composition would also be a balancing nightmare on the devs. Not to mention serve no real benefit. If Midas were able to maintain the equivalent difficulty regardless of party numbers. You're now attempting to balance upwards of 30 people's different schedule on a fight many of them probably won't get for a long time. Good luck with that.

9) Remove penalties for running things as a guild. (Aka savage chest penalty).

Thereby allowing players to unlock everything within a few weeks grind. Well, if you want to up the complaint threads about having nothing to do. This will help.

12) Remove the 1 job role per class.... SEE ffxi for this one RDM = Healer, Support, Crowd Control, Main Tank, Kiter Depending on the build and fight. (The ability to build jobs and gear to fit certain fights was one of the strengths of FFXI, the key is making it where 1 specific job build is not needed to win but a benefit if you have it)

Now that would suck for whomever lost all their progression on a job the enjoyed playing. But screw 'em, right? They'll learn to like something new! WoW has attempted this with their re-balances; only to be meant with immense backlash each and every time. The removal of a whole job would undoubtedly have people quitting.

Putting all that aside, the illusion of choice rears its head again. People nowadays have far more tools than they used to. They will find the best combination, and those unwilling to adopt it, won't be invited to parties.

14) Remove the scripted fights from everything. I do not like fights where I can start a stop watch and know exactly the second the mob will use an attack everytime.

All fights, in every game, are scripted to some extent. I would like to see some randomization on attack orders to make endgame less about memorizing a boss' patterns. But they will always be scripted, lest you get completely unwinnable fights because the boss decided to spam his ultimate attacks repeatedly.

15) Remove the 10-14min rage timers from everything or expand it up to a 1hr rage timer. The benefit of better gear should be quicker and easier clearing, DPS checks should be a rare thing not the standard.

This is part of the challenge; being capable of defeating it in a set amount of time. Seeing how rare bosses actually reach enrage, it's not even an issue, really.
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I left some out as I generally don't disagree with them, or am at least indifferent to what was said.

[Dzian]

10. As long as it doesn't mean you can access Savage gear without participation in a Savage raid (even if by as indirect a relationship as its materials) I don't have an issue with that, though I don't think it's necessary either. Crafting already plays a huge part at the start of each content tier by giving higher ilvl than the previously best raid gear and even higher secondary stats than the new weekly-cap normal gear (see Eikon gear).

This is a problem on both sides of the fence though. the raiders often say this is a problem because the gear they get from the previous teir of raid teir is essentially worthless when the next teir comes out. Eikon for example completely obsoleted Gordian stuff where Gordian stuff should have been at least entry level gear to savage midas. but eikon made it completely useless. then you have the non raiders who look at this same gear and because its useless they simply don't bother raiding at all.

13. To do what, exactly, with those job types? Both are, in the end, either going to increase clear speed for a given composition or not, and will be taken or ignored accordingly. What new playstyles would they actually offer? How would they feel different enough to attract more players? And, the obvious support-specific question: how are they going to be about as effective in a small group as in a large one, if you want to see them ever used in light parties without being overpowered in full parties? Also, by CCers do you mean debuffers in general (which can overlap with support, much like Trick Attack in an otherwise DPS job)? Almost nothing's CCable in endgame, nor is it designed to make use of CCs. If they are truly just CCers, they would be unable to attend virtually all significant content released thus far.

this needs to change crowd control should function in combat. nothing is ever slept or heavied or bound for example. having to silience or stun anything is incredibly rare and ultimately most of the associated skills are just spammed as a small dps increase as often as possible.

i don't think ive ever seen an instance where a bard has needed shadowbind for example. there's a good amount of cc skills in the game but essentially never a situation in which there usefull... even with stuns tend to find things you could stun you can't because everyone has spammed there stuns for the extra dps and the boss is now immune. ifrit for example stun the triple eruptions with shield bash to let the casters keep casting instead of having to move but the melee have spammed stuns so much he's immune. they really need to rework this stuff. and make it more important

[Masekase_Hurricane]

i don't think ive ever seen an instance where a bard has needed shadowbind for example.

Shadowbind was used in coil when bard was actually requested for there and drg was the loldrg. I know that was the case back in 2-2.3 (I quit in 2.3) not sure if it continued as drg fix came not long after.

[DPZ2]

Since this has evolved into a "make things harder/more challenging" topic, thought I'd add my own requests:

1. Perma-death. Get rid of this confounded 'ressurection' thing every time you die. A Real MMO should penalize you properly for messing up

2. If that's a no-go because you've gotten used to these casual MMOs, then penalize deaths by removing XP and/or levels. Level 59 BLM when you die? Say hello to level 55 BLM.

3. Remove Aetherytes. Bam. And force a cut-scene for every air-ship trip, or no, even better ... I figure it takes a couple of days to travel between the 3 major cities ... once you start travel, you log off and wait for an email indicating you can go back to playing.

4. Magic abilities should require you to select the spells you want to cast and memorize them overnight for use the next day. You're limited in the number of spells you can memorize at a particular level, and once you cast them all you're done playing for the day.

[Velhart]

12) Remove the 1 job role per class.... SEE ffxi for this one RDM = Healer, Support, Crowd Control, Main Tank, Kiter Depending on the build and fight. (The ability to build jobs and gear to fit certain fights was one of the strengths of FFXI, the key is making it where 1 specific job build is not needed to win but a benefit if you have it)

That is way too much balancing, especially for a game that lets you switch jobs on the same character easily. In WoW, it makes more sense because one class is bound to one character, and WoW does not have nearly the amount of classes that FFXI does and inevitably FFXIV. When FFXIV has 20+ jobs in the future, how do you think they will accommodate and balance all that? It would be a horrid mess. You can change your job on the spot to be whichever of those roles you like, that is the benefit of the Armory System. Before you argue gear, I would argue back if you are switching roles within a job, you are switching gear also more than likely.

But to argue your other 15 points, it basically comes down to "I want FFXI-2."

[Shurrikhan]

This is a problem on both sides of the fence though. the raiders often say this is a problem because the gear they get from the previous teir of raid teir is essentially worthless when the next teir comes out. Eikon for example completely obsoleted Gordian stuff where Gordian stuff should have been at least entry level gear to savage midas. but eikon made it completely useless. then you have the non raiders who look at this same gear and because its useless they simply don't bother raiding at all.

In the example I was responding to the materials for the craft at least had to come from the savage raid. I guess I just let my mind fill in the blanks that might otherwise allow a static quitter to take the week's last floor key item with him to sell or use in a different role or with a different static at the expense of his former teammates' gear progression.

This needs to change crowd control should function in combat. nothing is ever slept or heavied or bound for example. having to silience or stun anything is incredibly rare and ultimately most of the associated skills are just spammed as a small dps increase as often as possible.

i don't think ive ever seen an instance where a bard has needed shadowbind for example. there's a good amount of cc skills in the game but essentially never a situation in which there usefull... even with stuns tend to find things you could stun you can't because everyone has spammed there stuns for the extra dps and the boss is now immune. ifrit for example stun the triple eruptions with shield bash to let the casters keep casting instead of having to move but the melee have spammed stuns so much he's immune. they really need to rework this stuff. and make it more important

Indeed. I don't think I've felt like CCs had a real regularly applicable use since no-tanking Darkhold or 4-DPSing Stone Vigil to level. Though of course, they've scarcely even been allowed since. That much is pretty easy to fix. You just revert their immunities, making the mobs vulnerable to more types of CC again. Done. The real issue is that there are so few mechanics that require CC, especially in raid, making them feel generally irrelevant in standard compositions or any scripted fights with the exception of pre-nerf T7, and maybe T1 at minimum ilvl sync (heavy'ed slimes).

One of the easiest quick fixes for the oGCD stun DRed syndrome is to simply make those certain bosses immune to stuns except when casting or preparing abilities. I could have sworn there was one example of this in-game already, but perhaps not. At that point you just need at least one person to have a stun ready, and not to use more stuns in the cast windows than there are actual casts within a DR cycle (i.e. until the duration the DR would reset to full duration stuns). If that sounds too easy, a small addition similar to that would be for the boss to require X number or (modified) potency of stuns in order to actually be stunned, only the last of which (the one that actually has an effect, and therefore duration) triggers DR.

[JisKing98]

idk man have you seen demon hunters lately? Really the devs should take a look at other mmos out there and take some things from them and improve on it.

[Zojha]

I could have sworn there was one example of this in-game already[...]

Lost City (Hard) - Kuribu. Cure III I think was the spell (No inversion). All other spells are not interruptible.

[Ibi]

The real issue is that there are so few mechanics that require CC, especially in raid, making them feel generally irrelevant in standard compositions or any scripted fights with the exception of pre-nerf T7, and maybe T1 at minimum ilvl sync (heavy'ed slimes).

One of the biggest issues would be that if they make mechanics in raids that require CC, they have to make sure that any reasonable raid group has access to that CC. Especially if it's open to DF/RF, where there's zero guarantee with regards to what jobs will be present.

That pretty much limits them to stuns and silences (and, if multiples of a job are allowed, it's possible to end up with a composition that can't even silence), which is why those are the only types of CC that we do see required in raids.