Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Nalien]

In my opinion removing the loot restrictions only in the savage content would be one of the biggest motivations for the players to do it - so removing the loot restrictions in the easy content would be counterproductive.

Loot restrictions are fine, in my opinion. The problem is the way XIV handles them, I think...

Part of the problem is just content... I think back to XI, and that game technically had what I guess amounts to weekly lockouts on content... I don't recall it being weekly, but there was something like "You need to wait 3 days before you can do Limbus again", where I think XI got away with this, is that the lockouts weren't completely unjustified... Part of that is just the wealth of relevant content XI offered, you weren't stuck waiting to challenge Limbus again, you were doing Dynamis, and then Salvage, and then Einherjar... XIV has a very hard time replicated that, because gear progression just isn't a thing... If you're getting Midan gear, you've little use for Weeping City or Diadem rewards, what's more... The difficulty of all the other content? Non-existent... This game pretty much has a wealth of casual oriented content, and 4 glorified trails claiming to be raids... There is pretty much nothing in between, if Midas is satisfying you, and you clear it on Wednesday, see you next Tuesday... I really doubt this games dungeons or beast tribe dailies are going to keep you griped while waiting for the reset...

One thing XIV perhaps could replicate for hardcore content, that XI did a very good job of IMO, is the build up to an event... Dynamis and Limbus, for example, had a Gil component to access them, I forget what it used to be, but 500k per Lamp for Dynamis sounds about right... I'd absolutely love something like this in XIV, because I'm running up to 100M having put no real effort into making Gil... The game needs a solid Gil drain, and earning entry to content? That gives you something to do when you're effectively locked out... Rather than "See you next week" after clearing Midas, you go out and work on whatever you need to enter next week... Doesn't have to be Gil either... Heck, 1.x actually did this... You couldn't just queue up on the Duty Finder and challenge Ifrit, you had to farm Amalj'aa for some crap so you could get to Ifrit... Sounds annoying? Yeah, I guess it is, but it added weight to events IMO. The closest we have to that these days is what? Gathering a map for Aquapolis? I guess Diadem has you spending Gil/FC Credits to enter, but ho boy did they make that a completely redundant amount... I almost don't even know why they bothered, I mean I could say that about Diadem in general, but 700 Gil to enter Diadem? In a game where I can sneeze and earn 20,000 Gil? It's bad enough that you tried to replicate something like Dynamis but completely missed every single point... Obviously powerful rare gear isn't a thing in XIV, so we've scratched that off from the start... I wanted my Wyrm Armet from Dynamis for its enhancement effect, but most Dynamis gear was trash, more than anything I wanted that stuff because it looked good... You can replicate that in Diadem at least, after all #GlamourIsTheTrueEndgame... Oh what's that? Diadem has no unique gear? It's all randomized skins of existing gear? I... I don't even...

Level design is another big thing... I mean, raids really are just glorified trials... Coil did a much better job of this than Alexander, and even then Coil wasn't that great, but you actually had some build up before most boss fights... While a lot might complain that groups of trash are just needless filler, I still see them as a good thing... It's a time waster, yes good, raids are meant to be the ultimate time waster... Alexander removed much of that, and as a result you can pretty much just blow through it once you've gotten the fights on farm... You finish the content sooner, and get bored sooner while waiting for the weekly reset... The thing is though, the trash don't have to feel like filler, they could be substantial... I'm going to jump back to Limbus for a minute, because there were actually two ways to go about doing that; You could clear a wing, get a key item, clear all the wings, use all the key items to take on Proto-Ultima/Omega. You could also just go in and farm Ancient Beastcoins. I don't recall Limbus having much in the way of technical boss fights for each wing, might have been some but I remember it being more Aquapolis style challenges against various enemies (although likening it Aquapolis is a huge disservice to Limbus...), the two Proto bosses were very much bosses though, but my point was Ancient Beastcoins. The trash in Limbus was there to pad out the event, but it was also something you could farm for a valuable reward... If you wanted the key item, you could skip a fair amount IIRC, but you could also fully clear every floor, earn a lot of Ancient Beastcoins, and time out without even getting the key item... Christ... I wish Deep Dungeons was going this route... It has very similar level design, slapping a Smalt Chip (one of the key items for Proto-Omega, IIRC) on Edda to keep her relevant as more gets added, and turning those Potsherds into Ancient Beastcoins? I could love the crap out of Deep Dungeons...

Restrictions on entry/loot has it's place, without them we'd just burn through content and be done with it... XIV is just really unimaginative with its restrictions... "It's Tuesday, time to play the game again", there just isn't any padding around the restriction... I think this game just has too much of a focus on instant gratification... Perhaps the developers just still feel bad about 1.0 or something, it's a really odd choice for a MMO given it's unlikely to retain players longterm... I remember some early interviews with Yoshida, where he said it's fine/normal for people to unsub between patches... I'm just like... Really? You don't want a MMO people are constantly sitting down to play? Those are the ones people talk about... If you want people to play for only 1 month in a 3 month patch cycle, where is your free advertisement coming from? That's two months I'm either not talking about XIV, or justifying not playing it, not the best sales pitch... That doesn't draw people in... I mean yeah, it's fine for some people to just hop in for the story then hop out, but your MMO shouldn't be built around that concept... Yet here we are, a MMO which routinely resets progression so that people just getting back into it aren't left behind... Were I a businessman, I would question why people are abandoning progression and coming back for major patches.... Those are extra subscription fees I could be collecting... Why build around the concept that people will need to catch up, when you can instead build around the concept of retaining them so they not only don't need to catch up, but are giving you more money as well! Crazy idea, I know... Plus, maybe if we weren't constantly nulling progression with these patches, gear would feel slightly more persistent and valuable, addressing the problem that's resulting in at least a few people abandoning the game to begin with... Sometimes I wonder if SE just got too much money in the 90s, and now it's just allergic to the stuff...