Your biggest fears for 4.0

[Mikhaill]

How she got 37 likes is beyond me. One, we're talking expansion and not a patch. It's basically a new game. Peeps are still heavily involved with HW, or not even there yet. Two, leave the game if this is the attitude. She's not doing anyone any favors sticking around. The last thing I want to think my guildmate is thinking when running content I am new to is: "This again...sheeesh!"

The grind is all about the chase. Do people really want stuff handed to them? The grind existed long before FF MMOs. You do crap over and over and over and over again until you can do the sh*t in your sleep. You want something? You will grind. To claim it "mine"; you have no choice, but to put in the time.

I agree with Ryu. Do something other than kill sh*t will ya. There is a community and an economy than benefit greatly from your contributions. You might want to think about that Genaxx.

I am trying to figure out why you are attacking people. This game has had the same pattern
from over 3 years. The expansion of HW, was basically ARR in a different paint of coat.
No one's asking for stuff to be handed out, but more variety to shake the system a bit.
Not sure why you're being aggressive. I for one, am tired of predicting what's coming next in 6 months.
I already knew how 3.4 was going to play out in 3.1/3.2/3.3.
For over a year I knew how this current patch was going to be. It's the same exact treadmill under new paint.

[Shurrikhan]

The issue I had with that part is that you need to be REALLY careful implementing dungeons in that style. While I personally wouldn't mind a bigger dungeon (Blackrock Depths and the revamped Karazhan come to mind) with an increased reward, without other gameplay aspects keeping advancement on a leash you'd probably get tanks pulling entire rooms of trash to get AoEd down. The increased reward would thus make all other content not worth doing because you'd likely be able to cap tomestones faster with the big dungeon. If you don't increase the reward on a bigger dungeon, you make that dungeon not worth doing (see: Occulus during WotLK).

The focus should be on introducing different dungeon content. Have one be a sort of free-roam zone where you can kill the first three bosses in any order you want to unlock the fourth boss. Have one dungeon require some back-tracking in order to advance. Make another one a coliseum fight where you fight only bosses and no trash. Make another take place on a moving train. Make another a descent down a big pit where your stopping points are to fight some trash and a boss mob.

The mentioned 3.5 dungeon that'll take place on top of an airship sounds like a step in that direction.

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As for me, what worries me is what the devs are planning for the battle system (I'm hoping they'll go into more detail on this as we move forward instead of release only a vague video with pretty special effects). Suffice to say, the move to HW has left me with shaky faith in the devs, specially taking into account some of the design decisions they made for certain jobs.

This.

I wonder (no sarcasm) if it's unreasonable to expect that SE would take the same thorough look at their dungeons as, say, WoW has when creating and adjusting the dungeon timers for their mythic+ runs, varying from dungeon to dungeon... or similarly, in applying differing rewards for each dungeon to match the time and effort necessary to complete it. That just might be something they're not interested in doing. I imagine a lot could be done through minimum or "dungeon" ilvl scaling, to keep the expected times and rewards around the same band, rather than needing readjustment over time as larger pulls become safer, where the rewards rather than the completion time scales with your (excess / amount reduced in sync) ilvl, or some similarly universal adjustment to mitigate need for manual/individual effort-to-reward balancing, but beyond that... I'm not sure SE will even make the attempt, or even if it'd really be worth it for them to do so?

All these examples would be refreshing in themselves. While I'd love a true exploratory dungeon, let's face it, "dungeon" itself has a new connotation compared to D&D days -- which even then may have been mixed between 'exploratory' and 'survival grinding'. Just getting away from the 'running routine' as you said, Munba, should do a lot for revamping dungeons. And who knows, maybe someday we can get a decent bit of auto- / procedural generation, rather than just randomly attached cube rooms a la Palace of the Dead.

Sidenote: I too am very wary of the upcoming design changes, but more in a WoW 'streamlining' kind of way than the half-assed-ness of HW.

[Fevelle]

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

[Brannigan]

I really hope they don't continue the Heavensward gear progression trend of releasing normal mode/crafted gear that outclasses the previous savage gear.

[Duelle]

I wonder if it's unreasonable to expect that SE would take the same thorough look at their dungeons as, say, WoW has when creating and adjusting the dungeon timers for their mythic+ runs, varying from dungeon to dungeon... or similarly, in applying differing rewards for each dungeon to match the time and effort necessary to complete it.

That would require them first creating dungeon tiers like WoW's normal vs heroic vs mythic, which I find unlikely given how they implement hard mode dungeons.

It would require a change in the reward structure as well, with tomestone gear being the first casualty by either notably nerfing it (to the level of the class order hall sets relative to raid gear) or outright removing it from the game.

That just might be something they're not interested in doing. I imagine a lot could be done through minimum or "dungeon" ilvl scaling, to keep the expected times and rewards around the same band, rather than needing readjustment over time as larger pulls become safer, where the rewards rather than the completion time scales with your (excess / amount reduced in sync) ilvl, or some similarly universal adjustment to mitigate need for manual/individual effort-to-reward balancing, but beyond that... I'm not sure SE will even make the attempt, or even if it'd really be worth it for them to do so?

The problem with ilevel scaling or capping ilevel is that you defeat the purpose of getting gear, which is to get stronger. I guess the third option would be weakening the gains in power from ilevel jumps (so ilvl270 gear is not notably weaker than ilvl280 gear), but I'm sure that'd lead to people complaining about how their gear is not making them notably more powerful when they upgrade one piece.

While I'd love a true exploratory dungeon, let's face it, "dungeon" itself has a new connotation compared to D&D days -- which even then may have been mixed between 'exploratory' and 'survival grinding'.

I guess I look at it differently. What I was thinking is that you're in a jungle or something with three bosses, a big tiger, a big gorilla and a giant worm. To get access to the last boss of the instance you have to kill those three bosses, but the ordered is not decided for you and instead they can be tackled in any order you want. If you want an idea of what the instance would look like, I'd point to The Black Morass from TBC; just bigger and without the portals and time-traveling dragons.

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

You might want to be specific, since the word generic seems to mean nothing these days aside from "something I don't like that I'm trying to make look bad".

I really hope they don't continue the Heavensward gear progression trend of releasing normal mode/crafted gear that outclasses the previous savage gear.

This is sort of inevitable because of ilevel jumps. Crafted gear should be able to allow someone to leapfrog having to do older content, but materia and overmelding has sort of messed that up a bit. Granted, I don't think crafted gear should be of higher ilvl than past tier gear. The Midas Savage sets were all i240, and I think that heavy metal/star velvet stuff should have been i240 to act as a starting point for those that don't want to grind lore tomestones or raid.

[Fevelle]

You might want to be specific, since the word generic seems to mean nothing these days aside from "something I don't like that I'm trying to make look bad".

Think any Korean MMO with strifing/button mashing gameplay. I really really love the RPG feel that the FFXIV targeting system gives, and I hope they don't change from a rotation to "press this button as fast as you can while maintaining your camera on the boss".

[BroodingFicus]

My biggest fear is that in trying to simplify the battle system they'll pull a 'Legion' and oversimplify. I gave wow a go when it dropped a while back after years of not playing and so many of the classes have devolved into 'press this button over and over in hopes of a proc' or 'press these two buttons over and over until this third button is off cooldown'. Personally I don't find any of the ffxiv classes overly difficult to play and manage with the current level of difficulty and while I agree they may need to look at condensing down some skills (looking at things like Stone and Aero having three versions or little used skills that could be combined into others) I'd hate to see them gut the classes in favor of 'fewer buttons'.

[Elazu]

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

As opposed to... an even more generic tab targeting system?

[Slevin_Impudicus]

My biggest fears are the changes to the battle system. I fear they will change it too much and make FFXIV another generic action-MMO.

I do not fear this. I think this would be the single biggest improvement they could make. Then it would feel more like combat with physics and action/reaction and less like competitive synchronized dancing.

[Dragon_Sanders]

As MAX level up to 70, new skills added, there'll be too many skills that my hot bar BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM