FF14 HW Excitement/Patch 2.5X VS SB Excitement/Patch 3.5X!

[Talraen]

These are my own personal improvements.

- Apply the overall design philosophy from PotD to dungeons and expand upon it; necessitate priority mobs DPS need to focus down, the potential for mobs to break aggro, thus preventing tanks from just spamming Overpower/Abyssal Drain to easily maintain hate. Continuing along these lines, each dungeon has multiple pathways that are randomly generated per instanced. This attempts to keep the design fresh longer since it wouldn't be the exact same hallway for three months.

- Increase heal checks by a noticeable margin. Healer DPS should be a rewarded for experienced players, not something you do because you're downright useless otherwise. Obviously, the severity of these checks range based on content level.

So, make dungeons harder, basically? I mean that sounds nice, except a lot of the dungeons I've ran recently have been with newer players and they barely got through them. Healers particularly seem to have a lot of trouble. In a lot of cases this would lead to people quitting the game. That said, I think the problem is less "dungeons are too easy" than "we are way overgeared for them." More closely aligning new dungeons with item levels might help with that, but it's mathematically a much more complicated problem than one might assume. I'd err on the side of easier dungeons too, if I were Square Enix.

- Consider changing the tomestone restriction to a per job basis. Therefore, you can gear multiple jobs at once but progression remains limited enough to prevent farming everything within a few weeks.

As stated, this will not work. The reason is, as a white mage I could grab the healer body for White Mage, then the healer pants for Astrologian, then the healer head piece for Scholar, while the poor Dragoon can only get one piece. That said, this is a solvable problem. You could cap tomestones by role, or to not screw DPS, by sub-role (melee DPS/ranged DPS/caster DPS). Or you could not cap tomestones at all and every time you buy a piece, you are restricted from buying another piece that shares any of that piece's jobs for the week (so you could get WHM, AST, and SCH weapons in the same week, but only one piece of their other gear). You could also make every piece of tomestone gear, including accessories and belts, for a single job, but that would actually make gearing up much harder. Again, it's fixable, but it's not as simple as it seems.

- Include a third tier difficulty for raiders meant solely for challenge purposes. These can be any fight currently in the game, albeit buffed to exceptionally high levels.

Didn't people complain about Alex Savage already? As someone who has no interest in Extreme or Savage, I don't care one way or another if they add a higher difficulty, provided there's no story or mechanics I care about locked behind it. But how do you propose adding this to "any fight currently in the game"? Do you just multiply enemy HP and damage, like an evil echo? That might work, but it wouldn't be particularly fun. Or do you expect them to retune every fight in the game for content presumably even less people than already do savage would ever do? That would be a waste of dev time.

- Add a twelve forsaken-glamour log. Seriously.

Completely agree in principle. I am willing to believe there might be good technical reasons why this hasn't happened, but... yeah I definitely still want it.

- Overhaul Crafter Specialists to simply be a higher stat increase and unlock all cross skill abilities regardless of those jobs' respective level; scrap recipe restrictions.

I can't see this happening, but I very much like the idea. The best thing about 2.0 was the crafting system, and I felt like everything they changed about it in 3.0 (scripts, specialties, needing way more materials to make basic stuff) made it worse.

- Scale open world hunts according to player participation. Each interval of eight new players registering attacks increases the boss' stats/recovers HP to accommodate. Perhaps tie hunts to our relic progression in some capacity for more incentive.

Scaling, yes. Tying it to Relic, dear god no! Unless it was purely optional. But I don't want to ever be forced to actually deal with the drama of hunts.

- Allow for more varied and consistent ways of progressing said relic. If initiated early, the light step actually has potential, albeit with some restrictions to discourage farming one practically piece of content.

I feel like they're going to misinterpret this and make every step totally different, lol. I mean they actually kind of already did this. The umbrite/sands step allows a lot of ways to progress, they just all kind of suck. Building on what you said, I'd love to see a light step where you get bonus light every time you change content or something. It's no fun that your choices are A1S (or Garuda) grinding or waiting forever with the knowledge you're not being efficient.

- Introduce more varied stats like Mastery from WoW. And for the love of the twelve, clearly label precisely how they contribute to your overall damage/healing potency/aggro management/whatever. Some examples being skill speed having a more meaningful impact, possible ways to adjust TP or resistances. Put another way, give us some sort of decides that do not always boil down to "Crit > Det/Spell Speed.

Yes, please. More in-game information about mechanics is better.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

So, make dungeons harder, basically? I mean that sounds nice, except a lot of the dungeons I've ran recently have been with newer players and they barely got through them. Healers particularly seem to have a lot of trouble. In a lot of cases this would lead to people quitting the game. That said, I think the problem is less "dungeons are too easy" than "we are way overgeared for them." More closely aligning new dungeons with item levels might help with that, but it's mathematically a much more complicated problem than one might assume. I'd err on the side of easier dungeons too, if I were Square Enix.

In essence, yes. Although, it's less a pure damage spike and more adding a sense of dynamism to an otherwise, in my opinion, stale design. At the moment, dungeons are mindless. We just sort of... do them because nothing practically interesting happens and I would prefer seeing that changed more so than simply bumping the ilvl. Keep in mind, we have multiple tiers. Leveling dungeons absolutely should be quite reasonable for less experienced players but we can be a bit more creative with Experts, especially if they stick with only two.

I strongly believe many people struggle because the game does a poor job incentivizing improvement. You only shrink the skill gap between players by bringing the bottom up. That can't happen if everything until EX Primals is essentially a faceroll.

As stated, this will not work. The reason is, as a white mage I could grab the healer body for White Mage, then the healer pants for Astrologian, then the healer head piece for Scholar, while the poor Dragoon can only get one piece. That said, this is a solvable problem. You could cap tomestones by role, or to not screw DPS, by sub-role (melee DPS/ranged DPS/caster DPS). Or you could not cap tomestones at all and every time you buy a piece, you are restricted from buying another piece that shares any of that piece's jobs for the week (so you could get WHM, AST, and SCH weapons in the same week, but only one piece of their other gear). You could also make every piece of tomestone gear, including accessories and belts, for a single job, but that would actually make gearing up much harder. Again, it's fixable, but it's not as simple as it seems.

Ah! I should have rephrased since I meant to imply what you summarized.

Didn't people complain about Alex Savage already? As someone who has no interest in Extreme or Savage, I don't care one way or another if they add a higher difficulty, provided there's no story or mechanics I care about locked behind it. But how do you propose adding this to "any fight currently in the game"? Do you just multiply enemy HP and damage, like an evil echo? That might work, but it wouldn't be particularly fun. Or do you expect them to retune every fight in the game for content presumably even less people than already do savage would ever do? That would be a waste of dev time.

They did, however this isn't intended for them. And yes, it would be a straight buff to all the bosses' stats. The devs actually mentioned doing this for odd patches to keep raiders occupied, though they didn't say whether it'd be a single fight or the whole raid tier. Either way, it would only be a stat buff to limit developer resources.

I can't see this happening, but I very much like the idea. The best thing about 2.0 was the crafting system, and I felt like everything they changed about it in 3.0 (scripts, specialties, needing way more materials to make basic stuff) made it worse.

Sadly, I agree. I feel the devs applied the same logic to crafting they did raiders: slow down the hardcore. It just doesn't work. Omni-crafters have alts, thus the whole scrips and Specialist system only hurt the tier below. Hopefully, they do better in Stormblood and Heavensward was a lesson learned.

Scaling, yes. Tying it to Relic, dear god no! Unless it was purely optional. But I don't want to ever be forced to actually deal with the drama of hunts.

Optional, definitely. Or have smaller hunts like what rank Bs are. You could even implement a system not unlike how Aquapolis spawns mobs when you locate a certain area. That way, it's something you can just do with friends on a smaller scale if you prefer.

I feel like they're going to misinterpret this and make every step totally different, lol. I mean they actually kind of already did this. The umbrite/sands step allows a lot of ways to progress, they just all kind of suck. Building on what you said, I'd love to see a light step where you get bonus light every time you change content or something. It's no fun that your choices are A1S (or Garuda) grinding or waiting forever with the knowledge you're not being efficient.

*cries at mention of umbrites*

Knowing how they have progressed the relics, probably! But yeah, I would love if they encouraged more content. I don't actually mind the HW light grind but the "windows" just makes it so everyone waits on A1 to be Sturdy. Here's hoping the refine it more or Eureka has something unique to offer.

Tossed on queuing with multiple roles/jobs to my last post too. Forgot about that one.

[Talraen]

In essence, yes. Although, it's less a pure damage spike and more adding a sense of dynamism to an otherwise, in my opinion, stale design. At the moment, dungeons are mindless. We just sort of... do them because nothing practically interesting happens and I would prefer seeing that changed more so than simply bumping the ilvl. Keep in mind, we have multiple tiers. Leveling dungeons absolutely should be quite reasonable for less experienced players but we can be a bit more creative with Experts, especially if they stick with only two.

I strongly believe many people struggle because the game does a poor job incentivizing improvement. You only shrink the skill gap between players by bringing the bottom up. That can't happen if everything until EX Primals is essentially a faceroll.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but I worry that this is going to cut the bottom off rather than bringing them up. In terms of apparent player skill, the effect is the same whether the bads get better or just disappear. I feel like older MMOs had their population restricted by this exact issue. But I could be wrong. I just don't personally think it's worth the risk.

[Remedi]

Tbh I would really like for the forum to be more costructive like the 2 ppl above me have done so far rather than what we have now

[Jandor]

They did, however this isn't intended for them. And yes, it would be a straight buff to all the bosses' stats. The devs actually mentioned doing this for odd patches to keep raiders occupied, though they didn't say whether it'd be a single fight or the whole raid tier. Either way, it would only be a stat buff to limit developer resources.

I think it would be nice if we once we got to the stage of adding echo to a fight, they instead gave the party leader a slider. One way buffs the party for those needing help clearing, one way buffs the enemy for those needing an extra challenge.

Difficulty slider
Easier| 10% | 5% | Default | 5% | 10% | 15% | 20% |Harder.

Then add an official weekly leader board for speed kills, kind of like how Palace has its score board.

Pretty niche stuff admittedly, but doesn't exactly strike me as hard to do either. I mean, once the system is in place it can be applied to everything easily enough I'd have thought. Even 4 man dungeons might be at least a bit interesting if you could whack the difficulty up 20% and race people.

[Ririta]

Without any constructive criticism though, the devs can only guess what will appeal to us. Case in point: Diadem. If all people did was scream how boring it was, well... fun is entirely subjective. They could do any number of things yet have no way of knowing whether it'll appeal.

People are pointing out exactly what they're tired of, though. Offering solutions is nice and all, but shouldn't be expected.

Personally I just want them to stop with "weekly and daily" obligations.

[Oriens]

Why offer constructive feedback when the fanboys on this forum and elsewhere simply say "go play something else".

It's sufficient to tell the devs XYZ sucked or ABC needs to change. It's their job to brainstorm and see how to improve or develop new content based on the community's like or dislike of current content. They know their technical limitations as to what can actually be implemented, not us.

They are aware that a lot of their content would not be touched with a 10 foot pole if they did not tie it to relic/anima requirements, free i270 accessories or i270 gear upgrades. From what was said in many live letters and else where is their content development cycle is basically 1 year long. Content is approved, planned, created and introduced with such a long development cycle for it to become irrelevant as soon as the next patch hits in 3-6 months. That is their mistake.

They have had all of stormblood to take FFXIV in the direction they wanted as 2.0 is behind them. The community has a right to feel like 3.0 in itself wasn't enough and 4.0 isn't being highlighted as anything better either.

[Talraen]

Why offer constructive feedback when the fanboys on this forum and elsewhere simply say "go play something else".

It's sufficient to tell the devs XYZ sucked or ABC needs to change. It's their job to brainstorm and see how to improve or develop new content based on the community's like or dislike of current content. They know their technical limitations as to what can actually be implemented, not us.

They are aware that a lot of their content would not be touched with a 10 foot pole if they did not tie it to relic/anima requirements, free i270 accessories or i270 gear upgrades. From what was said in many live letters and else where is their content development cycle is basically 1 year long. Content is approved, planned, created and introduced with such a long development cycle for it to become irrelevant as soon as the next patch hits in 3-6 months. That is their mistake.

They have had all of stormblood to take FFXIV in the direction they wanted as 2.0 is behind them. The community has a right to feel like 3.0 in itself wasn't enough and 4.0 isn't being highlighted as anything better either.

The thing is, these design ideas are not mistakes. Rather, they are why the game works in the first place. How would you recommend making content permanently relevant? Horizontal progression? That's been tried, and is fraught with major issues, not the least of which is that it stifles game growth. And frankly, it's just not practical for all content to be forever relevant. Do you really want to have to do all of 100+ dungeons in a few years?

Instead, content is relevant at the start, and there are incentives to play it enough for people to catch up. Right now anyone can queue for a low-level MSQ dungeon, and they will get into it in a reasonable amount of time. All it costs you is a daily roulette with a nice incentive. That's not bad design, that's excellent design.

But since you didn't give your suggestion on what would make it better, I'm forced to guess. Maybe you don't want horizontal progression at all. Maybe you want old content to just die, and thus not be required at all? Maybe the MSQ should just skip the dungeons after they're obsolete, so if you weren't there when the expansion came out, you never get to play the content. But you still have to do the quests? How does this work?

The problem is that your goals are not Square Enix's goals. Here are a few basic tenets of this game's design:

1.) Keep all content relevant enough that new players can clear it
2.) Give newer users a chance to be competitive with older users so they don't give up on the game
3.) Incentivize older users to stay subscribed and keep playing

Every complaint I've seen addresses #3, but ignores #1 and #2. Those are why we have the tomestone weekly cap, why roulettes exist, why dungeons are not super hard. If you change all those things willy-nilly, you're going to lose the player base.

I honestly think the system we have is among the best possible systems to address all three points above. It's ridiculous to just tell the devs to "make it better" when it's not at all clear how that can even be achieved. If they start changing things, they're liable to anger the many of us who like the current system, and there's no reason to believe the people who don't would be any happier either! If part of your player base is telling you things are fine, and the other half says they're not but offers no solutions, then you go with the half that's telling you what to do (i.e., what you're currently doing).

[Bourne_Endeavor]

People are pointing out exactly what they're tired of, though. Offering solutions is nice and all, but shouldn't be expected.

Personally I just want tem to stop with "weekly and daily" obligations.

Nor should players whine if their ideas of fun not be implemented if they aren't willing to offer ideas. It goes both ways, after all. The devs aren't mind readers.

As for limitations. Those will always exist in MMOs because no development team can create content fast enough to last given how quickly people consume it nowadays. Even if they do loosen up on tomestones in some manner, allowing people to just farm it all to their hearts content means they have no incentive to stay 2-3 months down the road.

[ADVSS]

As for limitations. Those will always exist in MMOs because no development team can create content fast enough to last given how quickly people consume it nowadays. Even if they do loosen up on tomestones in some manner, allowing people to just farm it all to their hearts content means they have no incentive to stay 2-3 months down the road.

Thats whats happening anyway with raids going stale, and the weekly cap currently could even double or triple, and still not effect patch implementation. For example, I think with the current amount of jobs we have now, getting every piece of gear at the current weekly cap before it was raised recently, would take about 2 years to accomplish, before they nerf it. Thats a little extreme and unrealistic in my opinion...Its not even a wonder the 2 new jobs will be sharing gear with other jobs, because they know, its ludicrous. As far as horizontal progression goes, it could actually be used to incentivize people to run old content, but how the system is and will probably be for a while, i get that its just a pipedream to even bother and that much is understood. Changing the way things are currently doesnt effect new people joining at SB also, they never had to deal with the current system so it wouldnt/shouldnt effect them.

1.) Keep all content relevant enough that new players can clear it
2.) Give newer users a chance to be competitive with older users so they don't give up on the game
3.) Incentivize older users to stay subscribed and keep playing

Every complaint I've seen addresses #3, but ignores #1 and #2. Those are why we have the tomestone weekly cap, why roulettes exist, why dungeons are not super hard. If you change all those things willy-nilly, you're going to lose the player base.

I am pretty sure its either a lot of newer players dont know/read the OF, or if they do, like myself may not join/post because they feel they havent played long enough to post on here, with some brave few ive seen as of late being exceptions. Alot of these are assessments to their experience playing the game, and the reviews for the most part are positive. Thats telling and my point is the game does great pushing along giving progress, terrible fetch quests imo, but unlike games like neverwinter, you can teleport and thats hella nice. By endgame, thats when the tables turn. Thats where the veterans like alot of the number 4 group are most experienced with. The flavor didnt deviate much from HW besides artificially extending the period where eso terics(the true end game grind gear) was released. All because gordias. Thats it, thats the only reason. The relic grind when implemented was so arduous at that time, it couldve released with gordias and people still wouldnt have it finished before 3.1 when it was already irrelevant before it was released. All were saying is time things a little more easonably than last time. I understand their schedule has to be the way it is becaise its so tight, but giving raiders something for half a year to do, and midcore something to do half a year in between each other, is sort of like telling everyone to unsub after 3 months untill the next story or upgrade quest comes out.