So I'm not seeing how this is them changing things up from 2.0/3.0

[KokonoeAiyoko]

What has been announced that isn't different? THere's plenty of new stuff coming, even new jobs. What am I missing here?

1. Another Extreme Primal Fight, and no, I'm not saying exclude Primals, but this has been done before and is very predictable at this point.
2. Two new jobs. Okay? That's fine, no issues there, but that isn't ground breaking, we've seen this before. (Last time was 3 jobs)
3. More Hunts, which are the equivalant of mindless zergs. If I want to go practice on the training dummy I'd honestly go do that, that's all Hunts are to me.
4. No new race, yet the time spent developing said race is no longer there so I figured they might add some more character customization, or at least plan to. No plans, period.
5. More tomes! As in, they cannot invent a new way to progress outside of the same dungeon spamming tome setup. Perhaps there are those fine with this? But as someone who has played since pre launch of 2.0, I'm sick of doing this same styled of progression over and over and over. Get a little more creative with the system in place.

[Xenosan]

2. Heavensward maps were already a major step above ARRs maps. Add in the dimension of underwater and perhaps it'll at least feel bigger.

You think so? HW open-world is awful compared to ARR imo. Larger canvas = less refined.

For me it's about correcting HW mistakes (leas what I thought were). #1 open world negative space #2 raid tiers back to ARR's regular difficulty & savage option.

Of course that's not happening though so I'm pretty :[

My concern goes with leveling up portion. ARR 1-49 is still the best aspect to this game, rushing people passed to HW grind to SB grind just to get them to hop on the end-game treadmill faster. That has me concerned.

[Felis]

So people can just skip chests like in PotD and Brayflox's Longstop? No thanks. As long as all locations are mandatory to clear on the way I don't care if the dungeon is a Celtic knot but this "optional chests" thing isn't going to work.

In 1.0 you had to open all chests to get one of the 5 possible boss chests. Skip a single chest and you get 1 boss chest less.

[RaijinSupreme]

1. Another Extreme Primal Fight, and no, I'm not saying exclude Primals, but this has been done before and is very predictable at this point.
2. Two new jobs. Okay? That's fine, no issues there, but that isn't ground breaking, we've seen this before. (Last time was 3 jobs)
3. More Hunts, which are the equivalant of mindless zergs. If I want to go practice on the training dummy I'd honestly go do that, that's all Hunts are to me.
4. No new race, yet the time spent developing said race is no longer there so I figured they might add some more character customization, or at least plan to. No plans, period.
5. More tomes! As in, they cannot invent a new way to progress outside of the same dungeon spamming tome setup. Perhaps there are those fine with this? But as someone who has played since pre launch of 2.0, I'm sick of doing this same styled of progression over and over and over. Get a little more creative with the system in place.

So you're asking for a formula change. A change in the way the game is fundamentally designed. You must be, or you wouldn't even be mentioning these things.

Everything you mentioned is to be expected, since its part of the game's formula. Of course there are more hunts, more trials, and more tomes, that's FFXIV. Like the other person said, you want this to be a different game. But its not gonna be, and expansions shouldn't be expected to do anything other than expand what we already have.

I can slightly understand the no new race, but only slightly, cause Au Ra was nothing but a modified Hyur, and any new race would likely be the same.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

So you're asking for a formula change. A change in the way the game is fundamentally designed. You must be, or you wouldn't even be mentioning these things.

Everything you mentioned is to be expected, since its part of the game's formula. Of course there are more hunts, more trials, and more tomes, that's FFXIV. Like the other person said, you want this to be a different game. But its not gonna be, and expansions shouldn't be expected to do anything other than expand what we already have.

I can slightly understand the no new race, but only slightly, cause Au Ra was nothing but a modified Hyur, and any new race would likely be the same.

I really feel as if people who say stuff like this haven't played other MMO's much because changing something from tomes progression or the like will not make this game into something it isn't. It sure didn't with other MMO's, it just gave us a new way to play said MMO's instead of rinse and repeat. This game can actually be more than what people realize, it doesn't have to be only this. That is my complaint.

Then again, I've not played World of Warcraft much and I know this game is heavily inspired by it. Perhaps this is how WoW worked?

[RaijinSupreme]

I really feel as if people who say stuff like this haven't played other MMO's much because changing something from tomes progression or the like will not make this game into something it isn't. It sure didn't with other MMO's, it just gave us a new way to play said MMO's instead of rinse and repeat. This game can actually be more than what people realize, it doesn't have to be only this. That is my complaint.

Then again, I've not played World of Warcraft much and I know this game is heavily inspired by it. Perhaps this is how WoW worked?

Idk, I never played WOW, ffxi, or any other MMO except for DCUO. I stopped playing that for reasons. But I haven't stopped playing this since I started, and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. Me not playing other MMO's is irrelevant. If I had to play other MMO's to appreciate this one, I certainly wouldn't be here.

All I know is, I've enjoyed the game as is, and I never expected it to change. The fundamental aspects of the game has been a part of the game from the beginning, and I see no reason for them to be different. If people are tired of it, they can play another game. I'm not tired of it, and whether its an old system or not, its a system that works. Makes no sense to change it simply because people want it to be different.

[CuteWhisper]

I really feel as if people who say stuff like this haven't played other MMO's much because changing something from tomes progression or the like will not make this game into something it isn't. It sure didn't with other MMO's, it just gave us a new way to play said MMO's instead of rinse and repeat. This game can actually be more than what people realize, it doesn't have to be only this. That is my complaint.

Then again, I've not played World of Warcraft much and I know this game is heavily inspired by it. Perhaps this is how WoW worked?

WoW changed their 'formula' every expansion and that's why I stopped playing the game. If people don't like the way it is in FFXIV then maybe they should play another game.

[Lambdafish]

I really feel as if people who say stuff like this haven't played other MMO's much because changing something from tomes progression or the like will not make this game into something it isn't. It sure didn't with other MMO's, it just gave us a new way to play said MMO's instead of rinse and repeat. This game can actually be more than what people realize, it doesn't have to be only this. That is my complaint.

Then again, I've not played World of Warcraft much and I know this game is heavily inspired by it. Perhaps this is how WoW worked?

There is a lot changing though, the basics will stay the same because they work, but the entire battle system is changing, we are getting new. (never before seen) content that hasn't been announced yet, not to mention the graphics (which you said haven't changed) have ALREADY shown a notable improvement - go back and play 3.55 and tell me that the new faces of Lyse and Gosetsu don't seem slightly jarring because they are higher poly.

Ultimately we have only scratched the surface with information. I know right now you aren't very hyped up, but to say that the expansion is a rehash is naive at best. This live letter wasn't intended to reveal much other than the benchmark (which in itself wasn't meant to reveal much), and we have the other massive one on the 20th May. Even then, HWs most game changing piece of content - PotD, wasn't even revealed until 3.2

[Khalithar]

I can agree that we need some changes to the formula and that it can be done without fundamentally changing the game's formula so much as iterating on it.

For starters, leave the tomestone cap at 900. By having that cap much higher it encourages people to play more and do more content to reach their weekly cap which helps queue times and keeps people engaged.

Secondly, I like the Ex roulette concept, I really do, but I would want to see changes to that as well. Specifically, give us more than just the two dungeons to run. If they really can't come up with more than two dungeons, then combine the Ex roulette with the inevitable 70 roulette and up the rewards so it's equally as rewarding regardless of the dungeon you get and to prevent the issue of overgeared players blasting through it too easily, apply an item level cap. So then as the expansion continues, the highest level roulette will have several different possibilities there instead of just two.

Next thought is the acquisition of your tomestone main hand weapon and the 8man raid progression in general. I'm not a fan of the "seven weeks running the last 8 man to get it" system and I'd rather detach the tomestone gear from the raid. I would prefer making the 8man non-savage mode it's own form of progression. To elaborate further, I fully agree with Savage mode having the highest ilevel stuff, that's perfectly acceptable, what I'm suggesting is making the normal mode 8man gear equivalent to the tomestone gear and having a full set of gear (including weapons) be acquired from there so if I want to skip tomestones and farm a set of gear from there, I believe in giving players the option to do so.

I also am all for giving players a variety of options to do the upgrade system for their tomestone weapon/gear. But with what I outlined above rather than just have the upgrade be from the 24man, why not also add variety on where to get it from? Let us buy it with tomestones, hunt marks, get it from the 24m, and get it from the savage mode while applying whatever weekly cap to get it? On that note...

Make the 24m it's own form of progression as well and with the upgrade item I mentioned, give us the option to upgrade the tomestone gear or the Alex gear or the 24m gear and let us gear up that way rather than the tomestone gear being the only set we can upgrade.

There, I've suggested a variety of ways to let us experience the end game content while keeping the formula intact and iterating on it.

Edit:

We can probably keep EX mode primals where they are, between tomestone weapons and savage. I think that's fine as is tbh.

[RaijinSupreme]

.

1. Definitely, DEFINITELY, make the ex roulette more than just 2 dungeons. Jesus Christ, please lol.

2. I can't agree with the tomestones being at 900, simply because its hard to cap it every week if you aren't playing everyday. If you miss a few days that week, you can just forget about capping lol. I understand the idea to keep players engaged, but there are enough people playing this game where I won't really notice if a majority of players have already capped the 450 early in the week. Queue times aren't gonna suffer because of it.


The last few points seems to be about gear progression, and the only thing I see is that the only real reason why you would be trying to progress to best gear of the patch is for you to be able to play the hardest content of the patch, which would be the raid. So if all the gear progression is tied to the raid, well that just makes sense to me.