The general player base needs to improve

[KisaiTenshi]

IMO,

"All content" should be available to all players regardless of skill or difficulty, solo or 24-man parties. That said,

The game really needs to change how things are gated, because I think attracting new players to the game is pretty much done. Nobody really wants to get into a MMORPG that they haven't a chance in hell of catching up on.

The squadrons and POTD are a good way for DPS to level another job, not play the game. These are actually pretty tedious and boring, if not broken ways of leveling another job. But it does bring up an interesting detail, they could be used to bypass the storyline dungeons that they can't get anyone to queue for, or are too bored of (before level 50, you will keep getting Satasha and Tam-Tara Deepcroft, over and over and over in the leveling queue, no joke.)

The "old" harder content, eg Coil, and even Alexander, should be content that players can queue for, and if there are no players available, switch to AI players and maybe beef up the AI squadron players to compensate for their inability to do the mechanics well.

In other games, typically there is no actual gate to ENTER the harder content, but you can also just pot-spam your way through a lot of content with enough money, which IMO is not fun at all, essentially funding becomes the gate instead of skill. In other (less fun) games, there is no level sync, so you can only play a dungeon until you can beat it naked (no gear equipped) and then it's pointless to ever play again.

I don't want to see "difficulty sliders" become a thing in FFXIV, because that is extreme laziness on the part of the developer to artificially inflate the difficulty, without making any actual change to the content.

But I actually want a few "long" dungeons that have puzzles to them, where you can hit a checkpoint in the dungeon and exit and come back later with help, or your squadron, rather than have to camp in the dungeon until someone comes along to help. Puzzles are unfortunately spoiled by internet guides/videos, so something would have to be clever and personalized to really do this.

[KaivaC]

snip

The idea of AI squadrons in Coils and Alex sounds good, but ...you know...mechanics. Admittedly, I haven't touched squadrons since the first couple of weeks afte rit came out so I have no idea how much the AI has improved. I imagine that T9 would be incredibly difficult to program - for one, who the meteors target is not exactly set, plus the AI would have to be able to compensate for the player's position as well as the other AI...coordinating meteor drops is already rough with just a few players if they had never done it before, and then having the golems intentionally eat a meteor...then there's the next phase with the tower...

That said, if the devs could make AIs competent enough to allow players to be able to go through old content with their squadron, I'm for it.

[Kamatsu]

The idea of AI squadrons in Coils and Alex sounds good, but ...you know...mechanics. Admittedly, I haven't touched squadrons since the first couple of weeks afte rit came out so I have no idea how much the AI has improved. I imagine that T9 would be incredibly difficult to program - for one, who the meteors target is not exactly set, plus the AI would have to be able to compensate for the player's position as well as the other AI...coordinating meteor drops is already rough with just a few players if they had never done it before, and then having the golems intentionally eat a meteor...then there's the next phase with the tower...

That said, if the devs could make AIs competent enough to allow players to be able to go through old content with their squadron, I'm for it.

Squadron AI hasn't been touched very much, apart from improving the Tank's AI (ie they seem to use their emnity skills more appropriately). They still very much completely ignore mechanics in dungeons - they are so OP as it stands that they don't need to worry for a whole bunch of the games mechanics. For instance in Stone Vigil's 2nd boss there's no need to use the canon's to ward off the flying dragon, just keep attacking the boss and ignore the frost-balls that the flying dragon attacks with. Or in Dzmeal Keep on the 1st boss you don't need to worry about trying to slow the boss down, avoid the fire on the ground it spawn's, etc... just attack and kill it.

And as it stands, unless they massively change T9's mechanics specifically to be able to ignore the mechanics, or changes to work with braindead AI... I don't see how you could do it with a GC Squadron, even as OP as they are it would still be a wipe due to the mechanics. They would likely need to make a completely separate T9 dungeon just for GC Squadron's that don't use the standard mechanic - so when you queue up for it the game would have to detect whether you're there with other players (so get the current version), or with GC Squad (so get the mechanics nerfed version).

But that said, I do agree that it would be great to be able to do old content with GC Squadrons. Let people get the story from them, without having to rely on PF for it (if they don't have a FC to help them). PF is good for the most part, but you still get elitist jerks on there (who bitch & moan if you don't already know fights 100% & have issue's with mechanics now and again, even when the PF specifically says you don't and have medical disability which effect's performance.. pfft!).

Problem is while gC Squadrons do let you experience content, they don't help you play better. For that there needs to be other in-game things.. like greater focus on Novice Hall, SSSS, etc and making these things mandatory to do at least once. Teach players more about the different types of AoE that happen, the stuff like tail attacks that happen in some fights, teach what the boss-fight indicators usually mean (ie the 'orange plus for stacking to mitigate damage).

[DreadRabbit]

The game really needs to change how things are gated, because I think attracting new players to the game is pretty much done. Nobody really wants to get into a MMORPG that they haven't a chance in hell of catching up on.

Wrong. In fact if SE or any other business follows that mindset they will very quickly run themselves into the ground.

In every content creation field from novels, to music cds, and to games, each new release has even more opportunity to attract new followers than the previous one. In fact there's actually business strategies that revolve around this because it causes a chain effect: if people like your latest product, they're far more likely to go back and also purchase your older ones and binge on what you've made (like the few folks on here that have paid for FFXI after playing XIV just to see how things are different).

MMOs (and video games in general) are surprisingly similar in that vein. You have to remember that not everyone (in fact I'd argue the majority now) really doesn't care about "Keeping up with the Jones" like end game raiders that hop from game to game to follow what's new. There are indeed still people joining WoW, Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, and dozens of older F2P MMOs (hell, people are still joining Runescape and Mabinogi for crying out loud) for the first time despite their age. Companies have to keep appealing to new players over time, otherwise they run the risk of not replenishing players who do leave. Which makes populations lower and queues longer, empty worlds, and thus driving the die hard vets who remained to leave. Look at what happened to the Gilgamesh server during the server lockouts. That will be the entire game if they suddenly stop making an effort to appeal to new players.

A good business never stops appealing to new people. It's striking that balance with older fans/customers that's the hard part.