4.25 and beyond

[Vexander]

I wouldn't mind seeing a discussion on how to improve the gameplay. If gear is worthless because its only iLvl, how can gear be changed to make it more, 'Worthwhile?' The main complaint I see against it is that it has a shelf-life of 3-6 months, and the increasing numbers for stats don't yield a difference in gameplay from prior gear (at level 50, 350 Crit = 17-18%, at level 70 2,000 crit = 17-18%).

SE could always attempt to add more mini-games like Verminion to attract more of the mobile phone crowd. Honestly if Verminion was a lot more like WoW's Pet Battles I'd be doing that a LOT.
Triple Triad is nice and you can collect cards through many different kinds of gameplay.

What do you guys want to see added?

[Zojha]

Best bet going forward is to find an indie developer trying new things.

Well, there are occasionally MMOs trying new things. They end up failing and go on F2P life support. WoW has announced a "Classic" server already, with unofficial ones being available for years - Feel free to go there once it launches and/or check out the free ones in the meantime. I know I will, if only to remind myself why I am glad about the way things are nowadays.

I'd not be surprised if some of the old MMOs are still around either. They're not graphically up to snuff, but if the gameplay is good, what gives? Graphics cards got hella expensive lately anyway.

So yeah, I'd encourage people who get burned out to take a break and experiment with other games. You might discover something that suits your needs better. And even if you don't find a better deal out there, you might come back with new appreciation of what this game has to offer.

[Darrcyphfeid]

I'm not letting this slide.

stuff

Do you have all Jobs, Crafters, and Gatherers at level 70?

Yes.

Are those jobs all relatively well-geared?

The ones I play? Yes. I could, if I were so inclined to care, craft full sets of i350 gear for each and every one of them. By myself. With minimal effort. For relatively cheap.

Counter point: The weekly restrictions in this game are horrible. While I can craft infinite i350 gear, it'll take ~2 months to gear any job using Tomestones. RNG and time commitment were I to also pursue Savage for gearing purposes - at the expense of others, because the Savage gearing system is also pretty horrible. The very idea that my overcoming the challenge of clearing the 4th floor of a raid tier isn't my price for farming the gear is anathema to me. No, clearing the "hardest" fight of the tier only unlocks the privilege of yet another fucking weekly lockout. Can't even go help other people clear without hurting them by their clear having (at least) 1 fewer chest/direct drops.

Have you cleared the current EX Primals?

Cleared from Sophia through Susano while relevant. Was on a break during Shinryu, don't care enough to bother with Byakko since I have i350 weapons and will be unsubbed soon. I would, undoubtedly, have zero trouble clearing these were I to go hop into the fray right now. Square, however, has conditioned me to just wait for the mount drop rate increase before actually farming.

Have you cleared O8S?

I've raided in this game before, in a static with Midas and casually doing the PUG life towards the end of Creator. I find nothing fun about wiping ad nauseam because one or two people don't know the song and dance well enough. Certainly, I don't find it fun to experience that just to - again - unlock another weekly lockout.

Have you cleared UCoB?

If you don't like raiding, there's zero chance that you'll like Ultimate. Which just by its nature magnifies the things that I find most irksome about Savage.

Have you cleared all forms of older PvE content?

Everything except A3S, A6~8S and A11~12S. Level synced, not item synced. Finding people to do them with after they're no longer relevant is somewhat challenging. I burnt most of my friends out with our synced ventures into BCoB/SCoB/FCoB early-/mid-HW. We played with A8S a little bit at lv70 unsynced, but they weren't feeling it so we dropped the idea.

Have you solo'd PotD 200?

Fuck off. Exactly one person in the entire world did this because it was clearly not designed for it. Layers upon layers upon layers of RNG =/= challenging. I made it to 160F solo, blind, and wiped to the boss at ~20% because I was exhausted and failed to restock Sustaining Potions before entering in addition to my (final) Pomander of Steel wearing off. I've cleared 200F with a party. I have all of the silly Padjali weapons, and a Kinna. Content complete by any reasonable standard.

Do you compete in Ranked Feast Seasons?

I don't particularly like playing in traffic, no. There are so many things wrong with Feast before we even get into discussions about how horrendous the matchmaking, lack of rank decay and generally short-lived queues come into play though.

I have the Gloria-class Airship, Fenrir Pup, Faepup and Hellpup from playing enough Feast in general, however.

Do you play Frontlines & Rival Wings?

I no longer do Frontlines. Prior to 4.0 Frontlines was my endgame activity of choice - I didn't like Shatter very much, loved Seize, and 72-man Secure (/Secure in general) was a great experience. 4.0 ruined PvP and I have no interest in it. I have the Logistics System, Aerodynamics System and Flame Warsteed mounts. I was about halfway to my Serpent Warsteed mount when 4.0 hit.

I'm at 50/100 Rival Wings wins for the Magitek Avenger with a 65% or so win rate. I haven't been able to muster up a whole lot of enthusiasm for it; originally because every single match timed out due to exceptionally poor design/balance, and post-break now because of constant connectivity issues, increased queue times, and everyone's favorite: Bots. It's infuriating being one or more mechs down because the bots just push lanes.

Do you compete in Triple Triad & LoV tournaments at the Gold Saucer?

Nearly two years ago, yes. I'm missing a single TT card released before 4.2, I have all of the LoV-exclusive minions, and I used to do both tournaments weekly even after finishing to afford other stuff. I'm ~120k MGP away from purchasing the Korpokkur Kolossus, which is the final MGP-exclusive item remaining. I've been ~400k away from it for months and, again, just haven't been able to muster up enough energy to really care about it. Yay Fashion Report, I guess.

Have you collected every mount, minion, and relic weapon achievable through in-game means?

I have every Zeta in the game, and every Anima has been 260+ for about a year. I have 4 Luxes remaining. Just need to do the light farming (3~4 hours per) and the primal victory lap (~2 hours synced via DF per). I'm missing 46 minions in total, counting Mog Station, promotional and past seasonal events. Of those, about 8 could be obtained via farming of random content I've done dozens of times without luck thus far anyway. And the Faustlet from the aforementioned failed venture into A8S. Mounts are all over the place; I have 71 of them. 2 Warsteeds, the 3 lv61+ tank mounts and the A12S mount are notable on the missing column. Astrope, like your post, can bite me.

Have you earned every achievement?

#3 on my server and roughly 700 points away from being in the Top 100 for the entire game. A decent chunk of the achievements that I'm missing are no longer obtainable - be they Seasonal Events from before I even started playing or PvP modes that have been completely devoid of life for 2+ years - and many more are just asinine. If I spent dozens of hours farming up worthless gathering items, or spent hundreds of hours crafting worthless items, I would very easily break into the Top 100. Woo. Exciting. Absolutely the type of gameplay we've all been looking for!

Have I told you to fuck off yet? Well, fuck off.

Just because you don't do them or personally don't enjoy them doesn't mean they aren't worth mentioning.

They're literally not worth mentioning.

Anyway, thanks for the bait. It was delicious and entertained me for a good 30 minutes because god knows the game itself can't accomplish that these days.

[AmemeAmeklin]

Background on me: I'm still something of a newbie to FFXIV but I come from playing EverQuest (waaaay back when, first handful of expansions), where you absolutely have to cooperate with others to get most stuff done.

From what I've seen, the elite hunts are the most MMO experience in this game so far. You find friends at these hunts, get invited to the linkshells, show up, kill, and move on to the next one where you see the same people and get to know them. A close second is just hanging out at the aetheryte plazas for the main city-states and willingly interacting with other players.

Duty Finder is all well and good when trying to get things like the MSQ or tomestones, but it's hard to start cross-server friendships! I have macros to push, no time to chat!!

I think I'd be interested in more puzzle-like mechanics - like Qarn, but less rage-inducing bosses (do we have to have bosses?!). I'd also like more quests that don't spell out where to go every single time. Of course, I basically grew up with quests that had to be solved, completely sans help from maps and quest indicators. Didn't even know which NPCs had quests - you had to hail them all to see if they said anything interesting. Devs put in fun easter eggs, too: little silly interactions, like this one NPC on the docks in EverQuest who responded to players who told her "I love you" with something along the lines of "We'd make a fine couple".

I feel like the sylphs should dance with you if you ever emote /dance to them, and Haurchefant should get excited if you tell him you love him, and Lyse should /box with you if you do it to her, etc.

[Molic]

I wouldn't mind seeing a discussion on how to improve the gameplay. If gear is worthless because its only iLvl, how can gear be changed to make it more, 'Worthwhile?' The main complaint I see against it is that it has a shelf-life of 3-6 months, and the increasing numbers for stats don't yield a difference in gameplay from prior gear (at level 50, 350 Crit = 17-18%, at level 70 2,000 crit = 17-18%).

SE could always attempt to add more mini-games like Verminion to attract more of the mobile phone crowd. Honestly if Verminion was a lot more like WoW's Pet Battles I'd be doing that a LOT.Triple Triad is nice and you can collect cards through many different kinds of gameplay.

What do you guys want to see added?

I said this at a earlier post in the thread, i think a couple others have also offered up solutions if you want to take a look.

Going from 1.0 Character based to 2.0 Item based in terms of gaining "Power" the gear treadmill was pretty foreseeable. I don't think this is a huge issue, i think it could be improved upon though. They could add what destiny does, where say if you have a higher level piece of gear, you can have the lower level piece absorb that one to raise its lower level gear ilvl and stats.

Then they could actually add interesting stats to the gear or traits like "double attack", "5% chance of gaining triple cast", "chance to proc a fire dot", "chance to regain mana on spell cast" "Chance to quadruple your crits" random shit like that combined with the destiny style gear system, would actually make a lot of gear releavent again or at least fun to get gear.

Right now, they might as well just remove stats and have the Item level, cause its all pretty pointless and the % difference from having the best stats to just w/e at the same ilvl is insignificant.

[Remedi]

So yeah, I'd encourage people who get burned out to take a break and experiment with other games. You might discover something that suits your needs better. And even if you don't find a better deal out there, you might come back with new appreciation of what this game has to offer.

It's not like March has a draught of games either so this is a good advice

[Marcellus_Cassius]

Well, there are occasionally MMOs trying new things. They end up failing and go on F2P life support. WoW has announced a "Classic" server already, with unofficial ones being available for years - Feel free to go there once it launches and/or check out the free ones in the meantime. I know I will, if only to remind myself why I am glad about the way things are nowadays.

I'd not be surprised if some of the old MMOs are still around either. They're not graphically up to snuff, but if the gameplay is good, what gives? Graphics cards got hella expensive lately anyway.

So yeah, I'd encourage people who get burned out to take a break and experiment with other games. You might discover something that suits your needs better. And even if you don't find a better deal out there, you might come back with new appreciation of what this game has to offer.

I'm not looking for the old mmo experience, I don't have the time to invest in that in this day and age. I "appreciate" the things modernization of the genre has brought to the table, I simply feel it left too much of the old out. I think we can do some of the things that weren't perfect better today.

Edit: Wanting to improve =/= ungratefulness, sa

[ToasterMan]

You know this is an excellent point to be honest. Perhaps SE should invest more time into FC content. Tie gear acquisition into it and it could work wonders.

You mean more content were I gather the mats for an entire project all by myself and then ask 3 other people to stand in the workshop while I build it all because the game won't let me if I'm not in a party? Gonna pass

[Vexander]

I said this at a earlier post in the thread, i think a couple others have also offered up solutions if you want to take a look.

That could be a lot of fun, but a bit of a nightmare to balance around at the same time. Imagine Primal Farming groups that say, "Triplecast Procs only," or, "Fire Dots need not apply."

[Vexander]

You mean more content were I gather the mats for an entire project all by myself and then ask 3 other people to stand in the workshop while I build it all because the game won't let me if I'm not in a party? Gonna pass

More like content that could be engaging and fun. Imagine, say, if your FC could, 'Claim,' land in Eureka that they could build up by investing resources gathered there and provide buffs while there? Or FC specific mazes. A PvP mode for FCs. There are many ways SE could go about implementing FC content that isn't a twist on Retainers.

Honestly, I'd say something like FCs choosing a place to build a base and there being an instanced space there might even go some ways to helping with the housing issues people are having. FCs could, of course, still have houses in the residential districts, but being able to create a base somewhere and customize it would be fun too.