4.25 and beyond

[Vhailor]

people repeat this but it means nothing if the game was so good and just needed some touch up how would a few small patches to make things better get 490k players to join and stay?(a number to match ff14 arr at its lowest ever) i mean the content was already amazing as you said so what was the big thing that stop people from enjoying the game like you did?

there is only 1 excuse i can truely see as *game breaking for most people* that stop people from playing and that was you needed a great computer to play the game but would just lowering the graphic for bad computers (not even consoles just computers) so more people could play would that have saved the game?

Depends on what SE's goals for the game were.

With a property like Final Fantasy, SE can pursue a wide variety of goals with their titles. They can release AAA original efforts that remind people of how great the franchise can be. They can revisit older titles, remaking them or offering expansions. Or, they can milk the franchise name and release uninspired content cheaply and rapidly.

If SE's goals for FFXIV was the latter, then no, the only way to fix FFXIV was to re-release it a la 2.0. If their goal was to create a AAA original effort, I don't think XIV 1.0 was all that far off, with their primary issue being the utterly atrocious job they did on the game's graphics engine, UI responsiveness, server code, etc. Put some time into resolving that (not killing the polygon counts and reworking the graphics engine; simply optimizing it), and XIV 1.0 had a really solid foundation. Give it a Zilart-calibre expansion and fix the back-end problems, and the game's off and running as a natural successor to FFXI.

Also, as an aside, people are far too harsh, generally speaking, when they judge MMOs at launch. Virtually every MMO in the world really takes an expansion or two before it comes into its own. In that respect, FFXIV 2.0 was really like XIV's first expansion, just a very ambitious one; a lot of the work was already done, so the team was free to mostly focus on content and polish. It also took quite a while for ARR to find its footing, despite its unique advantages (pre-existing user base from XI and XIV 1.x; membership in a big-name franchise; easier development than many MMOs due to its reduced scope).

[Musashidon]

Or, they can milk the franchise name and release uninspired content cheaply and rapidly.

how do you milk a name? i say this as we watched 1.0 flop and noone want to play it despite being final fantasy.


i am not saying the content in the game are all master pieces but one thing didn't work and another did.

i don't see how content is uninspired in the current ff14 while yes you can 123 through most of it there are always interesting new mechanics and idea all the time from every different primal/raid to sometime just normal dungeons. when people complain about content it's never that the idea lacks its that the idea doesn't easily kill the player. the complaints are the game is easy and the mechs can be pretty much ignored but that is the complaint.

like with the fate hate people love fates they just hate that people can zerg them and they don't screw players over as if that is the only thing that matters.

the re-release of ff14 has shown people all over the world how great of a game SE can make.

people keep bring up xi as some king game but when people actually talk about it you had the choice of running something like 5 different things for gear for 5 years plus but current ff14 gives you 12 raids per 2 years 3 24 player raids per 2 years up to 10 dungeons (a little less with the current content creation plan) and something like 6 primals per 2 years and the complaint is simply that the gear doesn't last long enough.

yes 5 things is way better and less boring simply because the gear lasts for years.

judge to harshly? ff14 1.0 i will say didn't get thrown onto anything and everything it could to get attention sure i can say that but didn't have the ffxi player base behind it? umm i keep hearing how the ff11 player base loved 1.0, a big named franchise? hmmmm? easier development that many mmo's due to its reduced scope, well you got me here for i have no idea what you mean unless you mean they decided to take out the 99% copy pasted map that prolly took 15 seconds to put in place, idk what game needs a flower pot with so many pixels it can crash a computer.

some facts:

i am sorry you believe your friends not liking the game means it's dying, i am sorry you believe posting a couple pictures and you saying i am wrong makes 1.2 have 100k players magically.

[Vhailor]

how do you milk a name? i say this as we watched 1.0 flop and noone want to play it despite being final fantasy.


i am not saying the content in the game are all master pieces but one thing didn't work and another did.

i don't see how content is uninspired in the current ff14 while yes you can 123 through most of it there are always interesting new mechanics and idea all the time from every different primal/raid to sometime just normal dungeons. when people complain about content it's never that the idea lacks its that the idea doesn't easily kill the player. the complaints are the game is easy and the mechs can be pretty much ignored but that is the complaint.

like with the fate hate people love fates they just hate that people can zerg them and they don't screw players over as if that is the only thing that matters.

Difficulty is a component, but the sense I've gotten, and perhaps you've gotten a different one, is that people are bored with the content itself. These two go hand in hand to an extent, though, because literally the only meaningful, differentiating factor between Rabanastre and Labyrinth of the Ancients is boss mechanics. There's no difference in party composition, no difference in objective styling, no difference in ability usage (beyond the level capped abilities), no difference in pace. It's just the mechanics. Which guarantees two things: firstly, that Rabanastre (or any other 24-person fight) becomes quite boring, quite quickly; secondly, that Rabanastre becomes easy quite quickly, because there's nothing new to master beyond a different boss rotation to memorize.

If you look at FATEs, too, the complaint lurking behind 'they're too easy to zerg' is that they're brainless and boring, not that they're easy. Suggestions to make FATEs impact the world if they aren't completed have less to do with difficulty, and more to do with depth of experience, with a desire to feel invested in the content.

And this sort of crap is how a company milks a name. The update cycle for FFXIV looks a lot like Assassin's Creed. Shovel the same old crap on an accelerated release cycle, over and over and over as long as people are willing to keep paying for it. Don't bother with changing things up or expanding the experience in a meaningful way; that's not necessary, and requires too much time and money. Just keep repeating things until profits begin to suffer (which they will at some point, rest assured). And it isn't what XIV 1.0 did, if for no other reason than 1.0 wasn't allowed to exist long enough to fall into this sort of cycle. ARR felt fresh, too. I didn't mind 2.0, nor, I think, did most people. It's everything that's happened since that has people rightly concerned with the future of the title.

[Musashidon]

Difficulty is a component.

in any game if you choose a class/job whatever they want to call them players will make a guide to play them the right way and any other way is the wrong way, and in games like xi where every job is gives loads and loads of skills there are even more wrong choices to choose. we all remember the 2.0 ifrit fiasco where parties disbanded for having no mages or two warriors. people downright refuse to play without the optimal team, warrior was completely changed from its orginal creation over being too hard to play in end game content and people having to play better because of it.

fates this is what i said, they want them to not be zergable and to screw people over in the map by making quests or something needed inaccessible for no reason. they are constantly changing how fates work and adding new idea's too them from what makes certain fates spawn to what happens in them like the on in the peaks that is a giant robot you have to defeat before it reaches its destination but the only way that fate would be good is if it ended in town and blew it up making you have to do a whole nother fate to get the town back to do main scenario.

it comes down to the same two aspects being the only thing that matters and then people say no thought was put into this content! what do you mean no thought? SE has decided making quests disappear and people needing to hope someone will help them reopen the area is to cruel to do and would more likely hurt the playerbase instead of build it up, because while people like the idea they don't like the idea of having to go back to old content that isn't important anymore and helping a newbie with no incentives but it's a cool idea that it does this annoying thing.

why does ff14 have to change but it was terrible for ff11 to change? you have to change the formula! except for the games i like don't change them!

like i said earlier 1.0 died do to noone playing it, it got so bad yoshi p said hey if you guys can hold the bare minimum to keep this game running we will keep it and they weren't able too. so sure maybe 1.0 would have been the same over and over and yea i believe it would as you don't change a game for no reason you made the game to be that way why would you randomly decide to change core gameplay for no reason?

concerned with the future of the title? in what way that it won't go the way you want it to or that it may stop being successful one day?

All of which ignores that this isn't even the subject of this thread, which is decidedly in the realm of breaking the status quo and not doubling down by adding in more of what we've already got for the nth time.

why do you think it's ok to make ff14 different but not 11? you may not believe that but i am asking what you think the general idea about the casual change to 11 is that it was terrible and that it completely ruined the game but then says if 14 was changed into 11 it would make the game better and awesome.

and you said here is break the status qou do something different ok but why is it ok for 14 but not a game that you may like?

from what i am getting is it comes down to the idea that people like the way one game is and all games have to follow that formula or at least FF because FF can't deviate from what they like and when it does it's uncreative and uninspired.

so what i am saying is if no game is allowed to do the same thing over and over that means the games you like their current design and direction also has to change to the opposite because it continuing to do what it does is uncreative and uninspired. double standards in all.

[Darrcyphfeid]

SE has decided making quests disappear and people needing to hope someone will help them reopen the area is to cruel to do and would more likely hurt the playerbase instead of build it up, because while people like the idea they don't like the idea of having to go back to old content that isn't important anymore and helping a newbie with no incentives but it's a cool idea that it does this annoying thing.

I wonder if Square truly thinks so little of us.

Meanwhile on Faerie people are constantly coming to kill/spawn the various achievement FATEs for people, soloing down A Ranks that are interfering with newbies trying to do MSQ objectives (if the hunt community is sleeping or whatever), and many people (Faerie or otherwise) here on the OF have bemoaned the fact that Eureka will not encourage people to do older content to help with queue times (I waited 40 minutes for Lost City HM to pop the other day on BRD, and had 15 minute queue times for things like Garuda HM on MNK Thursday evening).

As a person that played XI, though, I can definitely say that not being able to flag my story quests because the towns were constantly being attacked due to WotG being very far out of date by that point was somewhat annoying. However, I can also say that I never had a problem either getting a friend or two to help or just plowing through the Campaign battle solo to make the NPCs reappear, and the rewards for doing those battles were actually relevant to what I was trying to accomplish. I think the same would be the case here, doubly so since our ilvl skyrockets so quickly and unsyncing and resyncing FATEs is a legitimate way to cheese all but the bigger achievement ones on any job. But who knows.

On the flip side once again, Adoulin's Coalition ranks had to be adjusted a couple different times to help the community out as the population diminished over time. And of course that Square still hasn't deemed it necessary to merge servers there, leaving most in a generally poor state for more than two years now.

why does ff14 have to change but it was terrible for ff11 to change? you have to change the formula! except for the games i like don't change them!

It was more how XI changed, though. People got really upset about Abyssea (eventually) raising the level cap to 99 not because they did it, but because they had spent more than 7 years at lv75 cap doing horizontal progression and, by and large, the new stuff invalidated years of work. There was a similar pushback when Adoulin released and introduced item level (up to i119, where it technically remains today), thus invalidating a lot of work put into lv99 content. And the added kicker, of course, that Adoulin originally - and for a good number of months - completely invalidated the Relic, Mythic and Empyrean weapons that took actual real life months/years to create. In addition to absolutely ludicrous amounts of Gil.

Things have once again stabilized at i119, though, and XI still regularly releases new content while multiple items from previous expansions are situationally useful/actually amazing.

concerned with the future of the title? in what way that it won't go the way you want it to or that it may stop being successful one day?

Who says these are mutually exclusive things? It's concerning when my entire friend circle is pretty apathetic towards the game - most of my group is on varying levels of extended breaks - because, usually, we're the people pulling the majority of the weight in our DF interactions. If a large number of veteran players leave the game, that doesn't bode well for the continued good experience of newbie players. Veterans are more likely to have (if not actually main) tanks and healers leveled, if nothing else.

[Darrcyphfeid]

Replying to this in a separate post as it was edited in while responding:

why do you think it's ok to make ff14 different but not 11? you may not believe that but i am asking what you think the general idea about the casual change to 11 is that it was terrible and that it completely ruined the game but then says if 14 was changed into 11 it would make the game better and awesome.

I am absolutely not among the group that took offense to the quality of life adjustments XI received with Abyssea and especially Adoulin, though. Being able to teleport between Home Points/crystals, between the various books that were added to the game over the last 7-ish years, the Geomagnetic Founts, the more accessible mount system - all very good stuff. There's no novelty in spending 15 minutes on an airship or a boat traveling around when you're the only one there because the community was allowed to wither and die by bullheaded developers (or more likely, stingy executives that like the game providing the company money but whom don't see a good enough reason in supporting it).

The only thing I took offense to was the Trust system, because the moment that was added to the game the concept of working together for leveling was killed off. Why would I have a human-controlled character in my party that will cut my EXP yield when I can have a party of overpowered NPCs buffing/healing me instead? It was probably a decent QoL thing, sure, but... I'm sure you can understand why I don't like it. Why you won't like it if and/or when Squadrons expand enough that people no longer queue for lower level dungeons/things like PotD and instead sit in their anti-social little boxes and toil away.

and you said here is break the status qou do something different ok but why is it ok for 14 but not a game that you may like?

But you've never seen some of the stuff I said about XI and Square while playing that game! Trust me, it didn't get off the hook any more than XIV is right now. And I've long since stopped playing XI because - shockingly! - Square couldn't be bothered to listen to me/us. One of the final straws was a massive cheating/exploitation of Salvage (no not that one, a more recent one) that saw a combination of position hacking and being able to use BLU magic spells without being BLU or /BLU (think the Pomander exploit here - and yes, history repeats itself far too often with Square's spaghetti coding) lead to obscene numbers of Alexandrites, used in creating the immensely powerful Mythic weapons, being farmed up. Square decided to not permanently ban a large number of the people doing it, with some posters on BG receiving a 3-day ban at worst, and it was at that point that I realized nothing mattered anymore.

And then because of pushback from the JP playerbase a couple of my friends copped bans for nonsensical things like powerleveling themselves using second characters and I just ragequit entirely. ...Thinking back on it, I'm not even sure why I thought playing XIV would've been a good idea. There are so many parallels, my god. lol

from what i am getting is it comes down to the idea that people like the way one game is and all games have to follow that formula or at least FF because FF can't deviate from what they like and when it does it's uncreative and uninspired.

I mean, yeah? No? I'm not sure.

XIV doing the exact same thing over and over again is just as bad as XI relying too heavily on melee-destroying AoE spam and utterly crippling status ailments. I grew to despise both. Both sill did things that I liked, and that I thought should be focused on more (or less) while shoring up the glaring issues.

There's an enormous chasm in between XI and XIV that I think, if Square worked hard enough, could be bridged to create a truly remarkable game. Diadem, for example, will never not be compared to XI's Skirmish in my mind - except Diadem's gearing system was trash (both times) and XIV in general invalidates gear too quickly for randomized stats to ever be worth it.

so what i am saying is if no game is allowed to do the same thing over and over that means the games you like their current design and direction also has to change to the opposite because it continuing to do what it does is uncreative and uninspired. double standards in all.

No double standard. The sheer amount of variety in XI was staggering, in large part because doing maximum DPS was almost never a good idea in XI. You could do it, sure, but... having, say, 5 DPS smacking an enemy would feed it TP like nobody's business and it would get pretty dangerous with it using named attacks more frequently. Or you'd kill it too quickly instead of hitting "weakness triggers" and get significantly fewer, less rare rewards. Or you'd kill yourself against its shield/counters. Or something along those lines.

Which is still not to say that I want XIV to be XI-2. 'Cause I don't really want that. I do want XIV to slow the hell down (in multiple senses) and maybe start plucking ideas from XI and refining them instead of, I guess (never played it and never will), eyeing World of Warcraft and following/copying it instead.

We're getting a whole special area for relic and people don't even give it a try before complaining we get nothing new that is worth while. I suppose SE should have just recycled the relic in the same way they did for the last couple go arounds given they never can seem to make some people happy.

I don't recall a single person in this thread saying they weren't giving Eureka a try, rather that they're bored from nothing in SB to this point being a breath of fresh air and varying levels of disappointment that Eureka has been delayed this long. Oh, and the part where we can't shake the feeling that this is maybe Diadem 3.0 because they've really told us almost nothing about what Eureka's going to be. Which is a valid concern.

If we're on the subject though, I liked when the Zodiac got Hydra and Chimera as trials. I didn't so much like when the Anima was 80% farming Tomestones.