4.25 and beyond

[Missbone]

Well as you can see i allready finished mine so i know what you mean. Of course some jobs are less fun than others, but i saw it like a challenge so it whas ok for me. There are different leveling paths but the real problem is that some are better than others when it comes to xp. If you take stuff slowly and dont care so mutch for max you have mutch more things you can do during lvling as if you go straight for the fastest way. If you just want to max a class as soon as possible potd until lvl 61 and just joining the new dungeons is the way to go (and of course taking daily lvling roulet with you). But that can of get realy boring of course. Crafters are not that worst for my taste, in fact they are realy easy and a lot faster to lvl than any of the combat classes. Sure i only use 1 tank, one heal and maybe 2 dd classes but it feels good to have everything maxed out. As for crafters i use more or less all of them for stuff like housing, clothes and so on. Its a good way to save money if you see something on MB that you like but price is way to expensive.

[Dzian]

LoL, again, XIV 1.0 failed/almost bankrupted(really?) the company because it was far from finished,
and SE want to sell the product & get back their money asap,
and maybe Mr. Nobuaki Komoto was not very efficient while working.

NOT BECAUSE the contents were boring. got it?...
not because the content designs bankrupted the company

Maybe all they needed, was a guy to push them hard, to work harder/faster,
but not change the entire game direction, omg , now the game is super stale & boring... it's a real fail to me now

Actually it kind of did. It was said back in beta that many people actually considered ARR to effectively be ffxiv 3.0 not 2.0.

This was because the game from like 1.0 through 1.18 was a completely different experience than it was from 1.2 to 1.23b

1.2 practically revamped the entire game to an extent. Crafting was changed, gathering was changed, the combat system was redone. Jobs were added. The market system was revamped. And relics were added. It was a massive change of direction and Almost a complete reboot in itself.

And it also started to see engaging contents like skirmish, hamlet defence and msq fights like United we stand, to kill a raven and even it's kinda savage equivalent the raven nevermore.

While 1.0 was what you might call a disaster. A lot of the stuff and the direction they were heading with 1.2 was largely positive and felt like a totally different game to many and certainly hoped ARR would continue in that direction. I remember a lot of people in alpha and even beta unhappy with the way theyd done a u-turn and headed down the wow clone path especially on the combat system

[Remedi]

Would like to point out that legion patches have been mostly raid-dungeon-story quest-world quest, wouldn't really say that there's variety there either
Now you may say they introduced artifact in the expansion as the new system and I would agree, but some may call it a glorified paragon grinding from wow or old talent trees coming back, (azerite gear can be compared to the old glyph system btw).
Personally I get annoyed by wow devs completely abandoning or scarpping systems each new expansions for no reasons, feel like a complete waste of time (Mine and dev team) if you ask me

[Dzian]

That sounds fun,
Did SE fired all XI designers? because they aren't a "modern guy"?

Incoming rant but often think XI was actually more modern than xiv especially in a world sense.

Vana’diel is or was when I played a deep dynamic living world impacted by literally everything. Yet Eorzea is dead and static it never changes no matter what you do.

Nothing you do in xiv has any impact on the game world at all and the whole world feels dead because everything is locked away behind instances completely detached from the game world itself.

In comparison in vana’diel literally everything you did impacted the game world in some way. From large scale things like besieged right the way down to each and every single point of experience a player earnt. Even a player dying and losing exp would impact the game world somehow. If a player died for example then the beastmen would gain influence in that area and possibly take control of it. Like wise every single point of exp players earnt in that area would help there respective nation’s gain influence or take control of it. The balance of power would change from one week to the next as a direct result of player actions.

This then changed the availabilty of various warps and buffs such as signet and also impacted the goods on sale at vendors and prices there of. If a nation lost a particular region then vendors would run out of stock of certain things or other things would become more expensive.
The world also remembered you and your actions lead to you becoming more famous or more trusted which if I recall also had an impact on vendors and things. And changed the way npcs spoke to you. Varying from total stranger to the local hero.

Other examples like besieged you might find various npcs were abducted and had to be rescued by players or they couldn’t rent chocobos, warp or spend imperial credits etc. Or if the candescance was lost the tunic portals wouldnt work and you were stuck waiting for the boat to go to caerdava mira or something. Until players went and got it back.

Literally everything had some impact on the world and it felt so much more alive because of it.
You also saw other players which made the world feel alive again. You might casually be running through the crawlers nest to an exp party and find players doing the escort quest or just passing through to get to simmy. Or you’d be passing through Ro Meave on the way to sky and see a group of players killing the golems for the bastok mission or maybe fighting shikigami weapon for the summoner robe. Or hell even one of the mms to unlock various weapon skills.. all things that bought life to the world. You never knew what youd stumble across.

In Xiv you never see any of it. You could run out of ul’dah get on your mount and ride / fly all the way through every zone between ul’dah and ala’mhigo and not see or pass another player at all. Big part of why eorzea is dead and feels empty.

Another thing is vanadiel had dynamic zones with little gimmicks and things that made them feel more alive and interactive.
You had the eldieme necropolis with its switch puzzles to open and close the gates as you worked your way through.
Toramai canal with its 3 mage gate.
Quicksand caves with its weighted doors 3 taru to open or 1 big galka.
Ifrits couldren where players could use ice clusters to douse the flames and clear paths.
The garleige citadel, sea serpants grotto etc etc all had little puzzles and things.
And then zones like the sacrarium which had a maze that changed every game day (roughly every hour)
Vanadiel is almost 20 years old and yet infinitely more alive and dynamic than eorzea ever will be..

If they could do all that nearly 20 years ago why the hell is Eorzea so bland and lifeless in this “modern” era it’s almost like its gone backwards not moved forwards.. even fates are lifeless.
end of rant

[Theodric]

Aleport is one of my favourite settlements in the game. It's a 'minor' quest hub in the grand scheme of things but you can enter almost every single building within it.

It's a real shame that settlements such as Namai do not boast that same luxury.

[MuseTraveller]

Reading some (though not replies here, ouch when did 3 pages pop!) I too feel like a problem lies in that... we don't quite feel connected to Eorzea! Nothing we do leaves an impact or changes anything. The only times I feel the magic of this world is during the MSQ but once done I'm with it, I'm back to feeling very much like a hamster in a wheel - grinding same old things that won't matter in 3 months. It's like the magic for me ends once I'm done with the quests.

I wish the alliance would in fact break. I wish us being part of Maelstorm/Twin Adder/Immortal Flames would cause difference in the world based on which faction has most active players. Maybe territorial control over some areas? Reduced Teleportation fees? Reduced vendors in our city state? Something more? I kinda wish this tax money we pay when we sell something would go into improving some areas maybe? Maybe have specific buildings that require X amount of money with time frame from one patch to another and we help build it by donating tomes or gil? I want to be more than primal kicking adventurer!

But yes overall, personally I wish I as a player had impact on what surrounds us. I wish grinding whatever it is - tomes, seals, etc, has meaning to the world rather than scrap it in next patch. :/
Alas, I have no creative ideas on how this could improve beyond what was stated above by other players. I just wish the dev team could take into consideration what people have been voicing here.

[Ayer2015]

Would like to point out that legion patches have been mostly raid-dungeon-story quest-world quest, wouldn't really say that there's variety there either
Now you may say they introduced artifact in the expansion as the new system and I would agree, but some may call it a glorified paragon grinding from wow or old talent trees coming back, (azerite gear can be compared to the old glyph system btw).
Personally I get annoyed by wow devs completely abandoning or scarpping systems each new expansions for no reasons, feel like a complete waste of time (Mine and dev team) if you ask me

Continually updating the game with new systems keeps it interesting over the long term. I may not play WoW as much as I do FF14, but it clearly does a lot right.... or it wouldn't still be around.

[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.

[Zojha]

I may not play WoW as much as I do FF14, but it clearly does a lot right.... or it wouldn't still be around.

In fairness: WoW lost 6 million subscribers (half their playerbase) within two and a half expansions and then hastily stopped reporting numbers. Only the gods know where they're now. The fall started with Cataclysm.

But that then begs the question which games those players migrated to and what those did well instead.

[Istaru]

A very good post.

Thank you for that. You summed up my feelings of hopelessness with this game anymore.

Didn’t clear Coil? No effect. Alexander? Savage content? Nope. EX primals? No effect.

I want to feel like doing something, anything that I do as the hero of this game actually matters. This game feels like a chocolate cake without the chocolate or the cake.

The world just feels very cold and empty.