Concern on the current state of FFXIV, and future content

[Altena]

Couldn't agree more. I am also similar to you as a player. Played through 1.0 pretty consistently and have been subbed since.
The content has been getting less and less since ARR, and the quality along with it. I still am of the opinion that BCoB was the best raid chain we've seen. Felt the least like "trials under a raid umbrella", the zones were really well designed etc..

I mean if it's not telling enough that the FC I have been a part of since 1.0, with a thriving 40+ members coming into 2.0, and many stuck through a lot of Heavensward, suddenly made a mass exodus once they played through the Stormblood content. While the FC still sits at around those numbers, I could barely count more than one hand of my FC buddies that have stuck around. Many of my veteran friends are now gone because of the same ol' stale formula.

I was extremely excited for PotD. I imagined a more FFXI's Salvage or Nyzul style system with different objectives.. Turns out it was just "kill mobs until next floor unlocks"..
The content was wasted potential. Admittedly I enjoyed doing floors 100+ but some additional mechanics or objectives would have made it so much better.

Dungeons all follow the same formula of "2-3 groups of mobs > boss > repeat", running in a straight line until you hit a wall. No real stand out mechanics.. What ever happened to dungeons like Wanderer's Palace which required you to go track down Tonberry oil to progress? Or Q'arn where you had to go pick up the stone thingies to open the final room?

Diadem? Well.. That was the first major sign that the game just didn't have much juice left in terms of innovative ideas.
Diadem 2.0? Look I will give it credit where credit is due.. The "idea" behind it, with missions / objectives was great! But the execution was not so great.. With the reward at the end of sticking around to farm FATEs for.... what exactly?

Now Eureka.. I had so much hope for this.
Now I promise I am not an FFXI fanboy (even though I have mentioned it twice in this post) I was really hoping for AbysseaLite.
Don't get me wrong with what I am about to say regarding Eureka.. I think the "base" idea is perfectly fine. In fact I think that the base idea is great for exactly that - the absolute basics..
Grind mobs > grind enough and a NM pops > kill NM > get reward.. Totally fine.. The issue is the execution. Without meaning to hijack this great thread with "Eureka suggestions" a few off the top of my head that would make it infinitely better...
- Remove the "180 min timer" and just allow people to stay in there indefinitely. (Sure, keep the AFK kick timer if you want but maybe boost it up to like 20 mins, it's nice to be able to go grab a quick snack without having to find a new party etc).
- Add objectives.. Steal a page from the Diadem 2.0 book on this one.. Force NM pops when this "quest/mission chain" has been completed that is exclusive to the party (eg. Faction leves like the relic quests from 1.0)
- When parties fulfill quests from A, B & C, then pop the "zone boss" which is treated more like a mass scale trial with more mechanics than the current NMs require.. (Similar to the Emergency Mission in Diadem 2.0)..

There is so much wasted potential with this new content.. It feels great to "go on a voyage" and have to legitimately avoid aggro / run as a group because the zone is dangerous.. The content feels like it's simply a bare-bones system with no actual "content" in it. It's just "Kill x number of mobs to pop a FATE"...

Ask your in-house FFXI team to take some pages from the Abyssea book here.. I think some of those ideas / systems would fit sooooooooo nicely in Eureka.

[Penthea]

Are you even reading people's posts in their entirety?

A lot of them yes and I sincerely think so many are overreacting.

I played WoW in Warlords of Draenor, also known as the expansion that nearly killed the game but in truth many of the issues were several expansions old. I've been on a sinking ship. I know what it looks like. I don't see it happening right now in XIV.

That isn't to say I think it's perfect, it's definitely not. I have many criticisms. But I don't think the game is doomed. Far from it.

[Vhailor]

A lot of them yes and I sincerely think so many are overreacting.

I played WoW in Warlords of Draenor, also known as the expansion that nearly killed the game but in truth many of the issues were several expansions old. I've been on a sinking ship. I know what it looks like. I don't see it happening right now in XIV.

That isn't to say I think it's perfect, it's definitely not. I have many criticisms. But I don't think the game is doomed. Far from it.

I'm curious, what would constitute a sinking ship, to you? What more would you need to see?

I see long-term content decisions that are not being enjoyed by the people I play with, forums that are near-universally upset with various things, and a development team that doesn't appear to be paying attention to any of it (they certainly haven't indicated any real concern or understanding in the past, anyhow).

I didn't go through the Warlords of Draenor period of WoW, but I did go through Diablo 3's initial launch. I saw the player complaints, the unhappiness on the forums, and the utter disregard on Blizzard's end (initially, anyway). To me, it looked a lot like FFXIV does right now. That's what I have to go off of, but I'm curious as to what ingredients are missing for you.

As an aside, I don't think many people feel FFXIV is doomed. I think there's a sense that FFXIV might be doomed under the current development approach, but that's an important caveat, and it's why I, at least, am being so vocal. I certainly don't feel the game is doomed beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I nonetheless think it's a sinking ship that needs to start bailing out water and paying attention to some of the gaping holes in the hull.

[Darkdesiree]

I am not gonna lie guys I unsubbed from the game this morning. I agree with the OP on almost everything. The dev team really needs to take a look at how they are releasing content. One of the main reasons I have stayed as long as I did was my personal house. It felt like a choke over me. But I think I am finally willing to let it go. And come back when maybe SE changes a few things. Gil is always obtainable anyway...

[MuseTraveller]

I typed something similar in one of the many topics, I considered making a topic on the same subject but I didn't think I could word myself well. I fully agree and I'm growing concerned with each patch. I'm not stopping my sub or rage quitting, but I'm concerned and don't want this game to turn into a shall of what it used to be for me. I feel like the dev team needs to realize they are summoning a second Dalamud with this stale formula they repeat over and over again. They need to start thinking outside the box, take risks, break the mold. If you use old formulas add twist to them, turn the idea upside down.

[Penthea]

I'm curious, what would constitute a sinking ship, to you? What more would you need to see?

On my phone so I'll keep it short.

Blizzard ignored their players for several years. Since Vanilla they had been asking for guild (fc) halls. Instead they isolated players by giving each their own town filled with npc. They appeared to forget their own game is a mmo. The towns also had very little visual customisation.

Healer balance was abysmal for years to the point that some heals could see through the walls in a raid boss mechanic and Blizzard didn't address it.

One of the endgame zones was delayed for far longer than Eureka and it had literally nothing new to offer. Yes it was more dull than Eureka, smaller and very ugly.

I could go on for ages but copy pasting and editing is a pain in mobile.

[Vahlnir]

I feel that people who have not played WoW, or have and didn't like it, should at the very least look to one of their fan sites. Wowhead is easily the best, but I wouldn't go there without a good antivirus and/or an ad blocker...but that said, people can browse its many contents, from items to dungeons to zones and even activities in those zones, and future content currently in the works. It's all there for the world to see. I just want people to see what things could be like when done right...and things that have gone horribly wrong. The game isn't perfect and never has been, but it's still around and still the MMO with the most subs. There's a reason for that, and it's not because the faithful are the only ones remaining (they're not, far from it in fact). It also has more similarities with XIV than people realize. Not enough though, imo.

This game needs more inspiration. Why not use WoW, the most successful of them all? Yeah, it borrowed ideas from other MMOs, but MMOs have done that since the very beginning. SE made a successful MMO themselves, XI. Every time this dev team tries to "copy" it, it's nothing at all like its former incarnation. It's made from cheap material that might look shiny, but it's worn around the edges and torn, and barely resembles what it's supposed to be. I'm not sure how or why it happens, but there needs to be a change. Now more than ever.

I don't think the game is doomed...yet, but we've hit an iceberg and the hull is starting to give way. It could give tomorrow, it could give months or even a year from now. But there'll be a reckoning at some point, even if it's not over Eureka. This, however, seems to be a catalyst of sorts.

[Tinibou]

It's a good thing that finally, people open their eyes about the state of the game and its development. It's not Eureka-related, nor Stormblood-related. It's an deep issue that we're facing silently, without noticing the first signs.

The fact that SE is okay with their "MMO recipe" that is always the same with each extension is already a problem but could be OK if the execution was great. And it is not.
Maybe that Eureka will make people see and understand what's going on for months, even more thant year now.
Maybe that Eureka will be a kick in SE's **** and that they will open their own eyes too.

I'm just like the OP. I've spent many many hours in Eorzea. Even in 1.0. I've been always impressed about the work that Yoshida and its teams do with ARR while maintaining the 1.0 with some contents and bugfixes. And I don't understand what's happening now.

I really don't know what's going on with Final Fantasy XIV and I would be really deceived to see that game which, just like Phoenix, was reborn and in a splendid way to finally start becoming a bad game due to bad design and lazy development ? (or absent money)

[hijifa]

eureka is fine.. they gotta flesh it out way more and tone down the grind for casual players and add complexity and depth for midcore/hardcore players . and when i say they "gotta" i mean they should've... like they should know that players aren't dumb.. after playing some content for some amount of time people can learn, so make things harder as you progress.. my suggestions of what could be added :-

1. elite mobs

2. mix elemental monsters or dual/triple elemental monsters

3. separate elemental attack, and def, so mobs can have fire defence and wind attack for example (higher level mobs).

4. eureka only gear, set bonuses etc.. for example fire armor will add resistance to fire, but lower resistance to water, could even have a 6 element set (wear 1 of each element, gives you a set bonus to inc all element def) (an option for some that want to be jack of all trades master of none)

5. monsters less spread out, like not all the wind monsters are clumping together all the time, rn its easy to never switch your board

6. eureka only spells, like there could be really OP spells, or useful spells. for example casters can get role action that lets them switch the element of monsters for limited time(useful for said mix elemental monsters or elite mobs)

7. eureka progression. just getting more slots on the materia board doesn't feel good at all. players could learn passive traits for example which they put skill points into. elemental resist - base resistance up, elemental affinity - base elemental attack up, elemental control - remove negative effects of armor, status resist up trait, chance to inflict status resists up etc.. these will all have their own levels 1-5 so you cant max all..

8. weather affecting elements

9. eureka hunts(basically mvp monsters)(in addition to notorious monsters), quests, leves

some extras are like making healers' healing element based, so a fire affinity healer healing a fire armor tank is 150% healing, water armor tank 50%

maybe some monsters have hidden element, as in the element is not shown so players should do some trial and error to find out

status elements emphasis, since its the overworld we can stun, sleep etc things, they could make monsters designed more OP, like a fire monster casting a water spell, if your tank is on full fire defence its gonna hurt alot so you can stun/silence.

they can also play with elements and statuses, like lightning give % chance to statis, fire % to burn etc.. so you might want to statis a mob (traits to increase chance of statis, burn, etc)

of course all of my suggestion would only come into play in the later levels, like 10+ where players already got familiar with the basics. also those that just wanna get the relic should safely be able to without going into that complexity if they don't want to. they could have easily make it casual enough so that anyone can go in and get their relic, but deep enough to make it interesting. its 100% separate from the outside world, with its own leveling system, so they could've experimented with literally anything inside there, like creating a game within a game.

the old school getting skill points, upgrading skills (but you'll never max all the skills or traits so you gotta choose), levelling traits, skill traits, item traits, stat points etc, hits home with many players including myself.. they were going for the old school MMO feel, so things like this would've been fun to go through.. games that come to mind are ragnarok.. i feel like right now, they are already trying to shake up their formula, which is good, but the things they are trying are still too safe. the potential of this content is huge, and something they could've experimented on. i think theres a major development psychology issue.. the content shouldn't be there just to get the reward, the content should be fun enough to play on its own regardless of reward.. the next time you enter eureka or any content, ask yourself, if there was no reward, would i do this?

[Miss_Jane]

Honestly, I sincerely think that Naoki Yoshida should step down as producer. This eureka content is absolute unimaginative garbage. I could have came up with this content (Eureka) in my sleep.

Nothing new has been introduced since Stormblood Expansion 4.0. They just removed/combined a bunch of our abilities and kept the same formula. 4 raids per tier, 2 dungeons and a 24 man raid every once in a while. And oh, heres this diadem 2.0 thing aka we ripped off FFXI also known as we were LAZY YET AGAIN.

I am sorry to say something negative on the forums. Please dont ban me.