Should FF14 take a new route? Discussion

[Granyala]

because of the dev AND player! yes dev was lazy to try new thing, but player are the one at fault, let me ask if tomorrow they decide to not focus on raid as much as now, what do you think will happend?

Sorry, honey, but after 8.5 years of raiding in WoW, all I can tell you that releasing 4 raid bosses every 6 months can hardly be called "a focus on raiding".

If you want to see what "focus on raiding" really looks like, go and play WoW as a non raider.

[silentwindfr]

i did play wow for a veeeeeery long time, outside pvp (that wasn't present at the start outside savage pvp....Xroad i will never forget your defense) and raid, what are the end game content added by the patch? more important the recent decline of wow was mostly because they did receive less and less content patch...
most of the other activity like craft and such can be done quite fast (in comparaison of FF14) yes, you have achievement that can be your focus, or the minion fighting... but can they really be called endgame content? yes you have too the mythical dungeon, but they have the same trouble that most of the heroic of wow since day 1 they are only dungeon with monster that have more hp and hit harder (didn't try legion then maybe it was changed from here).
i did heard about the class place and relic that indeed look interesting, but do it's really end game content? it's means, not an end... like the gears was a means to beat the last boss of raid... a good example from wow... like you wasn't not able to beat bwl without craft onyxia cape... kill onyxia was not the goal, the scale was the goal for be able to slay bwl last boss.
or like me and my guild was spending countless hours to prepare consumable like pot and such for face AQ40... in the end the goal of this action is to beat the boss of the raid... they are indeed activity outside the raid, but take out the raid, what it's left?

what i point out, is the fact that outside this they have a huge trouble to really create other challenge or content that will be on par. plus i did used wow as example of what did lead to this situation.

people will say is not true, then explain me why the best weapon is only in the raid (that not the case for the x.55 patch, but mostly because that the last patch before expansion)
why relic that can end to ask more time than raiding end to be a below weapon? instead to treat it like an alternative way to equip yourself, to have more choice in the activity and equipement you receive?

why didn't we have seen a sort of arena pve where player are forced to fight wave after wave of randomly generate enemy for see if they can beat a challenge and be able to receive a reward for them teamwork and skill?
why didn't we have seen a content challenging as as hard than savage for group of 4 player? it's was simple to do it, create content that will ask a certain level of skill, teamwork and equipement for be completed, while one more time receive a decent reward?
why didn't we have seen a true hunt system a la FF12 by example, where player need to hunt down a monster for them group only, avoiding the zergfest mess we did seen? is more enraging since they show with eureka that it's possible to make it. (here i say it's possible to create a hunt that will only allows a target to spawn if you have the right hour or weather or because you did slay a certain number of enemy in an area)
why didn't we have seen more FC or GC activity that will have offer reward with the color of your guild or GC?

and i can continue encore and encore and encore.... you have soo many idea that can be simply added to the game that will have offer more CHOICE.... more ACTIVITY.... but what is the focus of FF14 right now?
- do it's pvp? nope
- do it's craft? nope
- do it's dungeon? nope

it's raid... most of them time is invested in raiding... we did receive 4 different raid(without count primordial) since the release of stormblood... pvp did receive one new mode and new map, we did receive 5 new dungeon.. 2 tribes quest... uznair and Eureka.

soo far i dare anyone to tell me that the main focus of FF14 is not raiding.

people want change, like said it's nice, but do people are ready to make FF14 not focus only on raiding and accept that other content can be called the other endgame content? i doubt it...

[Tridus]

Action combat please. The exp model can stay the same with instances giving out majority of the exp. I want the most common thing in the game (combat) to be fun and loosely different each time.

Can't do that. Aside from it requiring basically scrapping the entire combat system to make it action combat and needing to redo all the content, effectively changing the genre of the gameplay would turn off existing players that like the current combat. And all the issues aside, there must be people who like the current model otherwise nobody would be here.

It makes more sense to improve what's here now than to burn it all down.

[Kallera]

soo far i dare anyone to tell me that the main focus of FF14 is not raiding.

people want change, like said it's nice, but do people are ready to make FF14 not focus only on raiding and accept that other content can be called the other endgame content? i doubt it...

I think I agree with some of what you are saying.

Right now adding new content is what people desperately want. But it is more than just. “Let’s add a new game mode and stuff cute stuff in lockboxes that we give them!” It ties back to a concern I had that the devs are willing to make other content suffer for the sake of making raiding “the best”, the ilvl system, the materia system, hell even relics, they are all molded into a hierarchy through ilvl and the speed of updates that makes them less rewarding, and thus less preferred, than attempting the raids.

The materia does not update ilvl, and has an merciless rng, and stat limits to ensure you cannot customize something better that is outside that hierarchy.
Ilvls tell you at a glance what armor is “the one to get”, with only one clear option, getting the one with the highest ilvl.
and it isn’t just the grind, it is also the amount of time outside of said grind that is important. Because eventually the ilvl raises and you are back in the treadmill, into another grind of content you might not like, all to raise the ilvl. because you don’t raid.

If there is to be any room for new content to grow, that hierarchy must change.

[Stanelis]

The only way I see it changing directions is if they decided to completely rewrite the combat system from the ground up...

I think the current combat system could be salvaged. If only they added a fourth party role and implemented more utility spells/status effects. However they really do need to increase the party sizes a bit to make it work (and they re going to have to do it anyway if they plan to keep adding new jobs).

As for the topic of new routes for FFXIV, they need to drop the current extreme vertical progression we have on gear (it feels silly when any given ilvl threshold only makes for like 4 bosses) and capitalize on horizontal progression over the course of an expansion.

[Remedi]

They need to re-do the entire game really on a new engine.

It's amazing a game nearly a decade and a half old like WoW can manage smooth combat where any number of abilities register instantly, and in FF Ninja's have to take server lag into account to use Ninjitsu properly. Unfortunately they probably didn't expect ARR to be a success at all and were given a tight budget and as a result the servers and game engine are simply incapable of decent combat.

FF14 is just far too limited by its game engine. They can't give us lots of bag storage or make fully fleshed glamor systems or support proper vehicle quests or cope with large amounts of characters attacking a boss or anything fancy like other MMO's with good quality game engines can pull off. As a result the game never advances or develops, we just get variations of the same things. If they were serious about ARR, they should have invested right from the start. But they didn't.

^This, the game problems lies at it's roots

[Derio]

Honestly I hope by 2020 they have enough money to rebuild the game on a new engine to be able to release it during 2021 alongside a new expansion

[BillyKaplan]

Eureka turned out different to what players had been expecting

Eureka turned out different to what the devs themselves have promised, is the reason for a lot of backlash about it. Those player expectations didn't come from nowhere. Biggest example is that they promised it'd be solo-friendly. It's not.
Now, take something that 1. has been hyped to high heavens and back for months if not years at this point, 2. came at the expense of other content, 3. goes against a lot of things that were promised about it and it's easy to see why people are upset. This doesn't even have as much to do with Eureka itself but how SE handles itself and its decision making. Saying Eureka is soloable and then giving us what they did is the company outright lying to us. I'm not saying I'm going to unsub though at this point it's hard for me to deny it's because of inertia. I have quite a few alts, most of them active in varying levels, I'm at 600 S ranks, halfway to the mentor mount, and yeah these are all in-game goals but dammit I want to get there. That also means that I have things to do in the game outside of Eureka. Given that I was hoping for new content however and have to lose it for the likes of Eureka... that bites.

That said, it is a nasty strike on SE's record and will be taken into consideration next time I want to buy any of their products and yes, if my sub'll be in danger of running out. Some people act like every single incident exists in a vacuum, but it doesn't. These bad decisions pile up at some point.

[MagiusNecros]

Can't do that.

I tire of hearing "I can't". I want to start hearing about what CAN be done.

End of discussion.

[Zojha]

[...], effectively changing the genre of the gameplay would turn off existing players that like the current combat.

What irritates me the most about the calls of action combat is:
The combat at endgame isn't really slow. People complain about getting hand cramps, pains and carpal tunnel as is when they have to engage in combat for a prolonged period of time, I fail to see how making combat even faster is going to alleviate the issue in any way.

It just isn't deep or interactive.
Basic mob attacks are just un-avoidable damage you can't interact with and even if you could, that's only the tanks job, leaving nothing but mechanics for everyone else. DPS rotations are fixed, regardless of whether you fight a bandit, a god or a striking dummy, it's all the same until mechanics come in. To top it off, healers trivialize most things anyway, so even if you DID manage to change things up... would it matter? Or would people just brute force through the new combat mechanics on the back of powerful healers?

Realistically, I don't see much way to change things up on the core level. I suppose they can add CC and buff/de-buff and their removal, minor sub-systems that allow for a bit more interaction between mob and player, but that's about all I can see actually happening. The rest is just too deeply rooted.