Do You Want Revisions or a New Game?

[Okamimaru]

How can we have rose colored nostalgia for ff14 when we are currently playing it... that's not how nostalgia works... no matter the color

[Vhailor]

I think revisions would be fine, I think a new game would be fine. The key thing is, Yoshi-P has to go. He's clearly unwilling to take risks and go in new directions, and that's painting XIV into a corner.

[Ayer2015]

I would rather revisions at this point. I'm fairly certain this is my last MMO.

[Slirith]

I think revisions would be fine, I think a new game would be fine. The key thing is, Yoshi-P has to go. He's clearly unwilling to take risks and go in new directions, and that's painting XIV into a corner.

Yup, he can step down(still be part of the team) and let someone else be a director. Unpopular opinion sure but come on, imagine how stressful it is.

[Tiaque]

Snip

This sounds alot like Chronicles of Elyria......

[Shurrikhan]

It's hard to say. At what point do "revisions" become, by systems and design goals alone, a "new game".

I don't think what I want from the game would be incompatible with what exists now, but there is almost certainly a world that could be constructed to slightly better suit the ideas within, even if the parts I most desire don't require much context beyond their given expansion.

To put it simply, I don't think it needs to be a new game, but I do think it needs to aim -- by each step that can be excused as (and fully function as) playing around with what already mostly exists -- for a further, more ambitious, and more cohesive goal (continuing to add to the game without delays, but where every addition prototypes a later goal, accumulating the tech and influencing the player community towards what development ultimately intends). It feels like the cohesion of this game, it's defining traits and so forth, are essentially just a summary of design inhibitions. The game is most defined by incongruous leveling, weekly currency and loot, and predictable content schedules only because there's so little else to define it by. While the post-cap MSQ progression over patches is less common, they're far from unique, and hardly hold any impact on the hours spent or overall play experience.

[Tiaque]

All I remember from FFXI was, a certain lv 99 update came out, and all the Whale players who spent up to 2000 dollars or so buying gil to get their relics, suddenly heard an entire chorus of this kid doing what he does best, straight at them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo Rage ensued, mountains of salt created, many players stopped playing.

[KisaiTenshi]

This sounds alot like Chronicles of Elyria......

I looked it up, other than being a cookie cutter Unreal Engine with fixed server capacity, it seems to tick most of the other boxes other than visual aesthetic. So I might give that a try in 2019 if it comes out.

Though as I've mentioned elsewhere, pretty much every MMORPG based on Unreal or Unity is kinda doomed from the beginning, and many of them don't last more than three months before being wrecked by bots. Chronicles of Elyria appear to be charging per "life" so to speak.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Contrary to what many think, the majority of players are satisfied with the current state of the game.

Source? Keep in mind you need to account for players who have tried the game and quit. They may not be current players, but they are players nonetheless. If they've had 10MM+ created accounts and only ~1MM of them are active, they are in fact NOT the majority.

This is Final Fantasy, a series that has always been known for reinventing itself with each new entry. I'm beginning to think that having an evergreen MMO isn't the best use of Square Enix's talents. I know the idea of winding down an MMO that isn't dying seems ridiculous, but is it perhaps worth considering? What if Square Enix were to embrace what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy and give us something new?

To be honest, I don't think this will happen for the same business reasons that prevent fundamental changes - don't rock the boat. But I wonder if, despite the impracticality, this is an idea that appeals to more than just myself. What do you think - do you want them to change and improve FFXIV indefinitely, or steer towards an "ending" of sorts and start on something new?

Speaking strictly personally - I just officially took a break from FF14 starting yesterday. My static and I were making decent progress on UWU (good bit through Ifrit after just 2 days), but I really can't commit to the 3 day a week schedule they wanted (I'm too casual LOL). I love FF14 and FF in general, but this game is not the game I wish it was.

I'd wish the combat was more dynamic and organic. I wish the world was less instanced, segmented and bland. I wish sub-systems made sense and interacted/synergized together. I wished itemization wasn't trivially boring and insanely vertical.

I'm at a point where I really want a game that marries the ideas of Dark Souls with an MMO. Like I imagine taking me and 3 buddies through Dorter Trade City (FFT reference - not an instance) where we're having to manage being pelted from above by Archers, not grouped up to get melted by Black Mages, and protecting squishies from Knights.

Stuff like enemies with AI that will try to CC me to get to the back line, enemies reacting to decisions I/we make as a party maybe with active defensive elements, etc. It wouldn't be just an AOE group fest. If you saw the BLM charging, and you were worried you couldn't interrupt/kill him in time, you'd spread out to minimize damage, utilize defensive cooldowns, etc. Real decisions in real time, within a FF universe with MMO elements? That's what I want to play.

Really I want to see the level design and danger aspect of Dark Souls married with the exploration, mechanics, and camaraderie that MMO's typically provide. Proper spacing and resource optimization, with lots of dynamic encounter design.

It's one reason I'm pretty excited to see how the Islands in WoW BfA turn out. Might be a really neat start to developing battle AI that isn't scripted in a binary fashion.

[Felis]

The 1.0 disaster still hurts the game even now because they had to use the same crappy coding and graphics engine.

I don't know how it is with the codes, but the ARR engine is not the 1.0 engine