Infantilized Aesthetics

[Vidu]

@HyoMinPark
It's all just pixels on a screen that only possess the value we give them in the moment so why not make those moments more potent as they'll soon pass from pixels you care about to meaningless bits on some archival HDD.

That value can be created in a lot of different ways though - the outright rarity of an item (yes, they do exist), the memories attached to you obtaining it (maybe it took you a very long, painful farm to get this dungeon-piece or maybe a friend made you that dress) or simply that it looks damn sweet on your character.
For you "guarding your items" adds value aswell - for me it doesnt. And I even like(d) the PvP in the game - I still value my peace in the open world more than the idea to guard my items to add some weird sort of artificial value to them. I'm already attached to them and value them because of the memories they hold - or because my character looks good in them. I have a hard time tossing/converting gear that a friend made for me aswell, because it reminds me of that exact moment. I kept a pair of Heavy Darksteel Flanchard in my inventory throughout all of HW because it was the first difficult craft a friend of mine tried - I didnt need to guard them for them to have value.

On the general design... I'm not sure what you're talking about when you suggest that the gear as been looking more and more silly? We always had the odd silly piece in between, while most of the gear looks like serious robes and actual chain-mail. I dont even agree with your notion that it looks more "exaggerated" - some pieces do, yes. But when I think about the latest crafting/gathering-sets or some of the battlegear my characters are currently wearing or even current glamour-pieces like the Ao-Dai, nothing feels terribly exaggerated. The only pieces that I feel dont really fit the general aesthics of the game are those that are brought over from the chinese-cashshop (angel/demon, prince/princess) and that happend partly at our request.
In general I dont feel like the gear-design is degenrating - sure, one might not like the odd piece, but thats fair. For me they still fit into the general aesthetics of the game - and quite frankly: I rarely see someone sporting a silly outfit. And if someone does: all the power to them! Its a game, its meant to be to be fun - not be taken super serious.
(And honestly: ARR had those hideous subligars... we even had a quest that would give us golden, starsprinkled underpants - silly gear was always part of the game.)

Same goes for the mounts - yes, some of them might be a little silly, but even those are mostly rooted in this world (except the abdormitnation that is Yo-kai). If your personally dont like them, you can just pick one of the more serious looking mounts. As others have mentioned already though: Since we're all playing "your" character for the sake of the story, you'll have to share Midgardsormr.
The only notion I agree with here is that we need more mounts that are difficult to obtain - and by that I dont mean Ex-primal drops but rather something along the lines of Astrope or the Hunt-tiger: Mounts as rewards for high-tier achievements. Or make them an actual gil-sink and have NPCs sell them for 30 million.

I'm all for more options in the game as long as they fit the general aesthetics - which I feel is still the case. I'm personally not a fan of the latest gear we've got, but I'm happy for everyone who is - I can look elsewhere and I rest assured that sooner or later I'll get gear that fits my taste more again. Until then I can value that other people have a different taste and actually manage to pull off items that I tossed for myself.

[DevonEllwood]

I'm tired and I read the first part as "onion piece".

Now that I'm more awake I realized I can't take this seriously.

[Iscah]

I also agree that there's no "added value" to an item (or certainly not enough to outweigh the frustration) because you're forced to keep it safe.

Are your real-world possessions not precious to you unless you're actively guarding them from burglars at all times?

Someday I'll stop playing the game, and the items will be meaningless, but until then they're in my character's possession and I get to enjoy them whenever I want. If I have gear item I like wearing, I think about and enjoy it when I feel like wearing it, and the rest of the time it's just there. If I had to guard it... (A) I'd have to be thinking about it when I'm not wanting to wear it, instead of thinking about something else I do want to think about, and (B) if I lost it, I wouldn't have it when I did want to wear it, and I would miss out on the enjoyment I could have gotten from it. And then I'd have to waste time reaquiring it instead of doing something I want to do and haven't done before. (On top of the wasted time guarding it only to lose it anyway.)

I haven't played other MMOs, but I hate the idea of being able to be killed by other players. I'm not competitive like that. The fact the FFXIV doesn't allow it is one of the reasons I was drawn here in the first place.

[Nora_of_Mira]

Yes, I think the game should include pacifiers and more pastels altogether. And maybe bibs.

[Bonbori]

I don't quite understand the OP but... I paid a lot of real money (twice!) for the maid and princess outfits the moment they popped up on MogStation, and spent months crafting, spending millions of gil, RNGing and grinding for all the silly outfits, mounts and minions in my collection.

So unless the OP volunteers to pay my sub and reimburse me for all the time, money and effort I've invested into acquiring all those "infantile" vanity items, I can't bring myself to agree or even remotely sympathise with any of their points. Sorreh, I'm afraid all that maturity isn't worth as much as the contents of my glamour dresser ^^

When I do actually want to immerse myself in the world, I switch to my down-to-earth RP glamour, find an RP venue where everyone else is wearing their down-to-earth RP glamours, and go strike up some serious in-character conversation. I love doing that too and there are definitely people (at least on Mateus) who work together to create such environments.

In fact, the fact that I CAN make my character look however I want any time I want depending on my mood is one of the reasons I continue to play this game. To me, it's a selling point and I want SE to do more to capitalise on it, not less. I'm a big proponent of both adding more silly stuff as well as more RP friendly outfits (I'm still waiting for SE to give us all the Hingan kimonos and Sekiseigumi tunics that all NPCs everywhere wear but I can't ._.)

Those things are NOT mutually exclusive. We can have the cake, eat it and then order a different cake and invite friends to eat it together.

[HakaseNyan]

I only have one issue with mounts and it's not the rarity or design; it's how all of them have to fly now. I get it - if a mount can't fly, then players are less likely to use it. That may limit design choices in fear of making a mount worthless. SE first tried to make sense of mount that could fly. The Fenrir mount, costing one million MGP, was unable to fly at first, but was quickly changed and given and animated effect to make sense of how it's flying. Now, we've got a flying Tyrannosaur.

Remember back in Heavensward when you had do a quest so your chocobo could remember how to fly again? That's a bird with wings remembering how to fly. Now we have flying dinosaurs.

[InkstainedGwyn]

I've always felt like Final Fantasy fit into the "high" fantasy brand (unrealistic weapons, less focus on physics/'logical' details), even though they've been going weird places with it (imo) by adding more modern details lately. It fits the sort of story they're telling, which focuses less on the minutiae and more on the story, which tends to be epic-proportion (i.e. if we don't stop this the world will end, vs. 'evil bad guy wants to take over village', even if the bad guy tends to be what gets the story started.)

FFXIV has toned it down somewhat, to be sure, but it's still part of the final fantasy brand and in a game in which we have King Mog, I'm not going to question the size of a weapon someone can wield (also, *side-eyes Cloud*). Sure, FFXIV has a lot of odd, cutesy stuff that doesn't quite fit in with the "main aesthetic", but that's always been in the game and is certainly not "added because the game is dying".

It really comes down to, this is an "accessible-to-all-and-friendly-to-casuals" MMO and if that's not the style of game you're looking for, then you're probably better off looking for a different game that has the sort of "high-danger" mechanics you want. And, to be honest, the fact that FFXIV is accessible is one of the reasons it's not going to be in danger; those of us who had 12-14 hours a day back to play MMOs back in the early 2000s (and even people who never got into 'hardcore' MMOs) look at this game as something they can play and have fun at without having to constantly worry about "keeping the things we paid for" safe, because we no longer have that kind of time.

I always have to look at these threads with massive, "change the entire way the game works" outlines and wonder, do you really think they're going to go back and rebuild the game from the ground up? And if you really dislike the game as it is to the point that you want it rebuilt from the ground up, then this... probably isn't the game for you. They're not going to rework it. We can't even get them to redo the glamour or housing systems or give us more faces because "server limitation". There's a lot wrong with the game, and a lot I like. And because there's a lot I like, I stick around. I bring up the things I want changed, but even I know that if what I want would significantly change gameplay, it won't happen. These threads feel like the equivalent of walking into a fast food drive taco joint and looking around and going "if you just gutted the building, redid the decorations, and hired different chefs you could have a really nice sushi bar in here." If you have suggestions as to how they can make better tacos, that's good. If you want sushi, you should probably go to place that... serves sushi.

And now I want sushi.

[WhiteArchmage]

Another thing that occurred to me while writing this was a hidden benefit of being able to loose items in the game to being PK’d. It would force players to “guard” certain items which created an enhanced sense of value around things that were difficult to obtain. If you obtain something once and have it for life I think you perceive it differently. I don’t know that there is a way to do this in the new world of theme park MMO’s but it's a thought I found interesting as I think a big issue in this game is a lack of relative significance.

Nope. nope, nopenopenope GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY NO. That would require a complete overhaul of the game and bring about a schism of players, mass unsubscriptions, months of griefing and generally TEN TIMES the amount of complaints that SE already gets. Hell, Aion had open world PvP all the time and even THEY had to introduce "fast-track servers" with no PvP (indeed, it was VERY annoying to be around level 25 and all of a sudden a level SIXTY shows up and two-shots you in the middle of your quest); and even Aion didn't make you drop "loot" on death...

Yes, I think the game should include pacifiers and more pastels altogether. And maybe bibs.

I can get behind this, and if someone complains about another person's toon (or whines about a raid boss needing to be nerfed) more than 5 times a day, all your glamours sets get auto-switched to this for a week.

[Sacriel]

Disclaimer:
*snip*

I completely agree, but unfortunately this game caters to those who prefer such shallow tripe. You're wanting what we'll never see in XIV, by Yoshi's own admission. Shiny shinies and meaningless content with no sense of accomplishment is here to stay. I am on your side though, agreeing that the game should've tried to have more in common design-wise with FFXI than with WoW.

[Sigma-Astra]

The idea that someone thinks XIV is more "cartoony" in terms of appearance and aesthetics as opposed towards realism...and then I look at WoW's art direction and how brightly colored everything is...

I can't help, but have the John Travolta GIF reaction. >_>;