We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Vaer]

The sum up the situation with Runescape, they evolved negatively because it added a hotbar and tried to emulate modern MMORPGs and update their graphics. They began losing a lot of their fanbase so they released "Old School Runescape" in 2013, a backup copy of the game that was saved in 2007 and by 2017 had twice as many players then the current "new" version of Runescape. Old School Runescape has had constant updates since 2013 but it's core identity is unchanged from 2007, and that's what makes it so popular. This older system sidesteps many of the problems the new MMORPGs have, and in my opinion is why it is still running so strong, being the world's largest and most-updated free MMORPG.

That's kind of what you're suggesting here though. What you're suggesting would be doing exactly what the EoC did to Runescape just in reverse. You'll just alienate the people who signed up for raid/dungeons/themepark if you bring in sandbox stuff just like EoC alienated the RS purists by forcing hotbar gameplay on people who didn't want it.

[Edax]

That's kind of what you're suggesting here though. What you're suggesting would be doing exactly what the EoC did to Runescape just in reverse. You'll just alienate the people who signed up for raid/dungeons if you bring in sandbox stuff just like EoC alienated the RS purists by forcing hotbar gameplay on people who didn't want it.

(darn, I'm being drawn into this topic again...)
Are the raider's egos so fragile that they'd quit if they didn't get the absolute best? Would it break the community on the level that EoC did? EoC affected nearly everyone in Runescape, every player had to relearn combat from scratch. I'll agree change isn't easy, but I do think there is rising discontent with the latest FFXIV content coming out. Change maybe necessary, though what that form comes in is debatable.

[HyoMinPark]

It’s not strictly about raiders, their ego, and their gear; you’re the only one who is drawing the conversation back that conclusion. Can you please stop with the condescending remarks about them since we’re finally having a discussion? They’re uncalled for.

I think a lot of why this new old-school Runescape they released probably worked was due to nostalgia from the people that enjoyed the original, though this is just an hypothesis. Nostalgia always makes you resistant to change, and it will always make older things that you enjoy more appealing over newer things that you dislike. I feel like you’re basically wanting FFXIV to function how Runescape did, but they aren’t designed to be anything alike—Runescape is sandbox, FFXIV is themepark. And while change is not a bad thing, you’ve already said that they tried drastic/significant changes in Runescape, and it didn’t work—the same would apply to FFXIV.

What you mentioned about being able to buy the best gear would already not sit well with a lot of players, raiders and non-raiders, if the gear was being bought through a cash shop. People here already don’t like having a cash shop in a subscription MMO that’s mostly cosmetics. Do you think that they would take kindly to battle gear being sold for money on there? Again, I don’t know how Runescape did it, but the concept of people buying the best gear over earning it is already something people don’t like in this community at least.

Re: Noodle’s comment—

I know. I just didn’t want to dive into the specifics of why Eureka doesn’t fit well (in its current state) with the way FFXIV is designed as a whole. I’ve said that many times in other threads, and was just not wanting to repeat myself here lol. I’d actually had it written out and thought, “I don’t want to turn this into another discussion about why Eureka is poorly designed when we already have so many other threads discussing that until people are blue in the face”, so then I just cut the text out.

[Sigma-Astra]

(darn, I'm being drawn into this topic again...)
Are the raider's egos so fragile that they'd quit if they didn't get the absolute best? Would it break the community on the level that EoC did? EoC affected nearly everyone in Runescape, every player had to relearn combat from scratch. I'll agree change isn't easy, but I do think there is rising discontent with the latest FFXIV content coming out. Change maybe necessary, though what that form comes in is debatable.

It's not about ego and you're purposely misunderstanding the incredibly common system used not just in video games, but in other facets of life as well.

Hard work should reap better rewards than the average. It's simple logic that you're refuting simply because you yourself don't wish to acknowledge it even though you know it's true.

A person earns a promotion through their job because they worked harder and better than the rest of the employees and thus, deserves better things than the rest of the employees. An employee not putting in the extra effort or physical labor involved does not deserve the same rewards as the other person doing double that. It's just common sense.

You can try to refute it as much as you wish and remain naive about it, but, that's the truth and it's here to stay.

[Edax]

It's not about ego and you're purposely misunderstanding the incredibly common system used not just in video games, but in other facets of life as well.

Hard work should reap better rewards than the average. It's simple logic that you're refuting simply because you yourself don't wish to acknowledge it even though you know it's true.

A person earns a promotion through their job because they worked harder and better than the rest of the employees and thus, deserves better things than the rest of the employees. An employee not putting in the extra effort or physical labor involved does not deserve the same rewards as the other person doing double that. It's just common sense.

You can try to refute it as much as you wish and remain naive about it, but, that's the truth and it's here to stay.

And yet, hard work via mining, blacksmithing, woodcutting, fishing, ect, in Old School Runescape equals reward with money. More hard work means more money. The more money you earn, the better gear you can get until you have the best.
Hard Work in FFXIV is gated. Hard Work is only rewarded by a very narrow set of FFXIV game mechanics and the rewards are spiritbound. That armor was earned in Runescape, it was not just handed out. More importantly the player had more freedom in acquiring that armor via the player-driven economy.

[Sigma-Astra]

And yet, hard work via mining, blacksmithing, woodcutting, fishing, ect, in Old School Runescape equals reward with money. More hard work means more money. The more money you earn, the better gear you can get until you have the best.
Hard Work in FFXIV is gated. Hard Work is only rewarded by a very narrow set of FFXIV game mechanics and the rewards are spiritbound. That armor was earned in Runescape, it was not just handed out. More importantly the player had more freedom in acquiring that armor via the player-driven economy.

Not necessarily and you're purposely being incredibly narrow in your views to only see what you want to see and nothing else because it benefits your narrative and nothing more than that.

A person who has maxed out their gathering and crafting jobs can easily funnel a lucrative and monetary supply in buying or making the pentameld crafting gear for battle classes.

You do have other variables and options towards gear that is relatively close towards BiS, it's just not THE perfect BiS which bursts your bubble and quite frankly, if you're not doing Savage raiding and seeking to improve your actual knowledge and skills with your chosen main class or multiple classes, then no, you don't need the highest ilvl that's achievable without putting in the same actual mechanical requirements.

Anyone can level their botanist, miner, and crafting class towards acceptable and good standards with the maximum efficiency, it's not mechanically hard, it's just tedious....not everyone can play their battle class under fire and make rapid, sometimes good and sometimes bad decisions, in the heat of a moment when you have no idea if it'll cost you or the rest of your team their lives, therefore wiping the run entirely.

Those are the standards that set you apart from the raiders. Tedious work does not and has never equaled the same factor as actual skill, it merely measures in how much patience you have and time on your hands.

I do tedious work at my jobs all of the time, it's not hard work, it's just there to give me something to do and stretch out the hours. That's all it is. There's no possible way that I can compare the tedious work of, let's say, shifting through a catalog and marking which chairs are out of stock and which ones aren't towards the person in the warehouse actually doing the physical lifting and labor of loading heavy objects onto shelves all day long.

There's a stark difference. Both are work, but one requires a bit more mechanical knowledge than the other. Savage raiding is no different. Why should a person who's only good at wasting time fishing be given the same gear as the person who completed God Kefka? It literally makes no sense at all. And don't you dare say fishing is mechanically hard in XIV. I've had harder times fishing in Dark Cloud of all places or XV.

You get rewarded with the best gear based on how much effort and skills you have, not how much time you can waste.

This also isn't Runescape, this is XIV. It's not going to be what you find in Runescape no matter how much you physically want it to be. You're comparing apples to oranges and it's not a good point.

[HyoMinPark]

And yet, hard work via mining, blacksmithing, woodcutting, fishing, ect, in Old School Runescape equals reward with money. More hard work means more money. The more money you earn, the better gear you can get until you have the best.
Hard Work in FFXIV is gated. Hard Work is only rewarded by a very narrow set of FFXIV game mechanics and the rewards are spiritbound. That armor was earned in Runescape, it was not just handed out. More importantly the player had more freedom in acquiring that armor via the player-driven economy.

But Runescape and FFXIV are not the same game; they aren’t even the same type of MMO. Comparing the two seems like a pointless endeavor to me. Are you wanting FFXIV to be like Runescape—a more sandbox versus themepark? As Vaer said, such a change is unlikely given the game’s development team. Personally, I think what attracts people to FFXIV (aside from name brand) is that there’s something in it for everyone, and it’s fairly casual in terms of play (and casual play is rewarded with similar tier gear, just that it takes longer—non-raiders can be full i370 at the end of the tier if they do a little bit here and a little bit there for it, and raiders get it faster because they did more for it: the “more” here being “harder content”).

FFXIV doesn’t have a focus on earning gear through DoH/DoL simply because the game itself is structured around battle content as opposed to crafting/gathering. I’m not sure the reason for this; it could be that battle jobs are simply more popular compared to crafting/gather, or that they didn’t want to have to restructure the MSQ and solo instances/duties for crafters/gathers; I cannot say. I’m not opposed to more systems for gear progression, but it’s doubtful that they would ever implement a system where one could just craft “the best gear”. Not only would that invalidate raiding, but it would also invalidate the Tomestone gear if the gear could be sold on the market board, all of the Extreme primals for weapons, and probably even relics if we’re talking about +5 item levels—why run content for gear when I can spend a couple million Gil for it (if that, considering how flooded markets get with gear)? That isn’t to say that the raiding community is “fragile”, either—just that people like getting rewarded for their efforts. If they feel like the rewards aren’t worth their time or their effort, they won’t do the content. Just look at Pagos.
If you want to get technical, one can technically buy the Savage gear—one way is allowed, and the other is not. It’s the player’s choice, but people typically don’t think highly of those who buy high-end gear because it wasn’t earned by them. And it’s usually easy to tell who earned their Savage gear, and who paid for it when you meet each other in combat (or, with regards to some content, if you know where to look). But I digress...

The armor in FFXIV is earned in its own right; it isn’t just handed out. I’m not entirely sure of the parallel you’re trying to make there, if I’m being honest. The gear dropped from each piece of content is a bit related to the effort that would, on average, go into clearing it: clear something easy, then you get lower-tier gear; clear something hard, then you get higher-tier gear. That’s the reward structure at the beginning of a tier; it later shifts to allow players that weren’t clearing the higher-tier gear to catch up.

If you started rewarding “the best gear” from every piece of content—the majority of which, in FFXIV anyways, is considered casual/non-raid/non-demanding content—the reward structure would be off with regards to the difficulty of the content and its drops. Completing Swallow’s Compass or Ridorana is not the same as completing Phantom Train Savage or Chadarnook Savage, to give an example. As easy as Savage has become as the years have passed, it still requires a different level of skill and awareness to complete compared to a regular 4-man or 24-man (the difficulty in 24-mans typically isn’t the bosses, but the 23 other adds present in the arena; and some 24-mans have had some teeth to them—Weeping City, Dun Scaith—though less teeth than Savage still). Thus raiders are rewarded before non-raiders with better gear (Savage gear + upgrade items for the Tomestone gear pieces they would need + a high-tier weapon).

Plus, the better gear is put to use for those who go on to prog Ultimate—you need the gear for damage to meet the checks, and to meet HP requirements so that you can survive mechanics (and even then, you have to meld VIT onto your accessories). It may be overkill for other content, but it is needed in Ultimate.

[Edax]

This also isn't Runescape, this is XIV. It's not going to be what you find in Runescape no matter how much you physically want it to be. You're comparing apples to oranges and it's not a good point.

But Runescape and FFXIV are not the same game; they aren’t even the same type of MMO. Comparing the two seems like a pointless endeavor to me.

If FFXIV can only be compared to FFXIV, then we don't really have much to talk about.

[Dualgunner]

If FFXIV can only be compared to FFXIV, then we don't really have much to talk about.

You're right, it's much better to compare it to anything. Why isn't it like Minecraft where I can have my own private servers and build my own towns?

[Edax]

You're right, it's much better to compare it to anything. Why isn't it like Minecraft where I can have my own private servers and build my own towns?

If an MMORPG can't be compared to a competing MMORPG, then really we have some low standards here. FFXIV will always meet the standards of FFXIV. Even if FFXIV 1.0 was a disaster that failed miserably, it was still FFXIV and you can't knock it for not being FFXIV.