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

[SaitoHikari]

Like all people who are against flying OP's arguments either support it or are just nonsense. As she points out, it's more efficient and it allows you to skip encounters. Yay, great points for it! After you have already likely rode from one end of the map to the other, several times, you earn that ability so it doesn't get stupid and repetitive. Fighting the same mobs over and over is not content.

Flying allows for more varied content.

The topic of flying reminds me of something.

What, exactly, was swimming even good for? It's mostly eye candy and endgame spearfishing stuff, but... It's not like people are voluntarily diving underwater in Yanxia/Ruby Sea unless a quest tells them to do so.

[Lyth]

Maps
The reason why the maps feel a bit soulless in comparison to ARR is because they have the same number of features spread over a larger area. Nostalgia-glasses off, the older maps aren't significantly different.

The issue isn't that there isn't enough to bring you into these maps. It's more that there's little reason to stay out there. If you get a quest in town, you're going to just make a beeline for the objective. The little settlements are nice, but without basic amenities (marketboard, retainer bell, etc.) players are incentivized to return back to town as soon as possible. In ARR, having to travel to the current dungeon hub (Coil) also helped to make some places look more populated. Idle players make a zone look significantly more 'lived in' than NPCs do.

It's not really about "dangerous mobs". They've attempted that with Eureka. I don't think it necessarily makes for more engaging gameplay.

Flying doesn't really do anything to shrink the world that fast travel doesn't already do. I didn't find myself relishing the journeys to Whitebrim and the Observatorium in Coethas Central. I'd just hop on a Chocobo Porter as if it were fast travel with a slower loading screen. There's no point to artificially lengthening travel times.

Raids and Rewards
I think dungeons and raids could definitely benefit from a non-linear structure (i.e. challenge bosses in any order, but you have to clear the sub-bosses in a particular wing to unlock the main boss). The original Haukke is the closest example that I can think of. It's still essentially linear, but the boss room is directly in front of the starting point and has to be unlocked by collecting keys that are guarded elsewhere.

I don't think that the trial/raid arena designs are the problem. Clearing out trash mobs before a raid boss has some novelty the first time around, but if you're doing the same fights for hours on end, it quickly becomes tiring. It would be nice to get a sense of the space that connects these boss rooms (i.e. similar to what Castrum does in ARR), but if you could challenge the bosses in any order, you'd need to have some sort of a "stage select" hub to do it from. It would also make the tactical element of raiding more interesting: do we challenge Chadarnook first to try to get a left side drop? Or do we start with Phantom Train?

One of the things that makes raid gear different is that raid difficulty scales with ilvl. Clearing at launch is more challenging than clearing a few weeks down the line, because you have access to significantly more gear. This allows the same content to be tuned to a wider range of skill levels. The problem with a completely horizontal system is that you lose that. So you end up with a tier that much more people find either too easy or too difficult. That being said, any time you create exclusive rewards for doing content, people are going to feel entitled to it. But if you hand it out for free, it loses its value when the novelty wears off.

Other Issues
I think ability pruning will always be an issue in the absence of a talent tree system which allows for customisation. This is the direction in which the role action system should head as well. There are some abilities that deserve to be pruned, though. I don't want to see the 100% uptime buffs (Slashing, Piercing) return in the next expansion. They do nothing for gameplay other than force certain already over-represented jobs into comps.

Job accessibility is important. The decision to place the RDM and SAM job trainers in Ul'dah was a good move. They should do something similar with the job trainers for DRK, AST, and MCH. People are more likely to try out and stick with a job if they are introduced to it early, rather than having it be story-gated.

[Zojha]

What, exactly, was swimming even good for?

Immersion (pun intended).

No really, it's just fluff. But all travel options are just fluff while flying is available, because they're all strictly inferior to flying. And as stated at some other point, flying can join that club when free instant anywhere teleportation gets added, because then even flying is inferior. Not sure if you can escalate that even further at that point.

Consider it the glamour of travel options. It has no stats and there's no reason to use it unless you either like the looks or a quest tells you to.

[WhyAmIHere]

The topic of flying reminds me of something.

What, exactly, was swimming even good for? It's mostly eye candy and endgame spearfishing stuff, but... It's not like people are voluntarily diving underwater in Yanxia/Ruby Sea unless a quest tells them to do so.

AFAIK there's a vista in Yanxia underwater?
Other than that... cool /gpose screenshots and immersion?

[Ameela]

The topic of flying reminds me of something.

What, exactly, was swimming even good for? It's mostly eye candy and endgame spearfishing stuff, but... It's not like people are voluntarily diving underwater in Yanxia/Ruby Sea unless a quest tells them to do so.

It was so they could design the biggest area in the game with absolutely nothing in it.

[Deceptus]

The topic of flying reminds me of something.

What, exactly, was swimming even good for? It's mostly eye candy and endgame spearfishing stuff, but... It's not like people are voluntarily diving underwater in Yanxia/Ruby Sea unless a quest tells them to do so.

It's really just underwater flying.

[alimdia]

It's really just underwater flying.

Worse IMO, at least most zones were made big post flight, our main water-centric zone is barren, if you remove the water from the ruby sea all you get is tiny islands here and there and a whole lot of nothing.

[Magic-Mal]

Worse IMO, at least most zones were made big post flight, our main water-centric zone is barren, if you remove the water from the ruby sea all you get is tiny islands here and there and a whole lot of nothing.

And when you think about that, if you remove all the water you get Azys La 2.0 but with islands instead floating ones. Big pieces of land with not much on them and a ton of other little pieces of land randomly placed that have no purpose.

Ruby Sea


Azys Lla

[Ameela]

And when you think about that, if you remove all the water you get Azys La 2.0 but with islands instead floating ones. Big pieces of land with not much on them and a ton of other little pieces of land randomly placed that have no purpose.

Azys Lla is one of the best designed areas in the game and I'm not about to sit here without defnding it.

On the surface they do look kinda similar yes, but there are many things you miss by simply comparing the maps side by side, namely the fact that Ruby Sea, for the most part, is pretty barren, aside from the odd cave the different islands don't offer nuch aside from what you can see at surface level. Azys Lla on the other hand has each island being absolutely packed with different structures, each with various levels of verticality and density. Seriously, take the time to actually explore the zone instead of flying over it and you'll see for yourself, each island in Azys Lla could have probably been an area of its own with how much is crammed in there.

In fact I'd even go as far as to say that it's completely wasted on this game, considering once you're done with the story there's no reason to go back there. It'd work really well as a stage in an action or 3D Metroidvania game or something.

[Magic-Mal]

In fact I'd even go as far as to say that it's completely wasted on this game, considering once you're done with the story there's no reason to go back there. It'd work really well as a stage in an action or 3D Metroidvania game or something.

That was actually my point lol. In my OP, I talk about Azys Lla and how it has a bunch of little places and those bunker/storage-like buildings with opening doors that I liked. But in the end, there's still nothing in it besides the sightseeing log. :/