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

[Magic-Mal]

Except it was nerfed. While they didn't nerf the iLvl of the gear, they did nerf the droprate if the i210 stuff. The nerfed droprate, along with the high change to get i210 gear with terrible stats/stat combinations, was enough for the majority to completely drop Diadem. I remember this clearly, because my FC was unfortunate enough to finally unlock the hard mode difficulty shortly after the nerf.

So yes, they did listen to the raiders with Diadem 1.0.

I'd argue that they also listened to the raiders with Diadem 2.0, with how ridiculously rare the i280 weapon was. You were lucky to even see a successful Emergency Mission, and even then there'd only be a chance for one person to get a random i280 weapon (not tied to their job) with random stats (which may not even be good).

Yeah I knew it had to had been something. If not the ilvl, it was something else. Because I also clearly remember the Death Of Diadem. It wasn't a slow death, it was an instant execution. Like alive one day and just stone-cold dead the next. Wasn't it because they nerfed dino island so badly that everything else was pointless? They basically nerfed the droprate so low that it was really difficult to get a high ilvl piece.

I remember only getting a couple "eh" pieces before it was killed.

May be a unpopular opinion, but we got what people asked. So you cannot say they don't listen to us.

- They gave us extreme primal and raids with a considerable difficulty (or acceptable difficulty). People complain it was "too hard, please nerf". Consequence: Nerfed and easy trials on release and high level raids easier compared to Coil of Bahamut and the first steps of Alexander.

- They add some dungeons with some exploration or different paths. People ignores everything and go straight to the end, speed running multi-pull, even blaming those who are "slow", in order to finish as soon as possible. Consequence: All dungeons are linear, straight forward, with nothing more than mobs to kill.

- People don't want to put any effort and want's everything easy and quick, getting frustrated quick when a single wipe happens. Consequence: Mindless grind, which can be long, but is easy enough to clear pushing 2 buttons.

- People buying every thing is put for sale in Mog-station, regardless they are basically glamour, even paying 6€ for a emote, over and over. Consequence: Mog-Station constantly adding things that we should unlock playing the game normally, because they know will be purchased.

Sorry to say, but was the community who is turning this game into what you call "bad". For me it is still enjoyable and I won't stop playing or say "Devs are lazy". I rather say stop complaining about the hard difficulty. Also, asking things such "give us more interesting dungeons with labyrinth layout and more exploration" when you know people will exploit the quickest and straightest forward path, ignoring the rest of the dungeon, is absurd.

Sorry, but in my opinion, players should change first their attitude if we want devs change theirs. They will adapt whatever players will do.

For me, developers listen to us way too much.

While I would still like more complex dungeons, I do agree. I think the dev team listens to every complaint too much. The issue with that though is that everyone feels that their complaint should be listened to.. at some point everyone has at least one complaint and no one wants to be told their complaint doesn't matter.

----Disclaimer: This is my opinion and personal experience.----

A really great post. Agreed.

Sorry I'm just now reading all this stuff lol.

[Ignacius]

So, having read a lot of this, I do think there are some things that SE could do for the next expansion:

-SE could make more open world elements both more challenging and rewarding (such as FATEs).

-SE could create a sort of mid-tier, instanced, generated raid encounter. I have previously suggested a sort of 8-man randomized chain-dungeon using our airships that have us do everything from randomized trial-like encounters to gathering.

-If these two are done, SE wouldn't have to put relics behind locked instance content, yet they'd have a viable Diadem/Eureka alternative.

-Tune up the dungeon trash mechanic difficulty (the avoidable damage), but gate each pack to keep the speed expectation down

-Shift the new zone builds to emphasize more walking and ground riding. All mounts will likely fly simply because non-flying mounts don't get a lot of use anymore, but that can be changed if SE really want us to experience the landscapes. They have to put something out there, though. It would be a waste if it was just junk in the way. I think a good amount of obstacles and path-picking would be a good way to design future environments.

[Magic-Mal]

With current BiS, that’s as high as we go—because the 2 Tomestone Rings give us Skill Speed (our headpiece does, too, as well as a couple pieces), and we begrudgingly take them in high crit builds because we also gain a substantial amount of Crit. We don’t want to meld Skill Speed. That’s the point I’m trying to make here; not that you can “go higher”. You certainly can, but BRDs don’t want to go higher (it feels absolutely awful, in my opinion...).

Speculation now is that, in 4.4, Crit will become king again with regards to substats. Our skill priority probably won’t change all that much (Crit > D.Hit > Det), but we may take higher skill speed builds if we gain a substantial amount of Crit at the same time. 4.4 will tell us when we see the substats on i400 Tomestone gear versus the Savage gear (and maybe even crafted, because High Crit uses a pentamelded i350 bracelet simply because we can shove 100+ Crit into it).

But I digress; this is, again, getting into BRD optimization, which is another conversation for another time.

All of this is exactly one of the reasons why I made up that post a while back. The one about all the different paths to gear that's max ilvl, meaning gear that simply has the level and different stats not actually being the raid or Augmented Tome Gear. I also edited in to the OP.

I want to be able to get something nice from more content than just raids or dungeons. No matter what we do, in the end if we want to be i370 or i400 we will have to deal with having things we don't really want. We shouldn't have to deal with extra Skill Speed if we don't want Skill Speed. We should have way more options. FFXIV even right now has the content to reward some things. Like the Peak Crafted Gear and Primal Jewelry I mentioned. If some MCH decides they want to try and create a build with 3,000 Skill Speed and 2,500 Critical Hit, they should be able to. Who knows, maybe something hilarious will come out of it. I just hate not having more than 2 options.

EDIT: Now I can actually finish the post. The only thing I'd like to see added to the raid loot system would be something like what Dualgunner thought of some pages ago. Something that dropped from the savage raids like a Precision Lens that could be used in a crafting recipe to create pieces of raid gear.

I'd also like the book system to be incorporated into the Normal raids because my goodness, it's more difficult and takes more effort to get the normal mode gear than the savage gear. I would happily take a token/book system that you get every week to buy stuff but for NM. Because when the catch-up patch comes and the weekly limit is removed, we'd have guaranteed reward after 4 clears or 8 for chest/legs. Less headache and that would encourage me to actually do the content over a few weeks span over getting a headache grinding it all week with no gain.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

All of this is exactly one of the reasons why I made up that post a while back. The one about all the different paths to gear that's max ilvl, meaning gear that simply has the level and different stats not actually being the raid or Augmented Tome Gear. I also edited in to the OP.

I want to be able to get something nice from more content than just raids or dungeons. No matter what we do, in the end if we want to be i370 or i400 we will have to deal with having things we don't really want. We shouldn't have to deal with extra Skill Speed if we don't want Skill Speed. We should have way more options. FFXIV even right now has the content to reward some things. Like the Peak Crafted Gear and Primal Jewelry I mentioned. If some MCH decides they want to try and create a build with 3,000 Skill Speed and 2,500 Critical Hit, they should be able to. Who knows, maybe something hilarious will come out of it. I just hate not having more than 2 options.

The biggest problem is that is stats simply don't offer that much parity. A MCH with 3,000 Skill Speed isn't experimenting with some new build, they're simply inferior to their Critical Hit counterpart. Theorycrafters have done extensive testing with extreme builds like you described. There isn't any that offers a benefit. For example, a Ninja who adopts too much Skill Speed will clip their GCD constantly, resulting is less damage overall. Nothing is gained due to how linear stats are. In fact, Samurai and Black Mage are among the very few jobs who can go Crit or Skill/Spell Speed and make it work, though they need to generally favor one of those stats not make and match. Ultimately, FFXIV doesn't allow for "crazy" builds and no amount of additional i370 or i400 gear will change that. You'd just look silly wearing gear pieces that are only a hindrance to your overall damage.

[Magic-Mal]

The biggest problem is that is stats simply don't offer that much parity. A MCH with 3,000 Skill Speed isn't experimenting with some new build, they're simply inferior to their Critical Hit counterpart. Theorycrafters have done extensive testing with extreme builds like you described. There isn't any that offers a benefit. For example, a Ninja who adopts too much Skill Speed will clip their GCD constantly, resulting is less damage overall. Nothing is gained due to how linear stats are. In fact, Samurai and Black Mage are among the very few jobs who can go Crit or Skill/Spell Speed and make it work, though they need to generally favor one of those stats not make and match. Ultimately, FFXIV doesn't allow for "crazy" builds and no amount of additional i370 or i400 gear will change that. You'd just look silly wearing gear pieces that are only a hindrance to your overall damage.

Lots of people out there don't go by what theorycrafters say though. Just like lots do go by what they say. Even if something is subpar, the player should be able to make that decision especially if they aren't raiding Ultimate since I bet even a MCH with 3,000 Skill Speed can beat Kefka with a team of other players with botched gear. Players with odd stats can make their own groups. Otherwise why have options at all if the best way to go is the way to go? Just have VIT/STR/DEX/INT/MND and call it a day.

Let's use MHW for example since it has a Skill system. The theorycrafters, math whizzes, and super skilled players proved that you could go out and beat the whole game naked with low rank weapons. Why have more weapons then? But we do have more weapons

The theorycrafters proved that raw damage is always better than elemental. Why have elemental weapons then? But we do have elemental weapons.

At least the players have that choice. Some will listen to what's out there, some won't in the end. But they can still beat the hardest content.

[Miste]

Except it was nerfed. While they didn't nerf the iLvl of the gear, they did nerf the droprate of the i210 stuff.

I can't find any proof of this. Can you give me the source from SE showing they nerfed it? Because I can't find anything that shows they nerfed it anywhere, be it drop rate or item level.

Even if Diadem was nerfed in some way, unless you can find some statement from SE saying they nerfed Diadem solely because of raider complaints and that all the stuff about diadem was nerfed or changed due to raider complaints then you still have no argument to stand on to be mad at/blame raiders for it.

In the end all decisions are SE's choices. They choose what to do and what complaints or requests to listen to. It is all their final decision, if you want to put blame then it should be on them for choosing to listen to those complaints. Or they might have even had an entirely different reason for doing something and you are just assuming.

Like even if any of that is true, it happened in 3.1, like that is a ridiculously long time to be holding a grudge against raiders for. Not to mention many of the raiders who complained might not even play the game anymore and the ones you are blaming now had nothing to do with what did or did not happen to Diadem.

I mean I could blame casuals and hold a grudge that the game is getting easier due to so many casual complaints about stuff being "too hard" and blame casuals for our savage raids getting easier because some complain, but I don't because I don't generalize and I also know to blame SE for listening to it and making the final decision to nerf things.

Actually there is some logic to this. It is very common for players in MMO's to do content they don't want to because the reward is something too good to pass up.

You are taking it out of context. I didn't say it doesn't make sense for getting people to do the content. I said it doesn't make sense that IF SE was listening to raider complaints that they would just do the same thing the raiders complained about for a second time and even double down by making it higher item level than savage instead of just the same item level.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

At least the players have that choice. Some will listen to what's out there, some won't in the end. But they can still beat the hardest content.

That isn't a choice but an illusion. You're either ignorant to superior builds or purposely being a hindrance. In a single player game, it impacts no one else. In a MMO, you're actively making it more difficult because you want to feel special. Can a Machinist with 3,000 Skill Speed beat God Kefka? Yes. But all you've accomplished is weakening your own damage to the point why bother upgrading at all? There is literally no point to obtaining i370 gear if you're going to willfully gimp yourself with silly stat builds.

Your example omits the fact most people want to become more powerful. And in a team, your expected to bring your A game. While it may be entirely possible to kill things in MHW practically naked, if you showed up like that most people are going to kick you for wasting their time. You're not experimenting with new builds, you're simply being a detriment because again, you want to feel special. Do that on your own time; with other like-minded people. Don't waste mine.

[Ruinfeild]

Some of these features seem to be kind of related to role playing, but then again, how many people do really RP?

There are a lot of us out there. Sure we may not number the amount of just pure PvE players but we are just as passionate about the game.

How does it help to create a better game overall and help XIV compete with other games?

This could be just from how I see it, but RPers tend to be pretty passionate when it comes to how gear looks, the story, decoration, lore, etc. As for being able to compete to other games, I like to believe that a good number of those subs are from people who RP and from what I noticed in my time with games like WoW, Tera, Guild Wars, etc, Rper's tend to stick around longer (more so when they find a good group of people) than those who just do PvE, complete the content, then have nothing else to do otherwise.

Why don't they focus their role-playing efforts on filling the maps with npcs, stories, interesting side-quests, areas in dungeons with information, books, npcs, special creatures or whatever. I mean, it is a fantasy MMO and I think someone who joins this game to RP would be interested in adventuring and fantasy stuff. After all, you can tend to Habbo or Second Life to just sit there and talk to people about whatever you want.

I am gonna assume you don't RP. Filling the map with NPC's, side-quest's, and everything else you listed doesn't really do much for us who role-play. Yes they are fun to do and they add stuff to the world but that is all temporary. Even for those who don't RP won't care after everything is said and done with those areas. At best they will be mentioned for backgrounds or lore reasons and at worst just treated like PvE NPC's or areas with nothing interest to go back to. At the end of the day, we either role-play in our houses or one of the major cities. Rarely do people go out into the world to do their RP.

[Nezerius]

I can't find any proof of this. Can you give me the source from SE showing they nerfed it? Because I can't find anything that shows they nerfed it anywhere, be it drop rate or item level.

After some digging, the only thing I found was this update on November 24, 2015: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...20#post3449020
The note on droprate changes seems very vague (which isn't rare for SE to do), so it's hard to tell if they did adjust the droprate of NMs and "certain monsters", or if they simply haven't adjusted droprate

I just remember that Diadem died pretty fast after that, with a lot of complaints being about the lower amount of i210 gear dropping.

Even if Diadem was nerfed in some way, unless you can find some statement from SE saying they nerfed Diadem solely because of raider complaints and that all the stuff about diadem was nerfed or changed due to raider complaints then you still have no argument to stand on to be mad at/blame raiders for it.

In the end all decisions are SE's choices. They choose what to do and what complaints or requests to listen to. It is all their final decision, if you want to put blame then it should be on them for choosing to listen to those complaints. Or they might have even had an entirely different reason for doing something and you are just assuming.

They're obviously not going to state that they nerfed something because of x group complaining about y feature, because it's not a professional thing to do. And you're right, ultimately it's SE's decision, but it's a decision based on what they think is best for the playerbase. That decision just happened to line up with the complaints coming from raiders.

Like even if any of that is true, it happened in 3.1, like that is a ridiculously long time to be holding a grudge against raiders for. Not to mention many of the raiders who complained might not even play the game anymore and the ones you are blaming now had nothing to do with what did or did not happen to Diadem.

I've been a raider for most of my playtime in XIV, except during Midas. It's kinda difficult to have a grudge against myself.

You are taking it out of context. I didn't say it doesn't make sense for getting people to do the content. I said it doesn't make sense that IF SE was listening to raider complaints that they would just do the same thing the raiders complained about for a second time and even double down by making it higher item level than savage instead of just the same item level.

Except the i280 weapon was so rare, that it might've not even existed at all. If they had actually doubled down on it, they'd have done so with a guaranteed emergency mission with every Diadem map, along with multiple weapons as reward from finishing it.

[Selova]

I know it won't be a well-received reply but the game might only get better when Yoshida is gone.

Yeah, get rid of the guy who literally saved this mmo from vanishing into existence, that sounds like a great idea. Yeah, the game is incredibly lacking in a lot of areas but getting rid of Yoshida isn't going to fix anything.