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

[Awful]

Snip.

Just because he saved the game doesn't mean he can't have his faults, they're still riding that high of the Calamity and people see it, it's not a bad thing you should take pride into what you love and turn it into something better. However I can disagree and have my own opinion about the state of the game and from someone who has played since ARR and lurked on the forums till 2015, I can say, for myself not for everyone, that what they're doing with XIV it's just not as enjoyable as it was back in ARR and HW.

Right now we're at the end of SB and the joy died in Deltascape for me because my favorite class DRK is just a shell of its former self and Yoshi P said that they're big focus was on class balance and it hasn't changed since HW, and my fav class (DRK) has been crying for change but nothing. Fast forward to Eureka and it's wasted content, relic behind a grind with RNG I can fault Yoshi for that he had a hand in it, same with BLU, New Game+, World Visiting, Duty Recorder which barely gets any use, what I'm getting at is they're going down a path that I don't agree with, none of these features appeal to me.

Yoshi P isn't some holy saint he's a person like you and me who both love and enjoy this game, it's not like i'm buddies with Yoshi P nor will I ever be but as a customer and paying for this game, pre-orders, etc I will disagree with what I think is bad or good for me because at the end of the day I pay to play this game just like you do. I will commend him for Re-Raising a dead game however, you can only ride it for so long, SB has just felt like HW 3.0 for me and I gotta say this is the least I've played where I just log in and do my dailies but I even find it cumbersome now where before I'd play this game from morning till evening and be like "wow where'd the time go".

You can respect Yoshi P but at the end of the day there's things I don't like, don't find interesting, and some things just down right eyebrow raising but I will continue to play this game in 5.0 where all my hopes lie as I want to love this game because this is my favorite MMO.

[reivaxe]

Can't read the spoilers in the op on my phone for w/e reason so I'm just gonna air my thoughts.

I wish they would make dngs more engaging and rewarding. As it is you fight a floor of trash mobs to open a door to a boss to beat it and roll on some glam or gear and repeat. This wasn't always the case, in earlier low level dngs you could sneak around mobs and there were more engaging flows to progressing through them.

But at these max levels ... I get NOTHING from being forced to clean a floor of trash before I can move on. I get nothing form the exp, I don't get chest drops or good mats.

So imo you should be able to select a side job the siphons like 10 or 20% of the exp that you get if your job is max level. Makes the game more alt friendly and gives people a reason to want to kill trash mobs.

[ApolloGenX]

I do miss epic quests. Not just a laundry list of endless grinds, but truly epic quests that include fights, crafting, lots of great story...maybe a scripted fight or two... maybe a zonewide event in a questline of fun and quality content that can take a long time to do but gives a reward that is useful for a very long time.

I guess I would just like to have something to occupy my time and keep me engaged for a longer time that wasn't just grind for throwaway gear. (Raiding alternative). I loved the EQ prayer shawl quest. Still one of my all time favorite quests and rewards. I think I must have completed it an expansion or two after it came out- still worth it. still amazing quest.

[Judas_Ramirez]

To the OP i called this back in ARR release, it was on the old lodestone & the new as well on these forums, If only SE support did there job of changing my E-mail Rather than deleteing my account. I'd link it all & Call everyone out for it!

[Zarkovitch]

The game is stale & safe expect to be like this for awhile sadly they don't see this game as worth investment.It fine other games they try put money on are failing SE expectation.It will teach them respect more this game put more money on it.

[Edax]

It is kind of sad I end up with far more enjoyment from the holiday offering in FGO then in FFXIV. FGO is 95% grinding but the holiday events actually offer the best chance of getting hard to get materials that I need in generous amounts, along with a decent sized story. Here the events reward trivialities with a story that probably won't be remembered for more then 20 minutes. It's somewhat distressing that I end up more engaged with a mobile game then an MMORPG, even when I'm at my computer.

[Slicedevice]

So, I know this is topic has been discussed to death and all, but i thought i'd just share my feelings aswell.

I think the game right now suffers alot from flying alone in the game. Not necessary JUST the flying, but i feel like SE has put the focus on the wrong aspects in the wrong order.
For example, if you fly around in The Fringes just to "take in the environment" or just wanna explore for fun, you'll soon notice that you see stuff the devs are trying to hide from the player, if they were on the ground level. You can see clippings behind "Mountains", Baelsars wall just randomly stops, which begs the questing "Why didnt we just walk around the wall?" and so on.

Also the Texture on mountains and rocks looks so bad when you fly up to them or see them from a perspective you're not meant to see when on the floor level.
you'll also start to notice how extremely barren the lands are when flying. When you first run through the MSQ on foot or on mount, it looks pretty good and you also get the info that this is infact a barren land. But its ok because you're just meant to see some of it. But when you fly you can see miles past the mountains and theres literally nothing there, causing the Barren feeling to change to a more empty feeling.

Also the Settlements in these zones are ridiculously small. Take Ala Ghiri for example.
Its supposed to be a city settlement (I atleast think so, since its not just camps thats been set up, but actual stone houses thats been built) but it just feel like some random place with a few buildings and nothing too it. I cant even imagine anyone actually living there, but there are even families there, which makes no sense to me.

I'd love to see more "life" to these zones, eventhough they're ment to be barren, a few more houses in the settlements or even settlements out of the zone that you cant reach, but you can look at them and get the feeling that theres more to the world in FFxiv other than what you see IN the zones.

Idk, thats alteast my take on the whole world situation atm.

[Shurrikhan]

So, I know this is topic has been discussed to death and all, but i thought i'd just share my feelings aswell.

I think the game right now suffers alot from flying alone in the game. Not necessary JUST the flying, but i feel like SE has put the focus on the wrong aspects in the wrong order.
For example, if you fly around in The Fringes just to "take in the environment" or just wanna explore for fun, you'll soon notice that you see stuff the devs are trying to hide from the player, if they were on the ground level. You can see clippings behind "Mountains", Baelsars wall just randomly stops, which begs the questing "Why didnt we just walk around the wall?" and so on.

XIV does certainly have some of the worst coverage in that regard. I remember the first time I was flying in the Dravanian Forelands and noticing that the whole thing seemed to be apparently on this roughly circular plateau that, chasmed off from further mountains that similarly end jaggedly. It was like the kind of thing you'd expect from a community map hastily made, yet all one needed to do to encounter the issue was... fly some three hundred feet, which... well, why wouldn't you? It was just so instantly immersion-breaking... And I know "immersion" gets ridiculed a lot in the first place in an FF game, but I don't mean perfect immersion, just whatever amount of it we had before; it was instantly gone. I tried to forget about it as quickly as I could and kept low enough not to see it in the future but still just felt so off compared to the quality of the map at ground level.

[Kalise]

XIV does certainly have some of the worst coverage in that regard. I remember the first time I was flying in the Dravanian Forelands and noticing that the whole thing seemed to be apparently on this roughly circular plateau that, chasmed off from further mountains that similarly end jaggedly. It was like the kind of thing you'd expect from a community map hastily made, yet all one needed to do to encounter the issue was... fly some three hundred feet, which... well, why wouldn't you? It was just so instantly immersion-breaking... And I know "immersion" gets ridiculed a lot in the first place in an FF game, but I don't mean perfect immersion, just whatever amount of it we had before; it was instantly gone. I tried to forget about it as quickly as I could and kept low enough not to see it in the future but still just felt so off compared to the quality of the map at ground level.

This isn't really an issue with flying though.

Since you can get similar experiences while on foot. Like, going to the edge of Southern Thanalan and noticing that the edge is a crevasse and beyond that... Some vaguely endless desert in the distance (As opposed to you know, actual ST which is full of mountains and dunes and the like)

Even in newer zones you have places like Azim Steppe and you can go to the eastern side of it and notice the same thing. A giant crevasse (Also, a broken rope footbridge of all things) leading into an endless flat plains? Again, while AS is full of hills, mountains as well as giant stone structures.

The issue seems to just be that SE haven't figured out how to make a believable "Edge of the map" that doesn't seem janky or out of place. Rather than flying being unique at exposing these things.

I might put my thoughts into some more of the points brought up in the OP at some point...

[Slicedevice]

This isn't really an issue with flying though.

Since you can get similar experiences while on foot. Like, going to the edge of Southern Thanalan and noticing that the edge is a crevasse and beyond that... Some vaguely endless desert in the distance (As opposed to you know, actual ST which is full of mountains and dunes and the like)

Even in newer zones you have places like Azim Steppe and you can go to the eastern side of it and notice the same thing. A giant crevasse (Also, a broken rope footbridge of all things) leading into an endless flat plains? Again, while AS is full of hills, mountains as well as giant stone structures.

The issue seems to just be that SE haven't figured out how to make a believable "Edge of the map" that doesn't seem janky or out of place. Rather than flying being unique at exposing these things.

I might put my thoughts into some more of the points brought up in the OP at some point...

I agree. I noticed the river in AS aswell and it just stops at the end of the map. Nothing covering the end of the map at all. thats why i wish they would put stuff like tiny settlements in places like this, to cover up abit more. And i know people argue that they're restricted because of PS4, but come on, Theres games rn that require 10x more power than FFxiv on PS4, and they manage to make their games feel more filled in. Like Bloodborne or the dark souls series in general does this perfectly.
I just feel like if SE did more to the world in general, like update textures and fix the proportions so you actually feel the way you're supposed to feel in a zone, the flying wouldnt be an issue.