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

[Deceptus]

And putting the Relic into Eureka was one of the worst decisions in this Game. An exclusive weapon, like with the POTD would have been okay, but not the Relic.
From my View, they learned one thing from the Diadem: Put a loot of exclusive Rewards into it and the people will follow the Carrot on the Stick.

And look at the state of Diadem now. Dead. Previous relics are all still done because they can mostly be solod at this point.

Eureka will never be that way. And due to that, it will die just like diadem once Shadowbringers comes out.

[Imuka]

And look at the state of Diadem now. Dead. Previous relics are all still done because they can mostly be solod at this point.
Eureka will never be that way. And due to that, it will die just like diadem once Shadowbringers comes out.

Yeah, I even did one a few Months ago, as some kind of side activity, because I was bored by release of Eureka.
The big Problem around Eureka is, like you said, that it will be dead in Summer and the Devs bury every Mount, every Relic, every Minion, every Song, every Hairstyle, etc with it.
Lost forever...or till someone in a Guild is able to annoy his whole Guild, to do this Content for the Rewards.
And that is like with the Bluemage not how this Game should look like in the long run. That you need to "annoy" your Guild, to be able to play Content, because no one else is doing it.

The only reason, why this Game feels so small on Content despite having a ton of Content is that they bury everything with a Patch.
Release Pagus, bury Anemos. Release Pyros, bury Pagos. Release Hydatos, bury Pyros.
Instead of a connected Lootsystem, they just bury everything behind them. I can't trade Anemos Crystals, for Pagos Crytsals and the other way around. To help Players and still get my Gear done.
And the people who fell out of the System, will never see a chance to get this done in the future.
It is scalled depending on the Players in the whole instance as I heard, but how much fun is Eureka with 6 Players. Running around this empty Map, trying to spawn a Fate with just this small Party.

The Diadem is dead, because people did not like it. And it always baffles me, that Yoshi is not able to drop this Idea of the Diadem. Like I said "Fail Faster". He spend Time and Money for this Idea and now he is unable to drop it, because he invested time for it. While nearly 75% of the Community could have told him back then:
A whole Area just geared around Fates and more Fates is a bad Idea.
It feels like he wants to say "No, it is not unfun and boring. You just play it wrong.".

When new Players join the Game, they get the Picture, that FF14 is a MMO about Dungeons, Bosses, Raids, etc. and as soon as they hit max Level, they suddenly now get an Endgame about Trash Mob Farm and doing Bosses with 100 Players that just do super Basic Mechanics, like punching left or right. There are the Raids, but with Eureka a lot of more casualy Raids Parties stopped playing, because Eureka.
It feels like Black Desert would say "Grats, you unlocked your Awakening Weapon and not this Game is a Raids MMO for 8 Players.


I see so many people say "It is not unfun, you just don't play it effectively.".
This is a Game, I start the Game to have fun in the first place, not to feel like I am sitting at my second Job.

Or I hear "It is fun with friends.".
I got this horrible DayZ Standalone back then, when it was new gifted by a Friend.
And it was okay with friends, but I played it maybe once alone for 5 Minutes and noticed pretty fast "This is not fun at all.".
The thing that was fun was spending time with friends, not DayZ.

[Deceptus]

The Diadem is dead, because people did not like it. And it always baffles me, that Yoshi is not able to drop this Idea of the Diadem. Like I said "Fail Faster". He spend Time and Money for this Idea and now he is unable to drop it, because he invested time for it. While nearly 75% of the Community could have told him back then:
A whole Area just geared around Fates and more Fates is a bad Idea.
It feels like he wants to say "No, it is not unfun and boring. You just play it wrong.".

Eureka: Lets make all these FATES have time and weather conditions. Not to mention low spawn rates!

Can go entire lockouts without seeing certain NM's. I waited over an hour to see any NM in Hydatos despite people trying to spawn them.

[Kalise]

Eureka will never be that way. And due to that, it will die just like diadem once Shadowbringers comes out.

And thus... All the time and resources they spent making all the unique systems, creating the zones... Artificially inflating all the enemies stats... Giving enemies different types of "Aggro" styles...

*Poof* Gone.

At best, they might be able to translate Elemental Levels and maybe Logos to new "Eureka" content... But that would likely end poorly as people would then feel pressured into grinding out Eureka before being able to go into the new zone which is supposed to be the new "End Game" content (Which is different to how HoH requires PotD because both HoH and PotD are side content)

The only reason, why this Game feels so small on Content is, that they bury everything with a Patch.

Either a patch or an expansion.

I've mentioned in another thread how having an "Extreme Roulette" could be beneficial for the game, to allow old EX Trials and Raids to be run by sync'd groups. As opposed to leaving them to rot and never be played outside some people putting together specific parties for fun or steamrolling through them unsync'd for Wonderous Tails progress.

They have this plethora of content, but they condense the relevancy down to purely the latest dungeon/trial/raid/"Eureka" zone. Which drastically shrinks available content down to a pathetically small amount.

Like, people complained about how previous Relics had you "Running old content" when it sent you through a dungeon from a previous patch... But that at least gives that dungeon a longer life by making it relevant even when it's not required for the latest MSQ or loot farm. As if it's supposed to be better when you limit yourself to farming the one latest dungeon ad infinitum.

It is scalled depending on the Players in the whole instance as I heard, but how much fun is Eureka with 6 Players. Running around this empty Map, trying to spawn a Fate with just this small Party.

I imagine that unless they do something to address 5.0 killing Eureka by adjusting FATE spawn rates and difficulties (And/or ilevel sync in the place) that working on anything in the future might just end up being farming Bunny FATEs until a NM randomly pops of its own volition instead of actually grinding enemies to spawn stuff (Given it can still take 10-15 minutes even with 100 people farming to spawn a NM)

While nearly 75% of the Community could have told him back then:
A whole Area just geared around Fates and more Fates is a bad Idea.

Yeah... The issue is that FFXIV's combat is designed around instanced bosses. So that you have interesting mechanics.

This doesn't work with open world content such as FATEs, because you have to dumb down the mechanics so that they can function with variable amounts of people as well as open "Arenas".

Then, due to how XIV's actual combat functions, you can't just carry the enjoyment on the back of it being particularly fun to just fight things. Compare to something like Black Desert Online which is entirely open world fighting, it works because combat itself is actually fun and interesting. It doesn't matter that you're just mass murdering a bunch of enemies with few to no actual skills, because it's about how you attack stuff that makes it interesting, how you manage your resources, how you decide between what weapon to use for the situation (For those classes that don't have an Ascended weapon that's just 100% better than their default weapon in all cases)

XIV it's... You push your rotation. 2.5s GCD. Maybe if you're melee you have directional requirements for bonus damage (But that's irrelevant if you're solo as XIV has no tools to set up solo positionals)

Heck, BDO even does Limit Breaks better than Final Fantasy... Where each class has their own LB gauge to build and several ways to spend them even when solo. While XIV you have DPS LB3 that is the only thing that really means much and its only available in a Full Party...

When new Players join the Game, they get the Picture, that FF14 is a MMO about Dungeons, Bosses, Raids, etc. and as soon as they hit max Level, they suddenly now get an Endgame about Trash Mob Farm and doing Bosses with 100 Players that just do super Basic Mechanics, like punching left or right.

Interestingly, this Eureka end-game would have made some sense back in ARR. Back when FATE Trains were a popular way of leveling up. So someone would have leveled up via FATE Trains and then had an end-game that was FATE Trains.

However, since then, XIV has moved far more towards Duties. Be it Dungeons, Trials or Other Trials Raids.

Though, this isn't to say that Open World content can't be compatible with XIV anymore. If done correctly, it's quite possible to have simultaneously a focus on Duties but with a relevant Open World experience.

For example:

* In "Leveling Zones" increase the Exp rewards from FATEs and sidequests (Also, make some sidequests repeatable)
* Make zones have their own daily Rank B Hunts with decent experience and Tome/Seal rewards (For purchasing gear upon freshly hitting max level) with the Rank B Hunts being level appropriate for the zone.
* Make Rank A and S Hunts level appropriate for the zone and give a bunch of Experience.

There, you've made playing in the Open World to level up more meaningful. Where people are incentivized to work together and go exploring for Hunts and FATEs.

* Create new max level zones. Scale enemy difficulty to a set item level, with a warning if you swap to a class that is under the minimum ilevel for the zone. Make the ilevel be something not too high, but that requires some work to attain (Not just Eureka's "Do level 70 job quest, GG you're 300 item level")
* Make the FATEs give appropriate rewards, such as end-game Tomestones. Make the Raid FATE(s) give pages and maybe even chances for normal raid loot.
* Let chain bonuses grant worthwhile loot, something relevant like a currency. But make it possible for solo players to still get something for their time killing stuff not just parties whom run around with max chain bonus.
* Again, Rank B, A and S Hunts to do with relevant rewards.

There you get something relevant for max level players to utilize. Where they can grind out to work on relevant stuff, even if they're still queuing for duties. Where they can do something solo, but can be more efficient in parties and might want to work together for Hunts and the like.

The focus can still be on Duties, but now you have open worlds that aren't completely garbage or shoehorned in while stripping out a large portion of the activities (Like Eureka)

[Imuka]

Snip

Someone said it once quite well about the 14 Combat and Trashmob Farm.
"It is to slow to be engaging, but to fast to chill and chat with others.".
The Person also said, that was the reason why it felt okay in 11. The Game did a Part of the Job itself and you could Chat a bit with your Party, while farming Enemies for a few Hours.
Which is a bit funny, because going straight for a Voice Chat seems to be more a western approach to it, than an eastern Version of chatting with the Party.

BDOs Combat is fast enough to be enjoyable for it's own, while 14 always needs a second Actor to work. But 14. In short fights against Trash Mobs, you often don't want to use your long CD Skills or can't really fill your Gauge and 1/4 of the Job is missing.
It feels a bit like Dance Styles. Some work on their own like Street Dance and other look just ridiculous when one Person dances alone.


For the Roulette. I had the Idea of a "half synched" Roulette.
Your Stats get synched, so you can't one shot a Primal like Zurvan, but you keep all your Skills for the fight.
I would love to do some of the old fight, but the Classes play horribly on Level 50 or 60.
And unsynched is not fun. There is no fun in beating Zurvan in 3-4 Minutes and skipping half of the Mechanics.


Maybe Eureka as a concept would have worked much better, it they had expanded the world with a new Area and tried of people like this design.
Sometimes it is funny, how here in the Forums the Players come up with so much better Ideas, to make it interessting in the long run and how they spend time, thinking how it could be kept for a longer time, instead of being buried with the next Patch.

And I think, if they had started HW with such a Concept it might have worked, but now with Eureka, it would just feel like they gave up on building a World and instead made Eureka the Worldmap.
At the end of ARR, they had the room, to do such things, to make some larger changes, because while the Formula was there for 2 Years the first Addon is a place for changes, because people did not play the Formula for 4 or 6 Years.

Snip.

The Problem is, the Market rewards short term growth above long term growth.
A MMO can make Billions after 3-4 Years on the Market per Year, but if Activision or EA can sell them short term growth, the Investors will jump for that.
Take 5 Bucks today or 20 tomorrow and they will take the 5, then break their own arm and on the next day demand 25 get told to leave and wonder why their arm hurts.

Just look how Activision dropped 10% of their Workers for more short term income on the Paper.
While Nintendo back then refused to do that and stated, that such large lay offs, can damage the moral of your workers and lower the Quality of the Product.
And all of that despite the Problems of the WiiU.
EA ruins companies like Bioware, Visceral Games, etc. for more and more short term growth.

The second Problem is "Games as a service" how it is seen today by the Publishers
The Publishers ship a "Minimum viable Product" on the Market and then start to fix it over time.

[Kalise]

For the Roulette. I had the Idea of a "half synched" Roulette.
Your Stats get synched, so you can't one shot a Primal like Zurvan, but you keep all your Skills for the fight.
I would love to do some of the old fight, but the Classes play horribly on Level 50 or 60.

Though, honestly, this is fixable with the same fix to another significant problem.

Frontload classes skills. Make them be "Complete" earlier in the game and then rely on Traits to upgrade skills at later levels. So the core of the class exists even at low levels, but higher levels you're stronger with additional effects on your skills.

So for example:

Samurai has their 3 combos pre-50 and a rudimentary Kenki Gauge that they build up using their positionals (Like they do for 52-62)

SMN has a Demi-primal to use pre-50 along with a Tri-Disaster variant that just applies their 2 DoT's without the Ruination debuff.

Dork Knight has TBN and Blood Gauge pre-50.

Etc.

Sometimes it is funny, how here in the Forums the Players come up with so much better Ideas, to make it interessting in the long run and how they spend time, thinking how it could be kept for a longer time, instead of being buried with the next Patch.

Part of it is viewpoints. As players, we spend our time playing the game. So we see it from a perspective of "What would we like to play?".

While developers spend much if not all their time making the game instead of playing it. So they see it from a perspective of "What would people like?" or, sometimes the worse thought "What would make more profit?" - Which focuses around how many MMO players like to only sub so long as they have new gear to work towards. So little mind is paid to anything that isn't new gear rewards.

And I think, if they had started HW with such a Concept it might have worked, but now with Eureka, it would just feel like they gave up on building a World and instead made Eureka the Worldmap.

Some of it is having too much distance from the player perspective.

They only really see the numbers and maybe some loud complaints and have to figure out what that means. Which might not be accurate.

For example, when PotD and Roulettes became better than FATEs for leveling and people stopped doing FATEs as a result, they see it as "Oh, I guess people don't like FATEs" rather than the reality which is "FATEs aren't rewarding enough to bother with"

Some people comment that FATEs aren't rewarding enough and they decide to stick the Twist of Fate buffs for increased experience in rather than actually try and fix FATEs and their rewards...

Same thing with Leves, which resulted them in cutting Battlecraft Leves from SB altogether. As opposed to fixing their rewards.

A lot of these things are pretty obvious for players, but from a designers perspective, they just don't "Get" what the issues are with things, why people trend to specific content over others. It's not always a case of "Well, people do X because they don't like Y and prefer X" when it's quite often in XIV the case of "People do X because Y is not worth the time necessary compared to X"

Like, I'm pretty sure very few people actually enjoy PotD/HoH, but they'll get high volumes of players in them because they're really good for leveling DPS classes because of the shorter queues than DF with higher experience per minute than farming FATEs. But the dev's will see the player numbers and think that it's a much loved feature that tons of people enjoy.

[Imuka]

Though, honestly, this is fixable with the same fix to another significant problem.

Frontload classes skills. Make them be "Complete" earlier in the game and then rely on Traits to upgrade skills at later levels. So the core of the class exists even at low levels, but higher levels you're stronger with additional effects on your skills.

I had something similar in my mind.
The Core of the Samurai are the 3 Combos, Shinten, Hagakure and the Iajitsu Special and the Player needs all of them as early as possible.
Gurren is a better Shinten with an AOE Effect, but nothing I would need to learn before I learn Hagakure.

A Player could already learn the Basic of the Combos, Hagakure and Shinten, while leveling.
I have no clue, why they give the Player Meditate so early and before they give them Shinten.
Why Mercufil Eyes is a 58 Skill and not a 68 Skill.
Why Shinten is a Lvl 62 Skill. Really using the Kenki Gauge should start when you pick up the Class.
And Hagakure in 68. Hagakure is a absolut Bread and Butter Skill and the Player gets it a few Levels before hitting the max Level.

For the Dork Knight, they could easily push Skills like Darrk Passenger or Carve and Spit on higher Levels, because they are again like Gurren for the Sam Skills, that are used in between.

Part of it is viewpoints. As players, we spend our time playing the game. So we see it from a perspective of "What would we like to play?".

While developers spend much if not all their time making the game instead of playing it. So they see it from a perspective of "What would people like?" or, sometimes the worse thought "What would make more profit?" - Which focuses around how many MMO players like to only sub so long as they have new gear to work towards. So little mind is paid to anything that isn't new gear rewards.

I know, and I think, this is why our Feedback is so important. As rude and loud as we western Players can be, we straight say what is wrong with something and rarely drive around it.
When I saw some JP Feedback for Eureka in the neutral Part they were more like "Perhaps, maybe maybe, some people do maybe not enjoy this as much as other...maybe, but just maybe maybe...perhaps.".
It feels like some wanted to say something, but then remember that they have to be super polite. And it is not their fault, their whole society works this way.
But I think, this is not a real help, to improve a Videogame.

I know, the Devs see us as loud and rude, but at the same time, we straight jump for what we see as not well made. We praise what is good, but also talk about what we dislike.

Combine this with the habit of the Dev Team to only read the positive Feedback and we all know, why the Game does never really move forward.

I think, the Problem with this streching habit is, that people as soon as they drop the Game, never come back.
They burn out and never revisit the Game in any way, because so much feels streched to the Point of "No Fun Ville.".

I stopped playing, because of those streches and like I said a few Posts before, I just start the Game very rarely now and only because my Sub is still running for...it should be 20 days left from today.
But everytime I start the Game, I do not feel fun. Just the feeling of a dozen Tasks, streched for the sake of streching it. Finishing the Bluemage could be fun, if it would not involve running Primals up to 50 times, per Skill and hope RNG likes me.

It feels for me, like "The Hobbits" and the Lotr Trilogy."
Turning each Lotr Book into a seperate Movie was a great Idea and it worked really well and is really enjoyable.
But "The Hobbit", I would rather have seen one 180 Minutes Movie, instead of 3. The Book is not that big and for me, it felt streched. If they would have made one really good Movie, it could easily be on the same Level as any Lotr Movie, because they streched a pretty short Book into 3 Movies, every Movie felt weaker than any Lotr Movie.
I like Tolkiens work, but more=/= better.

And I feel like Game Devs today are scared to make a shorter but greater experience for their Players, because (sorry for the Word) Idiots try to make a Dollar/Hour Hobby out of it. Like the Value of a Game is determined by the Time needed to finish it.
I played some Games that were just 3-4 Hours long for 15 Euros and they were great.
And I played Games like Assassins Creed, that tried to strech their Game to over a 60 Hours Mark for no reason and instead made their Game weaker than it could have been.

This is also something I heard from some people about the Ultimate Fights.
They could be better, by being around 12 Minutes instead of 17.

[...] they see it as "Oh, I guess people don't like FATEs" rather than the reality which is "FATEs aren't rewarding enough to bother with".

The Problem is something some call a "Harddate Problem".
After the Yokai Event it might have looked like we were absolutly Fate Crazy, but we only did those because of the Event, so they went with this Fate Idea around 24/7.

Blizzard is the best example of how to missinterpret such Data.
Someone once told me about the whole "We want more Deck Slots" Story of Hearthstone.
A lot of Players keep the last Slot open, for experiments.
And when they demanded, they got a response of the Devs. Because so many Players don't use all Deckslots, we do not see a reason to expand those.".
They just worked with the Numbers but did not understand why they got the results, they got.
And it is the same in 14.
They did not understand why the POTD was played a lot, they just see the Numbers and take them as their Feedback.

Btw. I enjoyed it, but gave up, because if you play Solo, there is a pretty high chance for a Disconnect, that is counted as a Death.
I don't run again all those Floors for another Disconnect.

[Shurrikhan]

For the Dork Knight, they could easily push Skills like Darrk Passenger or Carve and Spit on higher Levels, because they are again like Gurren for the Sam Skills, that are used in between.

I'd have to disagree with those two. Before its nerf, Dark Passenger was the perfect iconic tempo-oGCD for DRK. And Carve and Spit, before the relative value of its mana (and potential last-ditch need for mana via defensive DA spenders) was nerfed, felt pretty integral. It provided some great-feeling burst, even if not all that potent in itself.

Honestly, for a lot of these jobs, there's little they can afford not to give early on, but that just means that the overall concept of the jobs are often just that... shallow. By level 60+, if not 50+, we should be looking at things which offer more nuance and opportunities to our kit, but should already have that kit in full swing.

[Imuka]

I'd have to disagree with those two. Before its nerf, Dark Passenger was the perfect iconic tempo-oGCD for DRK. And Carve and Spit, before the relative value of its mana (and potential last-ditch need for mana via defensive DA spenders) was nerfed, felt pretty integral. It provided some great-feeling burst, even if not all that potent in itself.

Honestly, for a lot of these jobs, there's little they can afford not to give early on, but that just means that the overall concept of the jobs are often just that... shallow. By level 60+, if not 50+, we should be looking at things which offer more nuance and opportunities to our kit, but should already have that kit in full swing.

I was a DRK in HW and Dark Passenger was a good Skill back then.
But, if I would have to pick between Bloodspiller and Dark Passenger on 50, I would go for Bloodspiller, to make the Gauge work.
MP Management is an important Part, but first we need to implement all Basic Tools from my View.
This is why I see Shinten as more important for the Sam as Gurren. Gurren comes with this long CD so a Sam Player will always hit 100 Kenki, because of the long CD of Gurren.
Shinten can be used everytime, between 2 GCD Skills, so the Player already gets the feeling, where to use it later.

The biggest Problem with the whole System for the Classes is, that again, the Devs strech it for no good reason, just to strech it, for the sake of streching it out to the max Level.
And this is were they lose a lot of Players. Till someone reached the max Level, something that takes now a small eternity, the Classes just feel bad to play and unfun.

If someone here would post "I was on Level 45 and the Combat was so uterly boring, that I dropped the Game", I could not really say anything, because he /she is right about that.
And saying "It will be fun later, keep on playing", is just a horrible advice and in some way a showcase of bad Game Design in the Game.
A Game needs to be fun when I start it, not after 120-150 Hours into the Game.

This is what I absolutly dislike about the new way the Devs design new Content.
The Bluemage gets fun, when you have all the Skills, but farming the Skills is a RNG streched chore of boredom.
Instead of using Reccourses to make the whole Skill unlock Process fun and enjoyable, they made it absolute bare Bones. Give us a Book and tell us, where we get the Skills and then strech it with RNG.
Eureka maybe gets better at the end, but people need to play the really horrible start filled with RNG, utterly boring Grind and boredom for hours. Sometimes even completly Solo.
And even at the end, it is a Place with more RNG than a Gacha Game.

This Game starts to see itself like some kind of Job that needs to occuopy more and more time of the Player but without adding more Content and instead streching what we have.
Eureka would have been fine if it was designed as niche Content for Players who want to spend 5 or more Hours per day in the Game. Maybe with daily stuff for the Players with less time to progress faster because they have less time.
But they made it like a Niche MSQ Content by putting the Relic and all the other things like Hairstyles, Mounts, Songs, Minions, etc. into that thing and streched it as hard as they ever could. Handled like a Niche Content, but at the same time, the focus of the Design Team.
Like I said "They took a 0,5l Beer and mixed it with 5l Water, to have more "Beer"".

And this is a gigantic Problem of the Game now:
They strech Content to make it longer for the Players who spend +10 Hours a day in the Game, but also strech it for the regular Player who maybe plays the Game 10 Hours a week.
But while those people rush through Eureka in a few days, the other Player needs Months to get done with a single Weapon, being there every god damn day.

[Physic]

leves are boring and crappy as hell, if you are talking about battle leves. Fates could are ok, if more rewarding. But Potd is more entertaining than either fates or leves, in my opinion. I think one problem with players, is they think everyone agrees with them, its also a problem for devs. People think they know what everyone else wants, then there is always people who hate what others wanted or love.

I think putting relic in Eureka, and Eureka itself was one of the most entertaining things SE has done in recent times. I enjoyed potd and HoH immensely. You dislike these things, Different players like different things. One could say you should just homegenize rewards, but having played a game like that, many people dislike that.

So, i dont think there is any right solutions, they just have to try their best to make things very entertaining and hope for the best