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

[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.

[Psytic]

Open world is bland and lacks dense vegetation. ARR looks better than any zone that has come since. Everything is just bland space with a couple trees plopped down. Look at La Nosca and the hot springs at bronze lake, etc. look at the zones since the expacs. Just bland rocks even the wall textures used to have moss growing on them you look at Yanixia its the same brown bland repeated texture. Please add some more trees and shrubs and ground cover so it at least looks as good as ARR in Shadowbringers. Look at Kugane 90% of people are standing in the street and you cant go in most of the buildings. Gyr Abania side is even worse, I get that its badlands but even Thalanan had cactus and some interesting things.

[Psytic]

PS the poster above are right. I play potd just to be able to do something and not be in a 30 minute dps queue to play the game. Deep Dungeons could use some improvements.

[Justadude]

well you are not wrong. Only thing that doesnt sit well with me is your raid section.
Dont get me wrong everything you said in there is absolutely true.
Now i dont mean to get political here but i need an analogy and it seems a perfect fit.
Heathcare isnt broken because people cant afford insurance. Healthcare is broken because hospitals think its ok to charge 90 dollars to hold your new born baby for 60 seconds.
Same situation with raids and rewards. Its not broken because raiders exist. its broken because REWARD CAPS exist.
OH My have reward caps gotten out of control. it started with highest tier tomes just before HS. now its:
Highest tier tomes
Highest tier 24 man
Highest tier normal Raid
Entire highest tier savage content.
which leaves only one endgame content not buffered by a stop wall. Eureka.
you can sit in eureka forever and ever, and you have to too because each kill is worth only a whopping 1/10000th of a level (i did the math)
but no matter what progression is steady throughout. That is literally the only redeeming quality eureka has going for it. Its not fun, its literally Final fantasy 11 on final fantasy 14's engine only without all the things that made Final fantasy 11 fun. So basically its all the things that were bad about final fantasy 11. Maybe Diadem and Eureka were paying respects to the old producer who was legendary with final fantasy 11. Guess what though. He isnt legendary. He was a failure in the end and was fired for it because he didnt respect the players. But i digress.

Bottom line it isnt the raiders that are the problem. Its the content and the very visible stoppage of progression. its the literal hand in your face that says OK player you did enough of that fun thing for the week see you next tuesday, now GFYS!
Im just venting here because i know the bosses are doing the same thing that Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida did. They are no longer listening to us. Its evident because Diadem and eureka have gone on for OVER a year now and we do not see any signs of regret.

[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.

[Gardthorne]

That first post is unreal. I've never seen so many bad opinions collected into one space.

[Yhah]

Not sure if anyone touched on this but these folks running around in game asked my 16 year old niece if she wanted to hook up for some sexual role play. Those kinds of people roam, use nude or naked modded characters, making the game unsafe for children like my niece.

[Shurrikhan]

Not sure if anyone touched on this but these folks running around in game asked my 16 year old niece if she wanted to hook up for some sexual role play. Those kinds of people roam, use nude or naked modded characters, making the game unsafe for children like my niece.

Did this person know she was 16? Also, the mod only affects their own graphics, ultimately making no difference from them getting off to a fully-clothed cat-girl without the mod; in either case, we don't know what they're doing behind their monitor, nor what they fancy, but it's not exactly relevant either unless they start discussing things that ought not be discussed in knowing context of the other players' age. Though even then, it's still far safer than anything irl... You don't have to see any more than you intend, and needn't even hear them any longer than you like. Sure, there are strange people out there, but even if there were some twenty times as many problematic individuals here, she'd still be technically safer socializing with a broad spectrum of people in a game than via a video-chat program or in person.

[Kuroka]

lol
16? are you from the US by chance? that is no were a child. IF thats too much then idk... just say no and done.