The Game 2012 and what I'd Like to See

[Kittra]

Alright, before I start, just a warning that this post is huge.

It is not intended to raise the ire of people who may not agree with what I have suggested.

It is intended to make people think about what they'd like out of the game in the long run and to encourage them to offer up their own suggestions.

Getting to the point, here's what I'd like to see for FFXIV in 2012 and beyond.

Things that need to happen

Fluid actions in battle

I don't think I need to tell anyone why this needs to happen, but I'll elaborate a bit anyways.

It is incredibly inconvenient to be stopped or paused every time an action is performed in battle, and until the performed action's animation has passed. With the addition of the combo battle system in 1.20, this is a growing problem for most classes which need mobility to perform the next action on their target, as opposed to Archer, which is at an advantage in group play because it does not need to run up to a monster to perform a combo.

Fluid actions, that is, actions that flow gracefully into each other so as to reduce "battle lock" would alleviate much of the problems faced by close range damage dealers and tanks, and probably help Archer out down the road too.

Fun ways to level up as opposed to grinding

Don't get me wrong, I actually love grinding with random people in an MMO, it's one of the reasons why people play these games, but after an hour or more of killing the same pitiful rat-monster-thing in a group, people start to lose interest. Thank God for random conversations that pop up or we'd all be doomed into becoming mindless drones.

Obviously fun ways to level up include quests, missions, maaaaaaybe guild leves depending on which one you do... but at this time most quests, missions, and leve quests are all more of the same. Go here, kill this, return, reap rewards, repeat. This isn't the right way to do it, and I'm afraid I don't know what is, but that's what the game's developers are here to figure out.

Server stability

I've been hearing that this is actually going to happen long before version 2.0 comes out so I'll just leave this one out and only say: It needs to happen correctly.

Less hunting and fetch quests/useless dialog from quest NPCs. MORE depth and multi-tiered quests!

Anyone who's done a quest in this game knows where I'm going with this... All the quests are the same, they send you out into the world to slaughter rat-monster-things, bring back their nuts, and repeat this formula with almost every quest, maybe changing the rat-monster-things you need to kill to evil-shocking-flies.

The only differences are the quests that send you from point A to point B, then to point C, which sends you back to point A, which sends you back to point C, which sends you to point B to complete the quest, and then to point A to receive your reward. While all this has taken place, the only thing you've done is listen to 3 NPCs talk about absolutely nothing to do with the quest.

I seriously find myself just pressing the enter key most of the time, rather than read something I know is going to be of no consequence to me if I DON'T read it.

What I'd like instead? More depth, and more multi-tiered quests.

The depth of the quest would be the "mini" story-line, that doesn't necessarily need cut-scenes to make me interested in it, all it really needs is for the NPCs to talk about something that actually has to DO with the quest and in such a way that the players feel drawn in and WANT to know more.

Multi-tiered is where the players need to complete quest #1 (albeit an extremely involving and interesting quest) to move onto quest #2, #3 and so on, but they need to be built around the basis that this is something that will draw the players in so much that they WANT to do each phase of the quest because they want to know what happens next, like in a good series of books.

Less totems, nuts, next bad gimick(s). More reasonable progression!
(AND LESS/NO MORE DARK MATTER IN CHESTS!!)

I'll admit it, I loved the idea of totems when I first read about it suggested on these forums and then saw it come to fruition by being implemented in the game. That was before I got a taste of how it was actually implemented...

As it is now, unless you have some serious streak of good luck every time you do Ifrit or the Moogle instances, you'd be lucky if you got a totem/nut once every 20 wins. That's "one" totem/nut, every 20 wins, divided by 8 people... anyone can see the problem (well everyone can, but some just refuse to acknowledge it...). This is not the way you keep your players happy and playing through the pay period leading up to version 2.0. It destroys their faith that you can pull off what you've promised.

Can you guess what would be better, or at least improve the situation?
How about, making the "tokens" a 100% drop, and raising the cost per weapon for them to 50-60?

By the way, this isn't much better than what we have now, but it makes people FEEL like they're progressing, and that's the whole point! And if the developers wanted to be reeeeally nice, they could make it so the weapons went to our LOOT pools so that we could be NICE and give away the ones we DON'T want.

[Kittra]

Things that need to NOT happen

2.0 user generated applications using Flash

Call me out on this if I'm wrong, but I'd read somewhere that the package Square-Enix will provide to players to develop third-party "apps" for FFXIV when version 2.0 comes out, will feature a system that produces them in a Flash format.

Nothing against flash, but seeing as this game already crashes due to a number of unknown issues, do we really want to add something that would be a "known" issue like Flash to that volatile mix? I already have to deal with it crashing my browser periodically, I'd rather not deal with it crashing my game as well.

Spells being interrupted while moving...

For the love of the series, do NOT do this! It was terrible in Final Fantasy XI, it will be terrible here.

I was honestly upset (coming from FFXI) when I first started this game, that it did not interrupt spell whenever I moved. That's because I was conditioned to it. Now (and especially with this new battle system) I don't think I'd be willing to play without it. I can't even begin to count all the times in FFXI that I was interrupted while casting a spell because the "game" thought I had moved when, in fact, I had been standing still with my hands off of the keyboard the entire time.

With all the glitches that FFXIV has, I don't think we need to add death of a tank to the list because the game thinks 80% of the time that we're moving when we try to cast healing magic.

[Kittra]

Things that would be nice to see

More story driven content

This isn't about "main" story content as I know that's already in the works. What I'm talking about is story content dealing with minor side quests that are not/or are partially linked to the main story arc. These quests/missions or whatever you'd like to call them, would not be mandatory for progression, they'd just be there as something to deepen the bond players have with the game. Optional quests that broaden a players view on the game are welcome in my book.

More FFXIV Lore in-game

What can I say? I love lore, and FFXI had quite a bit to offer in-game. Coming from that into FFXIV, I find the game extremely lacking in what I desire almost as much as the main story, a good back story. Nothing can draw me into an
MMORPG more than knowing the history of a city, it's leaders of the past, how it originated, what bonds were formed in-order to incorporate it's existence and so on. Lore GIVES a game it's depth. Single player games can get away with a one-line story that has very little backing to them and still be fun, online games cannot easily do the same.

More FFXIV Lore out-of-game

I've noticed recently that they've been doing this recently on the Lodestone and I welcome it, but for some reason it just does not feel like the Lore I'm looking for. Maybe it's because the majority of it comes in the form of "Reporter" news and "Seasonal" events, but I just don't feel the same connection to it as I did to the lore that came out of the Vana'diel Tribune for FFXI. The stories in the Tribune were richly illustrated, and gave the feeling of being "authentic" lore. I could read it and it just "felt" right, like reading a good book where the plot stays constant.

The lore from these seasonal events and reports feel random... like two people having a conversation about the sky and a third coming along saying, "So... how about that ground?" The ground has nothing to do with the sky, so the two original people would be understandably confused. That's sort of what it feels like to me.

Puzzle driven quests, dungeons, open-world content (Monsters with weak points?)

Normally puzzle content is best left for single player games, but I feel a really well thought out puzzle that takes multiple people to solve would work well in an online game. These puzzles would be less about, how many people do we need to step on a switch, and more about using your thought process to deal with a situation (Door opening that has no key maybe?). There's the possibility of putting these puzzles into dungeons or open world content, it would cut through the linear monotony of progressing in a dungeon, and grace open world situations with a "different" element other than: Kill a guard monster to get door #whatever to open.

I may not agree with most of what Tanaka tried to and failed to do with the game before he stepped down and Yoshi-P stepped in, but what I did like was his idea for incapacitation. Take a Malboro for example, when you incapacitate one or all of it's tentacles it would cease to use a particular ability or get weaker. For some reason we never saw this happen, all we actually got was that if you incapacitated a monster (aka: broke it's horn) your drop rate for a particular "useful" item would go up. I would love to see monsters with weak points or having the original idea of incapacitation being brought to force instead of: "x" Weapon type deals more damage to monster "a" than Weapon type "y" does.

Small, bite sized, "info" updates on what is currently in the works for FFXIV

Lets face it, a little in-site into what the development team is currently working on would go a long way for most of our peace of minds. We wouldn't need anything like Yoshi-P's Producer letters, just some small snippets posted from time to time on the forums.

"What if" suggestions on the forums by the developers so that players can give "respectful" feedback

These "What if" suggestions would be by developers trying to shoot an idea to see how it would take in the community. As it is now, we've received more of a "This is how it's going to be" approach to the player base with the development team backing off on somethings after they see how negatively people react to something they feel "is going to be, and that's that." I feel it would go a long way in the developers' favor if they implemented this and followed players' reactions/respectful debates as to how such a suggestion "might" effect the game.

A fun use for beast-coins

All I have to say is, I have at least 20+ stacks of various beast-coins piled up and the only use for them is to sell them to NPCs for gil? I'd much rather find out what they're for and how to use them to a "fun" end.

Open World, Massive Strongholds

You know what I love about Online games? The huge castles, cities, ruins, dungeons, and not easily access-able locations. Walking into a Massive fortress for the first time and wondering how you're going to get by all the enemies to reach even more powerful enemies at the top/bottom/end is always fun. While the Beast Tribe camps are fun, they're not at all impressive. Almost all of them involve wooden gates and unimaginative scenery that has been around since the game was in
beta. I would love to see a giant castle or fortress spring up in some location we have yet to explore, and tackle it's "many" challenges with people outside of an instance. Sharing in the experience with people other than ones you're familiar with is half the fun of an MMO.

An end to repairing gear entirely?

I never understood this whole "lets make gear degrade but NOT break" thing. It was a lot more interesting back when you could make some "good" gil repairing people's gear. At least it almost made sense from an economical standpoint, but you never get to the point where the gear "breaks" and you lose it forever if it hits 0%, which would have made a whole lot more sense from an economical standpoint. Now that there is a "repair all equipped gear" that forces crafters to take a 500 gil reward, there is little motivation AT ALL to repair someone else' gear, not to mention the many NPCs at camps and cities that can now repair your gear to 99%, it's a lot more expensive sure, but it's instant and only inconveniences you. So why do we still have gear that degrades? Just get rid of it entirely. A more extreme measure, that would be just stupid at this point, would be to make gear break upon hitting 0%.

[Kittra]

Polish is something that can happen after the game has established itself and things have calmed down for the development team. Some of these are minor annoyances and some are massive eyesores, but none of them are anything that can't wait till after 2.0 (Except for maybe the cut-scenes).

Polish

Glitched cut-scenes

I know everyone's seen them at least once, cut-scenes where a participant's character won't stop twitching because of the way the ground is, or when the camera angle on a scene changes everything flickers... it hurts my eyes and makes me say, "Uh oh... time to spend another grand on video cards." Hopefully this will be fixed in 2.0, but for now it's just an eyesore.

Rain in cut-scenes

Ok! I get it! The Seventh Umbral Era is coming, enough with the @$*& rain already!!! It was bad enough when it was a rare occurrence, but now that it rains almost every other 6 game hours it's almost impossible to watch a cut-scene outdoors without it somehow screwing up the entire thing. The bushes flicker, in one particular class quest, it blocks out the sky so you have no clue why you're looking up, and also because of the dimming effect that happens when the camera is zoomed far out, it leaves blue/pink holes on the ground so that your character looks like it's walking on an unfinished floor! For the love the game and my GPU, please! make it so that rain does NOT effect your cut-scenes unless it is directly related to what is happening.

Dialog box not disappearing in cut-scenes after the confirm button has already been pressed

Soooooo, why? When an NPC is done talking and you hit enter to continue the dialog, and nothing else needs to be said, why does it stay up for another 30 seconds while the rest of the unspoken cut-scene plays out? It's an eyesore and not typical of a polished or finished game. On the flip-side, there are some cut-scenes that do not let you hit enter and instead get rid of the dialog box instantly, before you can even read what was just said (Had this happen to me recently, all I saw were two lines of text before it disappeared a split second after showing up).

DirectX 10/11 support

Oh please Square-Enix, don't make me feel like an idiot for buying a $2000 PC just so I could experience the full glory of this game only to find out it only supports DirectX 9. I'm in no hurry, but I truly believe that by supporting DirectX 10/11 you would vastly add to your resources for this game that has so much potential.

A Longer "zoom-out" for the character camera

Not to grumble about one more thing, but the current limitation placed on players as to how far out we can zoom the camera is a slight inconvenience. True, zooming the camera out means we demand more resources of our PCs, but it also allows us to get the full picture of the landscape and our surroundings thus allowing us to use the full potential of our awareness in battle.

More character creation options or at least an in-game "barber shop"

Coming into FFXIV's Open beta, I was extremely dismayed by the limited character creation options which I "though" would be a vast improvement to FFXI's own limited system. While they did expand a bit, is still horribly lacking, but seeing as it was the beta, I figured more options were in the works for the "official" release. Unfortunately, my faith was not rewarded, and we still have the same limited system as we did back in the beta phase of the game.

While I have heard of improvements being made to this system for version 2.0, I must admit to a lack of faith...

What I'd like to see are separated facial features, facial markings, tattoos, multiple facets to hairstyles, and... dare I ask for a body slider? While I do love seeing lean, muscular figures, and slim, perfectly proportioned bodies, I must admit I'd love to be able to be the decider on whether or not my character has a bit of... pudginess to them or not. And while the simple selection of "option 1 here, option 2 there" worked well for FFXI at the time, I feel FFXIV needs to move into the realm of options plus slider bars.

Smoother mouse controlled camera

I won't lie, I hate using a mouse to play any game short of an fps, but the mouse controlled camera in FFXIV has so much potential behind it. While I played FFXI, using the mouse to control the camera felt like ice-skating, you could never get the stupid thing to go where you wanted it to because it was always sliding all over the place. In FFXIV the problem is not "skating" it's jittering. Moving the camera with a mouse causes the screen to jitter wildly, like riding in a jeep with bad suspension, driving over uneven terrain while trying to film a herd of stampeding gazelle. A little smoothing of the camera would go a long way to making it less of a generator of headaches.

Camera angle affecting screen movement

In the same category as the mouse controlled camera, this is a major source of headache for me while playing the game. Ever been walking down a hill or what "looks" to be perfectly flat terrain, only to have the camera start bouncing up and
down, or causing your character to appear to jitter? Or how about when you're running around and you change the angle of the camera slightly up and every time you move it warps in and out on your character really fast? Same deal with chocoboes while the camera is slightly tilted up, it bounces all over the place. The only fix seems to be to zoom in or out slightly, that fixes the problem "temporarily" until you change the camera angle again, and then the process repeats. Please fix this Square-Enix.

Simplified emotes

Whatever happened to a simple smile or a playful slap? It doesn't even need to have any animation, it just needs to display a message to the player who receives it (animation would be nice though...). We don't need anything overly complicated, just something that conveys the way we feel at a particular moment.

Family plan

Oh please, Pleeeeeease consider this Square-Enix. I can't tell you the number of times I've wished my family could play an MMO with me, but when it comes down to money, it's just impossible for me to manage. If I could have one account access-able "at the same time" by more than one person, at a slightly increased price per each additional person playing on that account, I would totally buy the Family plan. It would have to be cheaper per month than having a different account for each person, but still within the realm of generating reasonable revenue for the company. I would gladly pay an extra $5 per person using my account if we could all use it at the same time and play together, that is my only wish. While I have no idea if this is even in the realm of possible, I'd still love to see it done.

Editorial camera for version 2.0 instanced content

If anyone has played one of the Dissidia games, you probably know that you can record and export your battle in .AVI format. So what, we have FRAPs or any number of recording programs for that right? Hold on, you can also edit the camera angles in the fight "before" you export it, creating a dynamic video for all to see, should you decide to post it to YouTube.

Now, I'm a huge fan of recording in FFXIV, I've recorded almost every event, cut-scene, chat dialog with NPCs, and instanced/open world fight that I can think of, but I can only do so much just editing the flat recording I do myself. Outside of the cut-scenes, nothing else really feels dynamic, because you're stuck with the camera always behind yourself to see what you're doing. I'm not asking that Squre-Enix make a system that allows you to record the game 24/7 whenever you want (although that would be nice too...), just that I'd like to see something for the small arena "instanced" fights.

Imagine, you're in the middle of an awesome fight, the camera is focused on a close up of the tank running from a horde of moogles, the camera switches and zooms in on a group to the right fighting Pomburner, it spins around the group, angles up and then zooms over to focus on the figure of an Archer shooting the moogle from a distance, unleashing a Barrage of arrows.

Now go to YouTube and watch any moogle fight posted there and you basicly get the idea of what I'm poking at. While watching someone's battles from their back is still fun (better than not seeing it at all) it's not a dynamic experience, it focuses ONLY on the one who recorded the fight, not the group as a whole, and that's what I'm all about, the whole, awesome picture.

[Alzelia]

Wow that was long. I have to say I mostly agree with you

[Phe]

I want to have that much time.

and yes, interrupting spells while moving is bullsh*t.

[Betelgeuzah]

So you posted on a discussion forum but don't want any discussion to happen (unless it's the ass kissing-kind). Fantastic.

Www.blogspot.com

[SniperRifle]

Edited

Less hunting and fetch quests/useless dialog from quest NPCs. MORE depth and multi-tiered quests!

Anyone who's done a quest in this game knows where I'm going with this... All the quests are the same, they send you out into the world to slaughter rat-monster-things, bring back their nuts, and repeat this formula with almost every quest, maybe changing the rat-monster-things you need to kill to evil-shocking-flies.

The only differences are the quests that send you from point A to point B, then to point C, which sends you back to point A, which sends you back to point C, which sends you to point B to complete the quest, and then to point A to receive your reward. While all this has taken place, the only thing you've done is listen to 3 NPCs talk about absolutely nothing to do with the quest.

I seriously find myself just pressing the enter key most of the time, rather than read something I know is going to be of no consequence to me if I DON'T read it.

What I'd like instead? More depth, and more multi-tiered quests.

The depth of the quest would be the "mini" story-line, that doesn't necessarily need cut-scenes to make me interested in it, all it really needs is for the NPCs to talk about something that actually has to DO with the quest and in such a way that the
players feel drawn in and WANT to know more.

Multi-tiered is where the players need to complete quest #1 (albeit an extremely involving and interesting quest) to move onto
quest #2, #3 and so on, but they need to be built around the basis that this is something that will draw the players in so much that they WANT to do each phase of the quest because they want to know what happens next, like in a good series of books.

Cliffnotes (for my post)The way Skyrim did quests was right. Had Skyrims quests been w/ Final Fantasy characters, w/ the Final Fantasy title, with Final Fantasy spells/monsters/cities... Then we would have the quest-section of our game complete and ready to suck in millions of players. Also apologies for any typos and grammatical errors or if something doesn't make sense. I didn't proof read.

To go along with this, and I use Skyrim as an example way too many times but, it truley did what it was well. If Skyrim wasn't dragons and middle-earthy w/ Castles, and took place in Eorzea, as an MMO, w/ primal summons instead of Atronachs, using key FF franchise characters to replace key Skyrim characters (Astrid, Bynjolf and Mercer Frey, Farkas and Aela the Huntress)... Dark Brotherhood n Thievery not your stuff? Do the College of Winterhold questline, become the Archmage of Winterholde. This stuff isn't even the main quest yet it feels so, I really had a tough time deciphering wtf was the main quest and what wasn't everything was just that dynamic.

I was thinking look at RoZ, CoP, and the 3 city states R1-10 missions and whatever else you liked about FFXI's story, and make every little quest in FFXIV exactly like that (with voice acting obvi). It's been done already by the franchise, just literally copy the formula for every little quest in FF14, and THEN make the big storyline quests even more/same level of atmosphere. Remeber Cid, Lioness, Prince Trione, Roagrimm? The little pale demon kid from AAx5? Hell, even the ZM8 guy had his own seductive badass thing going on. Characters like Sepheroth, Shantotto, Kefka and every other character you grew attached to… They need to be in every quest (this is also why we need voice acting, and get the cute/seductive/comforting voices to play the characters we want to succeed or learn more about).

Can't grow attached to a wall of txt anymore. (irony of this post, i know)

Back to the Skyrim ideaology where you do a dynamic quest, stumble upon many things that benefit your character(level, loot, secrets), including more quests. These quests help explain the lore of the lands,

Ex. Why there is a little girl crying in the corner of some random building? (was going to uncaps this, but I think it adds some much needed dramatic effect)

ITS CAUSE THE LITTLE GIRLS LIL BRO IS MISSING N HES GOT HER COOKIES N THEIR MOTHER IS WORRIED N U HAVE TO TRAVEL THROUGH SOME NASTY EVIL MONSTER RIDDLED FOREST TO KILL WAVES OF A FEROCIOUS FIENDS OF A TREMENDOUS VARIETY TO FIND OUT THE DUDE U NEVER EXPECTED (some dude u ran into one time at the adventurers guild within 2 days of playing) HAD CAPTURED THE KID BECAUSE HIS YOUTH WAS NEEDED TO MAKE THE BAD GUY LIVE FOREVER!!!!!

This kind stuff. We need it. For every quest...

Do you know how hard I would gasm for stuff like this?

Just make up new quests as you (x# months release y# quests) go. If somewhere down the line you contradict the quest story line no one will care cause its just a side quest(line) and all they will remember is the awesome time they had doing it, the friends they did it with. Or continue to make more NPCs/areas to ensure you don't cross storylines. Hell, leave a flaw in the storyline, more Easter eggs to discover the better.

This is a hard task to manage because quests scaled to your level in Skyrim and don't in this game, however, people can do 1-50 relatively quick you could just make, for instance;

(These numbers are just guesstimates)

1000 quests 1-50,
and 1000 quests at 50.

So you could make the assumption that 50% of the quests are from 1-50, and 50% is at 50.

Plus by doing nothing but adventuring and questlines you could still hit 50 before completing all 1000 quests (from 1-50). Uh oh, and some players don't like doing quests that have a small sense of accomplishment (cause they are 40lvls above recommended quest level), with only decent rewards, when they could be doing the Lv50 quests, right?

(caps time)

SO THEN U LVL A NEW CLASS AND ENJOY THE GAME AS THAT CLASS N SEE THE QUESTS YOU MISSED!!!! (AKA REPLAY VALUE)

and then continue the Lv1-50 process on that class. Didn't do the College of Winterholde on your first playthrough? No problem. You still have your Arcanist to level up.

Take the numbers/class system/replay value with a grain of salt. This is all just off the top of my head.

It took me like 100-120 hours of gameplay to do 150 quests/questline/mainquestline/sidequests on Skyrim. Playing like a minimum of 16 hours a day for like 7 days. If the game kept coming out w/ more dynamic questlines, and was an MMO, with addicting long-lasting end game content. You'd never have to play another game again.

With this wall of txt I have left you all with + the OPs... Keep in mind this is JUST the quests, thats all I wanted to talk about. I too never thought of quests as fun and exciting (thanks to my WoW/FFXI days), but Skyrim was a fine example where EVERY little NPC did serve a purpose, and not just /faceplain How are you today? /continues standing still.

The Guards in Skyrim were probably the least dynamic w/ overused 1 liners, and even they had the laughable arrow in the knee line, plus you could pick pocket them. Get caught? They send you to jail. Don’t want to go? Bribe, Persuade, or Fight your way out of the situation. Every little thing matters I guess and it holds true to something being as strong as its weakest link. Sure the Moogle battle is nice, but it's completely overshadowed by every flaw that the game has... Day2 of Patch1.20 there were more threads about the exploit then about the quality of the fight.

[Kittra]

So you posted on a discussion forum but don't want any discussion to happen (unless it's the ass kissing-kind). Fantastic.

I'm afraid I don't understand where you got that I don't want discussion to happen unless it's the "ass kissing-kind," from my post, Betelgeuzah.

Care to explain/elaborate?

[Demacia]

You know OP, I came in ready with the "Oh here we go again" mentality whenever I see any thread about people mentioning what they'd like to see in XIV, and 99% of the time it's completely ridiculous and poorly thought out, but I can agree with most of what you said.

Good post.