FF14 is in a content lul but super popular? Here is why.

[Shurrikhan]

Then you can go ahead and keep dreaming. American game developers will never do what FF14 has done and Japanese game developers will never do what the American ones do.

...Except XIV did exactly that. ARR was a deliberate imitation of WoW, according to its own producer/director.

It just apparently lacks more capable coders and/or software engineering foresight, hence the vast difference in systems polish.

[Ayuhra]

I want archaeology content, so to speak, but no archaeology system. Let me explain.

Essentially, any leveling system is just going to be a series of lock-outs. You cannot do thing #44 until you've done sufficient prior things to unlock thing #44. Certain lockout procedures may be more rigid or more flexible, and may ultimately seem a good thing in that their constraints create a more curated course through which to progress, but at the end of the day they are only restrictions.

I don't want to have to care about the lore of Cutter's Cry or Qarn or the areas around Qarn, etc., just to be allowed to find out more about Sharlayan. And given that leveling progression systems in XIV tend to be far less flexible than in WoW or the like, that's all I can imagine an archaeology "system" really doing -- giving me "must do"s before I can access my "want to do"s.

All that would be far, far worse, even, if Archaeologist were made a gathering class, as it'd remove any possibilities for progression from otherwise lore-rich dungeons and require a whole separate gear set just to use for those who want to just go Indiana Jones (combat + archaeology).

I would personally like something more along the lines of ESO's antiquarian system over WoW's archaeology.

It's not its own job, so you can do it while you do other things. You can level it wherever you want. Bosses, dungeons, certain enemies in the overworld drop "leads" that give you an easter egg hunt to a big dig with a valuable item. Smaller digs drop less valuable but still interesting items. It'd be a fun way to get glamour/pets/mounts and all of the digging could happen in the overworld which would give FFXIV's overworld some much needed additional content.

[Shurrikhan]

I would personally like something more along the lines of ESO's antiquarian system over WoW's archaeology.

It's not its own job, so you can do it while you do other things. You can level it wherever you want. Bosses, dungeons, certain enemies in the overworld drop "leads" that give you an easter egg hunt to a big dig with a valuable item. Smaller digs drop less valuable but still interesting items. It'd be a fun way to get glamour/pets/mounts and all of the digging could happen in the overworld which would give FFXIV's overworld some much needed additional content.

Hmm, that's actually really similar to how I'd hoped Hunts would work, back in the day. And yeah, that sounds great, so long as it's primarily intrinsically rewarding and established cohesively and comprehensively, rather than being just another reward system by which to push people back towards otherwise undesirable content.

[van_arn]

...Except XIV did exactly that. ARR was a deliberate imitation of WoW, according to its own producer/director.

It just apparently lacks more capable coders and/or software engineering foresight, hence the vast difference in systems polish.

Not to mention xi did exactly that with Everquest. Square has a history similar to blizzard, in that they find a popular game on the market and release a similar game inspired and enhanced by that template.

[Powercow]

FFXIV... sorta has an extremely basic version of this with Sightseeing Logs. Really if they just expand on that and maybe add in some other requirements (ride a certain mount, be a certain job, use a certain emote, have a certain pet out, if you wanna go real nutty have it be "use an AoE skill at this area at this time of day" or something) to unlock little bits of lore and maybe some basic items, that could be a fun way of getting you back into the world. Heck the emote one is exactly how the sightseeing logs works already!

So the framework is there, SE could do it, it's just whether or not enough people really care.

[Shougun]

As I see it, both games are in a content lull at the moment. If you're a brand new player to either game then there's plenty of content to get through because everything is fresh and exciting - whereas a veteran player is going to struggle to have things to do that interest them as they've probably gone through a lot of what they wanted to do already.

What I miss about WoW and envy about ESO, however, is that the open world matters much more than it does in FFXIV. There's many reasons to go out and explore in both of those games whereas most of FFXIV's content is entirely instanced.

I really wish we had something like the archaeology system from WoW and ESO in FFXIV.

CHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOCOOOOOBOOOO CONTENNTT!! lol

To rephrase, I feel chocobo could do WoW's archaeology but better - it already takes the mount unmount mount unmount pattern out of it and potentially could replace that with a bit more of a fun mini game. Both repeatable content and non-repeatable one time lore (and other item) adventures.

Also I think we could utilize an adventurer's guild w/ museum. Can't remember the thread title atm, but if I can find it I might revive it, well and another on codex. Depending on the depth it could be really quite something, including a really nice marriage to archaeology. Something that has players being able to go out and collect information and wonders in the world, build up a museum, organize their knowledge, for example if they took some of their Bozja ideas this might be the codex for the game. Certainly, potentially, a huge undertaking, but you've got codex in many sRPG that are pretty cool (like most Bioware games, or Witchers).

Definitely some more open world stuff could be cool, I feel besides the games you mentioned taking some of the best GW2 had thought of might be a good reference too.

[van_arn]

CHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOCOOOOOBOOOO CONTENNTT!! lol

To rephrase, I feel chocobo could do WoW's archaeology but better - it already takes the mount unmount mount unmount pattern out of it and potentially could replace that with a bit more of a fun mini game. Both repeatable content and non-repeatable one time lore (and other item) adventures.

Also I think we could utilize an adventurer's guild w/ museum. Can't remember the thread title atm, but if I can find it I might revive it, well and another on codex. Depending on the depth it could be really quite something, including a really nice marriage to archaeology. Something that has players being able to go out and collect information and wonders in the world, build up a museum, organize their knowledge, for example if they took some of their Bozja ideas this might be the codex for the game. Certainly, potentially, a huge undertaking, but you've got codex in many sRPG that are pretty cool (like most Bioware games, or Witchers).

Definitely some more open world stuff could be cool, I feel besides the games you mentioned taking some of the best GW2 had thought of might be a good reference too.

Chocobo digging. It existed in XI. And 8 come to think of it.

[Neoyoshi]

We may be in a content lull, but we will never run out of Brothels to explore on the aether datacenter.

Did I say Brothels? No I didn't say Brothels, I said hangouts.

[Jin-]

ESO just dropped a new expansion.

Those are DLCs. Which are basically one zone with a story. Not traditional kind of expansions where is multiple zones and hundreds of hours worth of content.

[ZedxKayn]

Those are DLCs. Which are basically one zone with a story. Not traditional kind of expansions where is multiple zones and hundreds of hours worth of content.

DLCs are something else if we're gonna be nitpicky, Blackwood is a chapter