What is one aspect of MMO design past or present that wish was added or taken away.

[ReynTime]

Not going to answer directly to that person who got super offended I wanted the game's overworld to feel less like a glorified uninteresting oversized lobby room, but I just want to clarify when I said "no teleporting everywhere" I meant I actually prefer when games impose a more rigid restriction on where and when you can.

I actually thought the Anima system people oh so hated was nice. The time it took to recharge was too long but I legit think anima + gil should have been the way to go. It would encourage players to use their teleportation wisely and still push for better map design/overworld content since maps would be important beyond MSQ theatre stage. "Oh no muh Porta Praetoria" - Use your anima. "Oh I'm in Gridania and I need to go to Limsa" - Use the freaking airship that's 20 seconds away from where you are.

Furthermore the critical paths in XIV's silly overworld aren't that long.

Some of the arguments against this miss the point completely, because the overworld being designed the way it's been since Heavensward is a consequence of how traveling works in XIV since then. ARR zones are a lot more filled with points of interest, lore to see or to read, NPCs, etc because flying wasn't a thing then.
Maps are oversized, barren and with a huge lack of verticality in 3.0+ onwards with like 2 exceptions because they know players will have flying real soon and not explore anything after except for FATE clearing.
When a game is designed around traveling back and forth by ground/limited teleporting more content is expected to be in the overworld.

The "themepark" analogy works perfectly for XIV's map design because most of the time you're basically having short guided tours from point A to B. And for that approach convenience is all that matters.

A fellow XI? Nice!
I pretty much agree with all your points.
And I'd like to stress the party play. In a world where DF/PF exist you have no problems finding a party anyway. The MMO part gets dismantled more and more to cater to people who think running a trust dungeon unsynched is what cooperative play is about. It gets more and more shallow and people increasingly lazy.

TBH I never played XI. It's legally impossible for me (thanks SE...)
It sounds like a game I would enjoy a lot more than XIV though.

[Shougun]

I wish, which i know won’t happen in XIV, they had the classes that were a little more diverse. Example, like a dps who in general had weak damage but could like debuff and such. Or flip it, a job who’s main goal is to buff and support their party members and have lower damage themselves. I don’t mean dancer or bard style of support either. I know this isn’t how XIV will ever work, but it’s just wishful thinking.

Over a few threads I tried to help the feeling of the idea, though it's difficult to go full classic without huge shifts in design. For example in a dark healer thread suggested offensive 'heals' (oGCD for balance reasons) and damage boost debuffs (curses), that were balanced on the nature of their total potential output. Like a curse that prevents a boss to deal 1000 potency of damage (for your party specifically, could use % to spread it out too like prevents 25% outgoing damage up to 1000 potency, an enemy target 'shield'), or a curse that says players deal 10% more damage up to 900 potency (of the player). These allow a job to not have balance issues you would have otherwise, like if you imagine I increase the damage dealt to a boss by 10%. 4 players, 8 players, 20 players, it changes the 'power' of that debuff (especially if it stacks). What was worth 500 potency may become 5000, and then 50000. By setting expectations (limits) I think you can get some more leeway, of course this makes it more of a 'feeling' of design over maybe the more classical "bard sings a song and buffs everyone". Alternatively adding a support role could help, if they redesigned everything such there were something like 5 roles, then each party has a support job (though this far late that is pretty serious suggestion over just one or two jobs with twists). Of course we have some of these abilities (Ninja) already, but that's one ability- when you give these designs limits you could give a job a lot more of them. En-fire target weapon adds 100 potency to the next 3 weaponskills (300 potency total, rather than saying "adds 20% bonus damage" and it's much harder to know what'll happen exactly, and of course use cooldowns to manage expectation even further).

In a blue mage thread on discussing potential main job concepts was that blue mage could have a lot of enfeebles, fun things to mess around with basic monsters, but when it came to a lot of non-trash content (like bosses) the idea would normally fall apart. However the idea was failed buffs automatically become a generic blue debuff (that may have a dot in it, to further compensate from the idea that there is no nice debuff effect, or maybe even successful debuffs become this generic debuff once they complete their cycle so you can see short debuffs function in the kit smoothly). Then the overall kit of the job is applying effects and then interacting with those effects (so if they have some spell that increases their mp regen based on number of active buffs and debuffs, or then they have another skill that deals huge burst by consuming all debuffs- things that would work on bosses then).

Anyway, not exactly the classic ideas, but I think you might be able to capture the idea partially in a job here and there without having to make an entirely new role.

I just want to clarify when I said "no teleporting everywhere" I meant I actually prefer when games impose a more rigid restriction on where and when you can.

I figured that's what you meant, like it reminded me of early WoW where there were some teleports but mostly not (even current WoW appears to have less instant travel than FFXIV, but certainly more than it used to). And I agree if there were few teleports and a huge world of nothing, "what was the point? Why?" lol. One doesn't want nothing for long stretches, the idea was to have an enhanced journey but not a great journey of nothing (or at least that's also what I was trying to say, and fairly certain Shurrikhan was saying).

While the whole game isn't exactly in my tea I do really like the GW2 mount system as it adds a sort of gamification to movement when traveling about, one that lets you think about your approach to the world (and doesn't have to be super long hours of boring nothing, heck it might only be 30 more seconds in some cases), I would appreciate that too. When looking at the landscape it's fun to think about how you're going to get places, and you sort of get to do that here in FFXIV it's rather limited and then entirely gone forever once you get flying. I don't want to see travel be annoying (or barren), but I do believe "a game" could have more in it in terms of the fun of journeying and the general interaction vibes with the world itself. Like someone who posted the GW2 video of the jungle, watching that was a small mental puzzle and because of how the game has movement mechanics it's not just "whatever hold W and spacebar and win".

[VelKallor]

This is 100% false.

100% true, 8 years worth of experience says so.

[VelKallor]

I wish they would lose the Duty Finder and go back to the old days when you put up your flag and waited for an invite to a levelling party

MMO developement superceded that outdated and archaic system years ago. No one has that kind of time to waste.

[The_Schwartz]

I wish they would add a class that mimicked a Creature Handler from Star Wars Galaxies. I enjoy playing pet classes and FF14 lacks pet classes. Also, with all the different NPCs in the game, it would be great to be able to charm a random monster to be your pet.

[Kuroka]

MMO developement superceded that outdated and archaic system years ago. No one has that kind of time to waste.

Exactly that is the problem with everything here... sadly...

[FrogDog]

MMO developement superceded that outdated and archaic system years ago. No one has that kind of time to waste.

I wonder how true this actually is. People don't seem any busier than they were 10+ years ago, there are just more forms of entertainment vying for their attention - and the makers of this entertainment want to extract as much money from people with as little engagement as possible.

People still waste tons of time playing MMOs, the experience is just less social in a lot of ways.

There's at least one upcoming MMO that is looking to do away with the duty finder equivalent and I hope it's successful in doing so. You can design systems that make it easier to find and connect with people that want to run the same content you do without making it a matchmaking system with people who you'll never see again. There's something to be said for meeting people organically through content and for the sake of doing content.

[VelKallor]

Exactly that is the problem with everything here... sadly...

Yes.

Ive said this elsewhere but Ill restate

Demographics drive game design.

The average gamer is in their 30's, married, kids, job. So that changes how games are designed, how they are paced, who they are aimed at. The average gamer isnt some pimply faced teenie in school..they are adults, with busy lives and little patience for stupidity.

NO ONE wants to waste hours screaming for a group, running there, having people quit or having to leave then start that cycle all over again. BTW WHO do you know wants to do ONE dungeon in an entire day?

By your method no one could get their roulettes done in a single day,..to say nothing of trying to corral 24 people for an Alliance raid.

Time is a precious commodity.and isnt something to throw away.

Shift workers, time split shifts, early shifts, late shifts, overtime.... no one works 9-5 anymore..

There's at least one upcoming MMO that is looking to do away with the duty finder equivalent and I hope it's successful in doing so

It wont be.

MMO's that didnt have a dungeon finder crash and burn. Tell a player he or she has to waste three hours trying to get a group for one instance and they will tell you "Thats way too long , I dont have that kind of time to waste doing nothing...and I sure as hell aint PAYING for it."

Ill also add that in a PAY TO PLAY MMO they have even less patience, as there is the financial factor to consider. People are PAYING, and that HAS to be respected. Taking a customer and their money for granted is a huge mistake.

This is 2021. Not 2004. Game design of that type is out of date by a light year.

People still waste tons of time playing MMOs, the experience is just less social in a lot of ways.

Social by whose metric? I do a lot of socialising in and out of instances, and then again, its a question of whether they WANT to be social with you or anyone else. You cannot force it.

In a day, I may want to get some dungeons done and get some outer world stuff done and I dont feel like being "social"..I have too much to get done.

I dont have any social media. None. Zero. Zip. None of them and quite frankly, they are cesspits. I socialise on MY terms when I want to, the same can be said of everyone. Lastly, when you mention "being social", I am, reminded of guilds I used to be a member of...that cut all ties with me the moment I left. if they are as friendly as they say, if they want me to be "social", its funny isnt it that all of a sudden they dont want to know me after Im not a member of their little clique?

Hate to say this, but MMO doesnt mean social in the way you think it does.

There's something to be said for meeting people organically through content and for the sake of doing content.

is it content I want to do? Are these people someone I want to know? Do they want to know me or are they there to just get the instance done?

[TaleraRistain]

For me, it will have to be dying to insanely over-levelled rabbits (Rarabs) back in FFXI-- literally one-shot kills on players-- and then losing an insane amount of experience points (I even de-leveled a few times because of that).

Till this day, I still have very colourful words for whoever amoung the Dev team dreamt up that insidious concept.

You can thank "The Vision" in EverQuest for that.

[TaleraRistain]

Fun times.

Now, to make it even more realistic, the airship from Limsa Lominsa to Gridania takes 10 minutes, as it is no longer just a cut-scene, but has to model some distance between zones. Unfortunately, there is only one airship making the trip, and it leaves once every six hours in-game. You can set your watch by it.

The Ferry to the East Shroud takes 5 minutes, but only leaves once every hour-and-a-half.

You have to have orders that you can obtain from any Grand Company officer in Ul'dah in order to get past the sentry at the Gridanian border into Ala Mhigo. Did I fail to mention that before? Go back to Ul'dah and start over.

Did I also mention that you have no flying mounts and the border guards will not let you take a Chocobo through into Castrum Oriens?

In order to simulate the long distances between zones, that little blackout period you see now is replaced by a spectacularly rendered tunnel for 15 minutes.

I could go on and on and on about the virtues of land travel in an MMORPG. And don't even get me started talking about the trip to Kugane from Limsa Lominsa ...

Smile.

You forgot that at any point when on a boat or airship the game could bug, drop you into the sea/air, and you start all over again after you locate your corpse naked and retrieve your items.