Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[Thaciscokidd]

SNip

First sorry about the delay in my post just landed in LAX about 20 min ago and finally caught up with this tread.

Second, while I stand by what I posted, I agree with you totally. The parallels are kinda scary when you look at how people use to super hard defend WoW to how the community is today. Tribalism runs rampant here and it only hurts the game.

And maybe Blue Protocol will be enough to shake if up if it doesn't lean to far into the gacha side like Genshin and Ashes of Creation might be a better New World when it comes out, but most definitely Riot's MMO is going to shake things up. They're in a stronger position than WoW was when it came out initially. If you don't think this remember when this game was sidelined for just being a "Weeb Game".

I think Liam's post following yours mostly answers how I ultimately feel. I don't want this community to fall into a can't see the forest because of the trees situation.

[R041]

Prove me wrong. Post some proper threads and get the support. Make them talk about it.

If I had the link handy, I would point to the recent endgame gearing post, which was beautifully done. First thing I've ever really seen with significant support in the triple digits.

Everything I'm saying has been a thread, multiple threads over the past 6 years. We're having a discussion right here, we're talking about it. I'm not trying to rally people, so this thread will do just fine. But if you look at other threads I've posted like New Player Experience, or Wishlist, you'll find I have content there. I don't need to make my own new threads to get my point across. It seems people are reading this one just fine. Why are you trying to create weird goalposts for my talking points?

And you're talking about Sfia, the reason it was such a massive thread was because the dude is basically XIV famous and a world first raider. I barely have hopes Yoshi will even read that if I'm being honest.

https://youtu.be/yLoko-TILLk
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/473632

[DPZ2]

People like to bring up 1.0 pretty often as an achievement in their accomplishments, we know what can be done. So why are we so shy of the extraordinary these days?

1.0 was a disaster on par with the release of, oh, the Marvel's Avengers title. I suspect the losses of the latter title resulted in the sale of Crystal Dynamics.

Square Enix shut down the servers for 1.0 and used an entirely new engine for 2.0. The game was basically rewritten. It is currently popular, unlike 1.0.

You don't want an update to this game, you want SE to wipe out what we have now and produce the game you want. Considering how long it took to get the remake of FF7 out the door, and how long FF16 has been in production, I can't see this game becoming what you want in any time frame you'd approve.

I'll be happy to see the changes they make in 7.0 and 8.0, but I'm not holding my breath that your particular wish list will serve as the basis for either of those releases.

Frankly, the "Open World" you seem to remember from 2.x can never be replicated -- there are more data centers, there are more worlds in each data center, there are a heck of a lot more zones to play in after 5 expansions. It's been the nature of longer running MMORPGs for the last 30 years. (Well, the successful ones, anyway)

[DPZ2]

I think Liam's post following yours mostly answers how I ultimately feel. I don't want this community to fall into a can't see the forest because of the trees situation.

I also don't want this community to fall into the "can't see the forest because this is a coral reef" situation. This game only needs to be what it is ... a Final Fantasy MMORPG. It doesn't need to become WoW or GW2 or New World. It's perfectly fine for another game to become way more popular than this one. Brand loyalty is a myth perpetuated by players who require validation that what they are playing is popular.

I wish Riot all the success it deserves. I've never heard of Blue Protocol. I'll look at both once players outside of this game produce enough buzz to make it worth my while. And by 'buzz' I mean more than Coming Soon!

By the way: I don't remember reading the term "weeb game" for Final Fantasy 14 until the last two months. In these forums.

[R041]

...

I'm aware, I was there too. I never said I wanted 1.0 back - I barely wanted to play it because it had such a limited and slow game-loop, I basically sat in a cave most of the time AFK shooting shit to level because I never had Leves. I'm merely pointing out the significant changes we've seen from not only 1.0 - ARR, but even ARR - EW. Some which are great, and some not so great.

Which wishlist are you talking about exactly, is it the massive one that I said would be impossible and I'm OK with that, knowing it'd need to be XIV:2?

Or is it the tiny one, where I just ask to make housing instanced, put more content in open world, increase the tick rate, and give classes more utility again? Because those sound very within the realm of possible. We have actual critical issues here that need to be addressed, like the absolutely massive barrier to entry and the complete single-playerification of the whole ass game.

As we add more of the same, we're just asking for more of the same issues. More housing wards, where FC houses still have money making systems that exclude the general public? Yeah, that's just going to continue to be exploited and we'll still have a fake housing crisis in a video game. So if they truly want to keep wards, then please at least exclude the money making systems from them and push it to FC GC instead.

Here are some Petitions and large threads by the way, because people think that matters and Yoshi reads these forums:

Instanced Housing: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/347165
Healer changes: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/460657
Hrothgar: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/460599
Raid Difficulty: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/416474
Account-Wide Cash Shop: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/365748
Astrologian: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/391252
RMT: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/226526
Re-Used Gear: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/450044
MSQ Difficulty: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/468755
Latency/Tick Rate:https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/444667

Ultimately though - I disagree with people being OK with XIV turning braindead single-player. I don't have to want to play it 24/7 to not want that, I just want more enjoyable and engaging underlying gameplay for the common experience. I don't want to have to go bash my head against Ultimates for months for that, it doesn't make my rotation and the feeling of each class any more fun. I don't enjoy falling asleep doing AoE rotations in hallways anymore.

Maybe I'll just main BLU and start a cult.

[Raven2014]

Frankly, the "Open World" you seem to remember from 2.x can never be replicated -- there are more data centers, there are more worlds in each data center, there are a heck of a lot more zones to play in after 5 expansions. It's been the nature of longer running MMORPGs for the last 30 years. (Well, the successful ones, anyway)

Yeah, and this is a good point. Even we're to assume SE will make every correct design decision in FF14 in the next 10 years, the game will still gonna buckle under its own weight. In 10 years we will probably see 4 more expansion, that means:

- 8 more classes.
- 24 more zones.
- Heck, I don't even want to do the math for how many new duty instance we will have that point.

Creating and maintaining that amount of content appropriately, ... that's not even an expectation, that would be a miracle.

It's similar to WoW too. In retrospect they should have take that leap of faith with WoW 2 instead of canceling it and putting all their egg in the current game. Legion showed them trying to recycle the most successful period of the game (BC), then you have the greatest trainwreck of a story in Battle of Azeroth just to forcefully restart the Horde/Alliance conflict again. That shows that the current WoW is really bounded by the shackle and constraint that they could have broken free with a new game. And that, I can speak with confident will be something that gonna happen to FF14 as well, regardless of how good Yoshi-P and his team can be.


As much as I love FF14, I do believe it's entering it's prime and peak. And it will probably stay there for a few years, but the decline is inevitable. Not because of the same reason the complainers here are saying, but because it feels like a natural order of thing. Even if they do have a plan for FF14 in the next 10 years, I hope that plan include a soft-landing and the next FFMMO should be at least be on the drawining board atm.

[R041]

...

I think I can compromise - We don't even necessarily need our current open world to be super active. But maybe the main issue is that all of the fun content are behind Duties that prevent you from doing and queuing for anything else. If they made the Duties themselves more flexible to interacting with other systems then I think they would feel much better. I also don't believe lower level Duties will survive future expansions with the way they're pushing abilities forward and removing them from earlier levels, which is why I really think we just need to unlock abilities in Sync but reduce stats.

I'm in bargaining phase, send help. lol

[Deveryn]

Yeah, and this is a good point. Even we're to assume SE will make every correct design decision in FF14 in the next 10 years, the game will still gonna buckle under its own weight. In 10 years we will probably see 4 more expansion, that means:

- 8 more classes.
- 24 more zones.
- Heck, I don't even want to do the math for how many new duty instance we will have that point.

Creating and maintaining that amount of content appropriately, ... that's not even an expectation, that would be a miracle.

It's similar to WoW too. In retrospect they should have take that leap of faith with WoW 2 instead of canceling it and putting all their egg in the current game. Legion showed them trying to recycle the most successful period of the game (BC), then you have the greatest trainwreck of a story in Battle of Azeroth just to forcefully restart the Horde/Alliance conflict again. That shows that the current WoW is really bounded by the shackle and constraint that they could have broken free with a new game. And that, I can speak with confident will be something that gonna happen to FF14 as well, regardless of how good Yoshi-P and his team can be.


As much as I love FF14, I do believe it's entering it's prime and peak. And it will probably stay there for a few years, but the decline is inevitable. Not because of the same reason the complainers here are saying, but because it feels like a natural order of thing. Even if they do have a plan for FF14 in the next 10 years, I hope that plan include a soft-landing and the next FFMMO should be at least be on the drawining board atm.

I'm hoping they only one job instead of two. It's getting to be a lot and they've even made note of that.

[Tehmon]

MMORPG is a dying genre way past its prime, it has lost much of its cultural significance and new generations of gamers don't care for the genre as much because of it's lack of visibility and cultural impact in the entertainment they consume and are used to consuming. New MMORPGs are more prone to flopping than not. The fact that XIV got any boost in it's popularity is a once in a lifetime thing, and much of it's acclaim and appeal comes from how different it is as an MMO experience to old MMORPG players, and how approachable it is to completely new players, where the story is put front and center, something any gamer, old or new, can enjoy and experience.

I think there are certainly lots of things that can be done better, but it seems like many things that are being criticized in this thread are also things that are part of XIV's appeal to new players, which creates a dilemma by itself. Can this game survive on old (jaded) MMO addicts alone? Where is the point where you are actively starting to hurt the chances of new players coming in? What is the tipping point for old players?

[Atelier-Bagur]

I think I can compromise - We don't even necessarily need our current open world to be super active. But maybe the main issue is that all of the fun content are behind Duties that prevent you from doing and queuing for anything else. If they made the Duties themselves more flexible to interacting with other systems then I think they would feel much better. I also don't believe lower level Duties will survive future expansions with the way they're pushing abilities forward and removing them from earlier levels, which is why I really think we just need to unlock abilities in Sync but reduce stats.

I'm in bargaining phase, send help. lol

The problem with unlocking abilities in Sync with lower duties is that it'll undervalue any lower-level players whom dont have all of their abilities unlocked in that job. No matter how much you crunch the numbers. The best solution, and I believe seeing how they reworked Monk to give its "lite" Chakra gauge playstyle is to rework the abilities classes unlock to be available much earlier in levels but like you said, be lite versions of those abilities. Examples include:

White Mages having access to lilies
Bards having access to all 3 songs for their rotations
Dragoons having access to their dragon abilities
Gunbreaker having full access to their continuation combo (rather than the gimped one you do pre continuation....ugh...)

etc but basically allow these abilities to be unlocked much, MUCH earlier in the leveling progress. It'll be slightly overwhelming for new players of course but the big plus is that it'll also help to understand their job's playstyle once they reach max level rather than learning and relearning their rotations within certain level ranges