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

[Amenara]

Also, can you name two MMORPGs that do this well? I know that World of Warcraft appears to be able to adjust levels for Mobs, but I don't remember them adjusting player DPS on this level.

Honestly WoW does it pretty ok, but there are definitely issues with scaling in the sense that lower level characters do considerably more dps than higher level characters in a dungeon as well as scaling of different expansion's dungeons can by wonky at times. I think if they dedicated a team to do a balancing pass on leveling dungeons it would be in a really good spot.

That being said, FFXIV and WoW have different mentalities when it comes to dungeons. Instead of syncing characters in dungeons they sync mobs to your characters level. I think that is a massive difference in mentality towards the issue and honestly makes it very difficult to compare the two.

[DPZ2]

Actually current FFXIV isn't at all like ARR.

The game has certainly added much since 2.0 launched, but to say that current content is totally different from ARR is a bit misleading.

The ARR zones haven't moved. The dungeons have been twiddled a little bit, but I can assure you that Aurum Vale is still as deadly to a party that tries to take everything down at once. The MSQ has been shortened a bit, but you still have to run through the same tragic ending of ARR via cutscenes. True, the "pick a direction" dungeon that was Toto-Rak doesn't exist anymore, but it became pretty clear from the numerous runs I've made of that instance over the years that there was only One True(tm) Pathway for moving through that instance. The new, worked instance is much cleaner and understandable.

Dungeon design is still mob-mob-mob-boss1-mob-mob-mob-boss2-mob-mob-mob-boss3-and-out. The Dance of Trials is still required. And 24-person raids are still pretty much story-led instances for those who have no desire to participate in Savage (and, sometimes, Normal) 8-person raids.

I haven't seen the use of "The Great Labyrinth of Bahamut: Encounter" (LOB) in English in the eight years I've been playing. "Binding Coils of Bahamut" (CoB) has been traditional since at least 2014. I read that its first iteration required a premade party where the party leader could not have completed the Turn. Thankfully, that was replaced by a Duty Finder entry. For those who don't know, there were exactly zero additional 8-person raids in ARR. It was considerably more difficult than the current normal mode 8-person raids. It is also somewhat less difficult than most of the current savage mode 8-person raids. The cut-scenes are available on Youtube, but if you want to actually experience that era's idea of what a raid could become, go look for it in Party Finder (or bring your FC for a romp). Don't know anything about raids? I found a nice sensible guide a while back.

[Aword3213]

If you have a better model, feel free to share it.

I don't, and I don't need to. I'm not the one giving feedback about the game. Remember?

But that's also about the end of his presuppositions.The rest has been, here and there, framed implicitly or explicitly as his own subjective preferences

No, it's not. Otherwise I wouldn't even bother. Well, his newer posts are a lot better.

So what so assures you that Rolder50 couldn't possibly agree with R041's points except through a complete lack of consideration,

It's more like me being baffled by how people could be in agreement when arguement presented is vague

let alone that R041's "'feedback'" isn't meant to add to discussion nor discussion?

Because I don't consider his arguement feedback due to how it was presented, if it wasn't clear for you.

You, more than most here, seem to be the one devolving the topics into a singular switch of either (ambiguously broad) "agree"-ment or "disagree"-ment.

Actullay that started by someone mentioned cult first

What do you specifically find fallacious or ill-warranted about R041's models for how XIV might be usefully compared?

That's the problem, isn't it? He didn't specify what he's comparing when the word "competent" was used. By new games what does he even mean? Content Volume? Content Quailty? Which games was he comparing XIV to ? It's so vague

Or, attending to the finer points, what seems so detrimental about preferences such as doing more with the open world, no longer restricting dungeons to trivial difficulties, improving the tick rate or command queue handling, increased reason to run content that is currently otherwise run only once per day through dailies, or instanced housing, for instance?

You can give a million ideas about why X cannot be Y, but that's not the problem.

His earlier posts were more like "X should be Y" without giving details as to why when debating.

you have added surprisingly little outside of ad hominins and the broad stroke arguments you, yourself, demonize.

Well, after seeing IL600= IL 610 arguement, I don't see any point in it.

[R041]

...

Almost everything I talk about compares XIV back to itself in ARR-HW, and sometimes (rarely) 1.0. But the discussion is usually stifled by "XIV is only getting better, because see when 1.0, and look at how many players! So it's impossible that it's worse at all!" - But the discussion is around how we need to be picking and choosing certain things, and I've mentioned in a lot of my posts that I'm not referring to any specific expansion as a whole but parts of what made them good in certain content and community interactions. Just like how I consider ARR-HW raids to be an overall worse experience than SB-EW. I'd like to also bring up WoW, but some people use it as an instant decline for discussion.

A good example is how the ARR dungeons, although flawed in some ways (Too many dead ends with notes), typically had individual expression and encouraged discussion around not just the bosses, but the overall dungeon as an encounter itself.

Sometimes I think this isn't even about making dungeons themselves easier for us, but for them to create as a curated experience or Disney ride. It's like we went from FF7 design straight into FF13. I'd prefer HALF as many dungeons, if they were more interesting. Thinking back, I can't even remember half of the dungeons from SB-EW - Yet I remember almost all of them from ARR-HW and there were a ton.

A lot of people praise the death of bad MMO interaction, but it feels like we've gone so deep into stifling the bad, that it also started to hurt the good.

The most glaring example might actually be PvP, because it shows that XIV wants to act like a live service game, while also forcing it to be single player in almost all aspects from discussion to even queueing.

Can't have toxic chat, so remove it.
Can't have unfair queues, so remove it.

But we know these don't stop any of that, because people still exploit queue, and people still spam 'Hello' & 'Good Match'.

So we see this same philosophy being pushed into every system design now where it seems like fun is a lower priority than ease of use for single-player.

It feels like almost everything is built to the absolute lowest common denominator, but then they create an Ultimate once or twice an expac and that automatically averages it all out? lol

XIV Dad of Light would have never happened in Shadowbringers - Endwalker. They'd queue in a dungeon and go "o/" then never see each other again.

[Raven2014]

If damage is scaled properly the player with a level 15 kit can indeed have the same DPS as the 90 player with his kit.

Arbitrary say "if it done properly" is easy, anyone can say that. Give me an example, be specific, how can it be achieved in a way that makes sense.

Here is a counter example:

Lvl25 lancer: True->Vopal->Full thrust. A 3 button rotation.

Lvl90 DRG: The base GCD rotation have a total of 7 abilities, 8 if count the Raiden proc.


So, if we just look at GCD alone, those 8 abilites on the DRG have to be neft to a point where it will have the same potency as the full thrust rotation. Then, it get worse when you bring in the oGCD, which is like what, 7 or 8 more abilities?


Now I haven't done the exact math. But to make 16 abilities yielding the same output as 3 abilities ... each of the former have to weaker not by two, not by three, and probably will more than by 4 times. Does it make sense for Raiden thrust to be like ... 1/5 the power of True Thurst? Does it make sense for StarDiver to hit significant less than a simple full thurst? And if a lvl90DRG have to use their entire kit to get the same damage as lvl25 rotation, you'll be actively punishing the high level players.


Again, I would like to see at least one example you can give that will make sense both from gameplay logic pov, and also mathematically. Not just arbitrary wishful thinking.

[Amenara]

...

I am pretty sure this is the reason why WoW figured out how to make mob levels adjust to your own level instead of having your damage sync to the dungeon's level. It's obviously not perfect and not without its own problems but it sorta fixes the issues with losing every ability when you are randomly queued into Satasha or something. Honestly I think the only way to "help" with the problem is to have more complete kits at lower levels vs trying to balance having your entire kit at level cap sync down to lower levels.

[Deveryn]

I am pretty sure this is the reason why WoW figured out how to make mob levels adjust to your own level instead of having your damage sync to the dungeon's level. It's obviously not perfect and not without its own problems but it sorta fixes the issues with losing every ability when you are randomly queued into Satasha or something. Honestly I think the only way to "help" with the problem is to have more complete kits at lower levels vs trying to balance having your entire kit at level cap sync down to lower levels.

Is it really that widespread of a "problem" though? We've been doing this for how many years now? It's not perfect, but it's not really hurting the ability to complete the content. I get wanting to have more of your kit. I miss bits and pieces at times, but I don't think it's worth sacrificing time that could be spent on other legit improvements.

[Amenara]

Is it really that widespread of a "problem" though? We've been doing this for how many years now? It's not perfect, but it's not really hurting the ability to complete the content. I get wanting to have more of your kit. I miss bits and pieces at times, but I don't think it's worth sacrificing time that could be spent on other legit improvements.

Like I said, my problem is with how little of your kit you get from 1-60. I think the amount of effort to gameplay improvement would be well spent in redoing the level you earn skills, maybe in a weaker form that you can upgrade through traits. Balancing level 90 kits to Satasha isn't something I really care about as it only affects the level 90 player for the 10-15 minutes it takes to do the dungeon, but if you can make it so the level 15 player has a much better experience for the hours spent leveling at lower levels I think that is a worthwhile effort.

[Deveryn]

Like I said, my problem is with how little of your kit you get from 1-60. I think the amount of effort to gameplay improvement would be well spent in redoing the level you earn skills, maybe in a weaker form that you can upgrade through traits. Balancing level 90 kits to Satasha isn't something I really care about as it only affects the level 90 player for the 10-15 minutes it takes to do the dungeon, but if you can make it so the level 15 player has a much better experience for the hours spent leveling at lower levels I think that is a worthwhile effort.

They don't even spend that much time in there. Between MSQ and how much XP those dungeons give (2 or 3 levels), players only need to go there once and they move on to the next.

[Stanelis]

The game has certainly added much since 2.0 launched, but to say that current content is totally different from ARR is a bit misleading.

I mean, the game was totally different in ARR because :

1/ Classes still weren't as homogeneized as they are today and still had utility abilities. Like PLD was the defensive tank, WAR was the offensive tank. BLM had bind, SMN had gravity and SMN/BRD even had to kite adds in coil 7 floor.
2/ Encounters in 4 and 8 men raids were designed differently. They weren't just about dodging aoe in every shape and form. Some encounters had actual tanking to be done (like moving the boss in specific spots, taking quickly aggro on adds, etc). Copperbell mines is a very good exemple with the slime but a lot of bosses had actual strategies and it wasn't that uncommon to wipe even in 4 men dungeons (remember the killer wall of Amdapor or the last boss that had oneshot mechanics ? Remember Siren ?). Some 8 men raid encounters wer even about making use of interrupts on the boss. Since when had we to make use of an interrupt in raid in FFXIV ?

From heavensward and onward, all the classes and the PVE has been homogeneized in FFXIV and bosses became only a matter of dodging AOE/soaking/etc while meeting DPS checks. SE gave up on trying to come up with varied encounters on a gameplay standpoint as they did in ARR.

The devs didn't add. They streamlined. That s a totally different take.

Arbitrary say "if it done properly" is easy, anyone can say that. Give me an example, be specific, how can it be achieved in a way that makes sense.

Just as they do it today with stat scaling : put a DPS cap for players that are above the level of the dungeon. Its not rocket science.

Lvl25 lancer: True->Vopal->Full thrust. A 3 button rotation.

Lvl90 DRG: The base GCD rotation have a total of 7 abilities, 8 if count the Raiden proc.


So, if we just look at GCD alone, those 8 abilites on the DRG have to be neft to a point where it will have the same potency as the full thrust rotation. Then, it get worse when you bring in the oGCD, which is like what, 7 or 8 more abilities?


Now I haven't done the exact math. But to make 16 abilities yielding the same output as 3 abilities ...

My dude it doesn't matter if you have 35 abilities rotation or only 3 that you use in cycle..... all that matter is the average DPS per ability or the DPS per GCD/ogcd. They can simply adjust the potencies or more easily put a DPS cap per DPS per dungeon when running it synced...... Also one of the solution is in your message " if we just look at GCD alone, those 8 abilites on the DRG have to be neft to a point where it will have the same potency as the full thrust rotation. ". Here, you can even figure out a solution