FFXIV's Future

[Missus]

Ideas for FFXIV's Future:

1. Increase the marketing targeted towards cozy gamers.
2. Improve the housing item-placement system, at least for console.
3. Simplify the sign-up/purchasing process of the game.
4. Add more vanity rewards for difficult content to keep the angy hardcore players busy.
5. Address issues with PvP(?) I don't know the details, but it seems like a constant dumpster fire over there.
6. Hire some active GMs. Maybe hire a few more forum moderators too.

I really love FFXIV after the pain and suffering I endured in other games, but I can see why it feels stale for the long-term players. There is nowhere better to jump ship to (that I'm aware of) so they are left no choice but to complain on the forums.

[DiaDeem]

Riot’s MMO

If Riot has been paying attention, we'll probably see a lot of XIV's DNA on that game. I don't trust Riot too much personally.

[MonsutaMan]

FFXIV is not the current market leader. I think regardless of this, just because x game does something worse than FFXIV does not mean FFXIV does it perfectly. Gearing has been a wide discussion for a long time and the counterargument is always "Well WoW does it way worse". So? FFXIV's system is still also bad.

While there are a lot of bad suggestions on the forums, there are also a lot of good ones .

XIV gets alot of accolades thrown around........ Kind of common place to say stuff like "XIV is the highest grossing game of all-time!"

https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy

XIV hoovers around XI numbers, grossing more.

On the topic, I think XIV won't end..............Akin to how XI has not ended....yet.......

Imo, I think they will see the XI IP is still profitable & expand upon the title........be it a remake or adding to the OG game. Maybe they will realize the MMOs are what is keeping the company afloat & ditch the pet projects like Stranger of Paradise, Avengers & that Fortnite knock off.

Basically, XIV will be fine....I would be more worried about 16 if you are a FF fan........

[Zaniel]

Now, these forums are not unique in its negativity. Pretty much all games, specifically MMOs, have pretty awful forum communities. The only other MMO I've played that had a decent forum community was LOTRO, but that was a long time ago. I have no idea how their forums might be today. (That truly was a great community, though. From top to bottom.)

And here's the point. I read a lot on here about how the game is too easy, how SE isn't really trying anymore, etc. Yet on the forums and subreddits of other MMOs, such as WoW and ESO, they consistently praise FFXIV's accessibility. They do complain about features being locked behind the story, but they give the game high marks for not being raid-focused and for having dungeons that are relatively easy to complete.

...

I am curious, though. Based on everything I've read here, what do you really want to see in FFXIV's future? Keeping in mind that everything they've done up to this point has REVERSED the trend that FFXI followed in terms of hitting a downward slope after the fourth expansion. Shadowbringers brought more people to the game.

But what would you change that would honestly help the game overall? Not just for a subset of hardcore players?

These forums are an utterly microscopic portion of the community, way less (as a proportion) than you'd see on other MMO forums. Plus the "usual suspects" and trolls on this forum aren't particularly bad, even the worst Negative Nancys here (as annoying as they may be) are angels compared to the bottom tier of humanity you'll find in other game forums.

The nonsense level here is pretty high though, say for example the WoW forums are populated by some absolute dregs and random lunatics but a lot of the proper criticism there is based in serious problems with the game that the broad population agree with (ex daily grinds being a second job, the abject disaster of certain storylines and writing). The complainers here are generally more well mannered and write "some" actual feedback but some of the complaints are just utterly detached from objective reality. So its sorta pick your forum, pick your poison.

The only large scale thing I would like to see in F14 is a bit more of a mid-core game, ie open world and dungeon content somewhere a bit short of Extremes that you can do regularly without face rolling but without having to "gird your loins". VC dungeons were their first stab at this and I think it didn't quite hit the mark (first parts too easy, 2nd parts too hard). They should continue to experiment with this mode and fine tune it. Everything else I'm pretty damn happy with.

[VelKallor]

Blue Protocol for the weebs

I find myself wondering just what that word is supposed to mean. Playing a Japanese game makes you a "weeb"?

Seriously..?

[Rufalus]

This forum is usually the same 10 - 20 people complaining about how the game isn't exactly what they want. There's a few good arguments that pop up here and there, but for the most part, these forum should not be taken seriously, and the devs know that.

Alright we're a few people. I would be interested to see the results of a survey sent to 1m+ people. Let's break this game down into its parts and rate each one on a scale from strongly dislike to strongly like. The results may differ from participation data because we all participate in stuff we don't like to grab the rewards. Let us rank things we'd like to see more or less of. I've never been surveyed, ever, so I leave my feedback on the forums sometimes and I like to think that it matters at least a little bit.

[KageTokage]

I'm ok with the classes and flow of battle. To me the problem is the whole framework around it. The first expansion was exciting because it had some new concepts and we didn't know at the time that every expansion thereafter would be a copy.

Here's some examples of repetition to an absolute fault. Before you even play an expansion, you know for sure it has (1) six field zones and two big boss fates with tokens, (2) a dungeon every 2 levels with the same corridor design, (3) three trials with two extremes at launch, one gives accessories the other gives weapons, (4) hundreds of sidequests that mostly give nothing, some give HQ crafted leveling gear in-between the levels of dungeon gear.

A lot more examples could be made but you get the point of how they push new content through an old cookie-cutter template to an extreme degree. That decade of déjà vu was a big chunk of my life. I would hope that, some day, they try anything new. Offer up surprises to all players regardless of how long we've been around. Not just narrative surprises but actual game design choices.

The repetitive framework is something that's consistently bugged me because when they're having to shape the stories around that framework it can start to rob it of unpredictability by extension.

IE, literally no one is going to take the fake "raid complete" message at the end of O11 seriously because you know there has to be four fights per tier in the "modern" raid structure introduced in HW.

[DiaDeem]

I would be interested to see the results of a survey sent to 1m+ people.

Definitely. I posted a few weeks ago that they should send surveys via e.mail or something, so that they can get an actual consensus about how players feel about some stuff. The forums (and even Reddit) aren't the best place for channeled feedback.

[Picker]

I wanna hear an announcement for 17, this game is winding down

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I don’t know about the future but SE will have to innovate and offer interesting content soon with all the new MMOs on the rise like AoC, Pax Dei, Riot’s MMO, Throne & Liberty, Blue Protocol for the weebs, Archeage 2, Palia and many others…

Do any of those games even actually "Innovate" or are they just exciting because "new toy"?

Its not shocking that something new will turn heads, but the real test and question is, will it last long enough to build a large enough community and sustain itself?