This game is on a terrible state right now.

[Kaurhz]

Of course HoH was a copy-paste job. It wasn't good. The contention isn't whether there have always been copy-pastes. It's that the copy-pasting has gotten worse in ShB/EW. This applies to every piece of content. Dungeons have become copy-paste since mid-HW. ARR dungeons were unironically the best dungeons this game has to offer. Simple things like Dzemael's Crystal Veil mechanic adds a lot of variety to ARR dungeons. And in comparison HW and SB dungeons were all pretty stale. So no, no one is saying copy-pasting never existed. It's that it has gotten progressively worse. Same deal for jobs. HW introduced Whistle which you said added a degree of sophistication. It is obviously not some otherworldly mechanic but it's certainly more sophisticated than ShB/EW crafting. So again, the problem is that it has gotten worse instead of being built upon. Not that it was always some pinnacle of gameplay. And finally, with alliance raids, I certainly experienced way, way more wipes in Mhach and Dun Scaith and Ivalice than I ever did in ShB/EW. So even if it's easier for you the fact that things can go wrong makes it far more exciting for me.

Eureka started off poorly. But there is a place for open-world exploratory content. It builds in-game community, something that basically is relegated to Discord now. There just needs to be something more than FATEs.

Whistle was a degree of sophistication, it was a degree of sophistication which they in many cases failed to actually capitalize on or provide a good enough set of recipes to use. It was used for gear leapfrogging, however, unfortunately, the actual uses of this would not really become apparent until later parts of Stormblood, which was still several years after the release, and even this was fairly nuanced in and of itself since you also had the first universal set of scrip gear in the form of Handking.

Further, I wouldn't necessarily view the overall system for crafting as complex just because it included Whistle, if you were to look at the fundamental system of crafting and arguably in general it was, for the most part lacking complexity and engagement. E.g., you weren't manually crafting because the system was complex, you were manually crafting simply because the underlying touches were Hasty Touch, and something that you wanted to eliminate as much as possible by converting excess CP (Be it via Melds or ToT) into Basic Touch or Precise Touch. The actual logic you had composing of macros were no more, nor less sophisticated than the manual crafting that 99% of people were doing.

This was entirely the problem, where there was nuance with crafting there were absolutely only a few niche use cases for it, and unless it's something that could be much more widely adopted was just a wasted system. It was also a horrifically unbalanced system wherein if you learned even the fundamentals - You could pull very inane stunts such as the one below, this is something that never, ever should have been doable, as fun as it was. Contrary to my post in that thread, I do think Whistle would have been more harm than good if introduced with current experts - It's a system that downright needed redesigning more than anything.


Job complexity aside or lack thereof, the player base is largely just better now than it was. To put it into perspective, do you think people would be wiping in droves like they once were had Weeping City and Dun Scaith been introduced now instead of in HW? The only wipes I've experienced have been from some unfortunate sprout getting the meteor markers in Ozma and thus wiping their party. otherwise it goes down just as all the others do.

I'm going to half-agree with you here in that there is a place for exploratory content, but it is a place that should exist natively in the general overworld zones. e.g., Ahm Araeng, Tempest. The fact that players would need to do this content and that it is not experienced naturally in the standard zones is a big problem. It shouldn't exist as side-content it should be naturally embedded in every single zone in the game.

Edit: That I got that tangent off my mind; I think the copy and pasting job has been in varying amounts and to a varying degree. For the most part with many games, you'll inevitably find yourself going down this route. e.g., SE didn't think people liked deep dungeon, so didn't inc. in ShB - People complained, so they reintroduced it. The same would apply to exploratory content sooner than later when they've exhausted their creativity with it. E.g., Logos were just copied and pasted into Essences. BA was just copied and pasted from EM in that function, I would like to say (to some degree), just as CLL and Zadnor were copied and pasted features from BA.

Further replies I'll likely attach to this post or subsequent ones provided the discussion is worthwhile (Probably nearing cap on my post-count for the day)

[Incinerator2]

Whistle was a degree of sophistication...

Yes, Whistle would be harmful with current experts because it starts with a MaMa spam and goes on forever, with or without delineations. But why is the solution to just REMOVE the system? Why not balance it and add to it to make it better? The core gameplay of Whistle if you forgo the infinite loop to me is to simultaneously balance multiple stacks - Comfort Zone, Manipulation II, the Whistle stacks, SH stacks, Ingen stacks, Innovation stacks, the IQ stacks, etc. all at once, and the decision on what to do is not always clear at all. This is also subject to RNG. If they expanded on this and made it interact with expert recipe conditions they could've made a far more interesting system. Having even 100 or 200 steps is honestly not a big deal if the rewards were commensurate. The key issue they would need to solve is to make it so that you can't go on infinitely long or that it is not a good idea to do so (for example by scaling rewards inversely with the number of steps taken).

People shit on games like Destiny II for removing content, but FF14 has removed so many promising systems over the years.

do you think people would be wiping in droves like they once were had Weeping City and Dun Scaith been introduced now instead of in HW?

Of course not, but shouldn't the gameplay scale with the average skill level of the playerbase? Even if it's not a 1:1 scaling so that new player can catch up? As of right now I don't even think it's a flatline, I seriously think alliance raid and dungeon difficulty have gone down while average skill level has gone up, which makes literally no sense.

but it is a place that should exist natively in the general overworld zones

Yes, though I doubt they have the tech.

copy and pasting job has been in varying amounts and to a varying degree

You obviously can't prevent every sort of copy-pasting (every innovation is a combination of previous innovations after all), but PotD -> HoH -> Orthos is seriously beyond the pale. The key hope is that they copy-paste less, not that they never make a dungeon again since it'll have trash and bosses like previous dungeons.

[Kaurhz]

Yes, Whistle would be harmful with current experts because it starts with a MaMa spam and goes on forever, with or without delineations. But why is the solution to just REMOVE the system? Why not balance it and add to it to make it better? The core gameplay of Whistle if you forgo the infinite loop to me is to simultaneously balance multiple stacks - Comfort Zone, Manipulation II, the Whistle stacks, SH stacks, Ingen stacks, Innovation stacks, the IQ stacks, etc. all at once, and the decision on what to do is not always clear at all. This is also subject to RNG. If they expanded on this and made it interact with expert recipe conditions they could've made a far more interesting system. Having even 100 or 200 steps is honestly not a big deal if the rewards were commensurate. The key issue they would need to solve is to make it so that you can't go on infinitely long or that it is not a good idea to do so (for example by scaling rewards inversely with the number of steps taken).

People shit on games like Destiny II for removing content, but FF14 has removed so many promising systems over the years.

It would be difficult to balance if my full recollection is to be there. On one hand of the coin, you could limit the usage per craft. But in doing this you would then make it difficult to balance around what changes you would need to make with experts, e.g., turning it into net positive buffs to net loss, e.g., instead of Pliant decreasing CP cost, you would increase the CP cost of the subsequent action. Honestly, with enough time on the system, it just bleeds together where you do steps according to a pretty rigid ruleset to dictate how you handle the crafts. After 2-3 attempts it's not immediately obvious, but if you were doing it on the scale of Resplendent Tools or Hand of Creation then it does very quickly come together.

I suppose it would add a degree of self-satisfaction to learning it, but when you got to a certain point the end result was guaranteed regardless of how much you necked your stats, which does also remove some of that thrill with doing experts in the first place. I would be curious to see how it would hold in actuality, but I still think it would largely trivialize the recipes. Trained Hand under innovation and ingenuity back when that was a thing was absolutely busted.

I can't speak much on it, but I would say given the choice I would have stuck with the removal, but delayed it until after the first release of Experts, and then removed it for either redesigning or reworking to a system designed to work exclusively with experts, e.g., give expert recipes their own little toolkit. Rather than just attempt-limit the recipes. Even with infinite attempts, someone skilled enough could do them far more efficiently than you might do with traditional experts.

I have already gone on to say that systems ideally shouldn't be removed until they have been tested. But then I'm also the same person that thinks Guildhests have so much potential.

Of course not, but shouldn't the gameplay scale with the average skill level of the playerbase? Even if it's not a 1:1 scaling so that new player can catch up? As of right now I don't even think it's a flatline, I seriously think alliance raid and dungeon difficulty have gone down while average skill level has gone up, which makes literally no sense.

Uh, yes and no. They should still encourage people to improve, but that is always difficult as forcing people into those situations does not always yield the best result e.g., you cannot force someone to learn if they do not want to – You can only encourage it.

I’m going to bring a little bit of personal experience here now, but when I’ve had difficulty, e.g., Sophia NM, or Shinryu NM on patch, my experiences with them were, someone got it for roulette, literally sat down in the instance and proceeded to hold everyone else hostage, requesting that they were kicked to avoid the penalty. This occurred after 2 wipes. Granted, I think there's a miniscule number of people that would go this far. However, I would say there’s a good number of people in the community that whilst they may want something engaging don’t necessarily want the territory that comes with it e.g., people not being good enough for said content and more wipes, which is an inevitability when you introduce harder or more sophisticated content to the general community.

You obviously can't prevent every sort of copy-pasting (every innovation is a combination of previous innovations after all), but PotD -> HoH -> Orthos is seriously beyond the pale. The key hope is that they copy-paste less, not that they never make a dungeon again since it'll have trash and bosses like previous dungeons.

Honestly, this is precisely the reason why beyond a certain point, areas of content should be dropped for the time being, e.g., exploratory zone/relic content. Again, I personally don’t think they’re ready to do the innovation on it as such should try something new. Until they can. If I were being frank, I wouldn’t want to have seen another Deep Dungeon until they could transform it into actual dungeoneering.

Preventing it is impossible, but in the case of a deep dungeon they literally ran into it unmitigated, and the community practically begged for it. I suppose what I’m trying to convey here is… The question shouldn’t be “Why haven’t we got xyz this expansion” (e.g., Deep Dungeons), because this is precisely why we got Orthos.

[Incinerator2]

I suppose it would add a degree of self-satisfaction to learning it, but when you got to a certain point the end result was guaranteed regardless of how much you necked your stats, which does also remove some of that thrill with doing experts in the first place. I would be curious to see how it would hold in actuality, but I still think it would largely trivialize the recipes. Trained Hand under innovation and ingenuity back when that was a thing was absolutely busted.

Sure, but they could easily just double the quality requirement or some such to make it not trivialized, and further add optimization room by incentivizing low step crafts so that most players won't ever reach a place of perfection. That self-satisfaction is the most important part of gameplay. It's the same satisfaction when people master Dark Souls and defeat endgame bosses with ease, when just a month ago they were struggling with the a regular mob. Obviously everything will be eventually solved, but right now the time to solution is literally negative hours as rotations are figured out before patch is even live.

However, I would say there’s a good number of people in the community that whilst they may want something engaging don’t necessarily want the territory that comes with it[/B]

I unironically think the drama that ensues is good for the game. It's content and it makes the game memorable. And interpersonal conflict is also just part of life. It's not something to shy away from. I like Eureka in part because of the drama. It's also super low-stakes drama, so really it's just like watching reality TV. FF14 now is way too sanitized and dull. I don't mean drama like transphobia or stalking someone though. I just meant the drama of AFK leechers vs. spawners with people quarreling in chat. The game really felt rowdy and alive back then.

I know most players today wouldn't want that though, but I also enjoyed looking at the meltdown that occurs when people wipe again and again to Ozma. It was memorable. And these negative events make actual clears and smooth runs feel even sweeter.

I suppose what I’m trying to convey here is… The question shouldn’t be “Why haven’t we got xyz this expansion” (e.g., Deep Dungeons), because this is precisely why we got Orthos.[/B]

Sure. And now people are asking for exploratory content too. So as a community we need to be clear that we want exploratory content that is better and contains new gameplay, not just a pure copypaste.

IMO, the game's biggest downfall (and SE's, by extension), is that they leave content to die. I think Resistance relics wouldn't be so badly designed had they planned to come back to the content; they don't, so here we (and Eureka relics too) are, never to return. Relics honestly just seemed design to fail, no matter what you do, because essentially the grind is gated behind content you need outside help for (Bozja, SB), the grind is tedious to point of nauseous (ARR, HW) or we're here at EW, where the steps so far is just.. play the game and you get the relic, so the sense of reward isn't really there. I actually think I would like SB/Bozja relics, but if and ONLY if, SE would actually give it the TLC it deserves.

I think they have potential, but I don't think SE can utilize the potential or have the desire to, so here we are. It's really sad because I think SE CAN make a good relic grind, but have just kinda thrown in the towel at this point.. at least IMO.

We didn't even get a proper ending to the Bozjan storyline smh SE

It feels like it all amounts to synthetic difficulty in order to counterbalance the inability to be mechanically creative. Gods, even Eureka orthos everything is literally 1hit KO. Stop this. It's dumb. I'm tired of this inanity. Sometimes simpler is better, SE.

Yeah, I stopped raiding after DSR for this reason. It's especially bad for healers. I remember in UCOB when you can completely screw up a trio but salvage the party by thinking calmly and triaging the party, ensuring the tank survives the tankbuster, making sure DPS are up in time for the mechanic, conserving mana etc. so that you live to see the next trio, even if you don't necessarily clear the enrage. I haven't played healer in a while but this just doesn't seem to be a thing at all in EW now.

[Kaurhz]

Snip

I'm just going to quick reply to these.

It was always negative hours, really. People had fairly optimized macros before the patch was live, ever since we have had macro crafts become so widely adopted, the only outlier to this was the Ala Mhigan gear that people felt so terrified by that they... Utterly cheesed with Maker's Mark anyway (because a lot happens when you give people 67~ steps of spamming 1 button). Largely in part with HW, my recollection was there was a base macro/rotation which you followed that consumed x CP, and the only differential was that every multiple of 18 CP over this minimum was used on a precise touch where possible, or Basic Touches if needed. E.g., there wasn't really a great level of deviation in MaMa in the overall rotation, just the overage CP you had to allow for swapping Hasty Touch with guaranteed Basic/Precise under Steady Hand II. The same reigned true for those that championed Muscle Memory with Rapid Synthesis. The underlying rotation was to still use Rapid Synthesis to be within 1 step of finishing the craft and then working on quality.

Sure, though again, if you take into account technical limitations and creative limitations/blocking, then it is very easy to bump into the situation for copy and pasting. e.g., In the case of Deep Dungeons, there are only so many things you can do with square rooms before you need to transform the content entirely to actually innovate on it About the only thing I could see worthwhile adding/expanding would be to incorporate something such as logos or lost actions (Which granted, I would say is a missed opportunity). But No piece of content is exempt from this e.g., exploratory content - What would be their next stepping stone? Adding gathering directly to the zones? Sightseeing (that nobody does anyway)?

Not that I disagree with you in sentiment, because I don't. I just think with exploratory they're heading pretty close to very largely being copy and paste. My perception behind this is - You've made it fairly clear for the most part that Bozja/Eureka should just be a vehicle for creative large-scale raids and unique job playstyles which with all due respect that they're tied to this piece of content makes it exceedingly difficult for the content to live outside of the expansion it was released in. - To put it bluntly, this content is utterly hard carried by Discord groups at this point to actually function and have some survivability. I'll be blunt once again, it shouldn't need to be a vehicle to this as it should exist natively within the game.

Was BA fun? Sure, did it make going through Eureka nice? Sure, but would it have been better if it wasn't tied to exploratory completion? Absolutely.