I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[Shougun]

I look through the forums and everyday we got players here with some interesting and cool ideas (and not so great ideas) that could help break this game out of its rut.

However

I'm not sure if Naoki Yoshida understands what he is doing to his own MMORPG:

1. The Jobs feeling meaningless, more like copy and paste that reach the same conclusion which some forum goers have stated many times over. I think FFXI was the complete opposite of this if I'm not mistaken?

2. Lack of Custom Building for your jobs, I think the Job Diversity would help if there were passive abilities built into these jobs and other particular substats like elemental alignments (meaning a new materia system that have elemental sockets, so one could make a Fire Warrior or Ice Dark Knight). These are just a few ideas, I'm sure you guys got better ideas than I do (also I'm aware that elemental materia was a thing back then, but I think it can still work in a different way). Also have monsters be weak against certain classes like Avians weak against MCH/BRD.

3. Most of the normal monsters feel really meaningless, and their mechanics don't matter much. Maybe given its a relic from a time when MMOs were in a very different gameplay environment, but at this point most players have evolved, and so should the monsters in every corner of this game. Speeding up the mechanics would fix this problem pretty quick and might actually make dungeon monsters feel a lot more fun rather than something to be dreaded. I know Yoshi thinks these dungeons are fun, but in reality most people find it a chore because none of the monsters pose any real threat in most 4-man and alliance raids. I was so happy that one day when Thunder God Cid proved to be a real challenge and then he got nerfed (I just don't understand why that needed to happen).

4. There was some personal debate between me and a dear old friend who loved crafting if Crafting actually devolved after Stormblood (he left FFXIV when Crafting got very nerfed), I want your all opinions on this as I was not around during his ARR-HW era.

5. The Blue Gear every time its introduced also feels meaningless and its a waste of developer time to design all these clothes and gear only for it to be inferior to the Green Crafted Gear. It should be the other way around since Blue Gear seems like it was suppose to be a bit more special considering all the effort the Devs go into designing these things. Green Gear should be the first step, and then the Blue Gear being the 2nd step, and then finally Purple Gear.

6. Lack of Side Quest Diversity, now don't get me wrong the stories contained are interesting at times, but the gameplay involved in these is incredibly minimal and not very engaging and this seems like its been this way since ARR. I'm kind of surprised it kept continuing like this for so long. There were a few moments though that broke the trend, but then it goes back to what it always did.

7. FATEs, I don't think I need to say much how some people feel about FATEs for years on these forums. I think Bozja FATEs and Duels was incredibly a good step in the right direction and I wished Endwalker had followed through on this, but instead it was more of a copy and paste situation again. This ties in with number 3 above, I feel if the monsters were re-worked then FATEs could be a bit more fun to do and also FATEs need more diversity in terms of gameplay rather than always being the same situation, and these different situations are very few in each expansion.

8) The Remaining Grand Company Ranks that we will never get, I don't know where they're taking this, but it feels like a dead project that maybe someone on their development team gave up on. I think next time if someone gets a chance to ask Yoshi a question about this please do.

9) Empty Zones from a lore perspective, a lot of the landscape feels like it could tell a story, but in the end its just names slapped here and there all over a zone. The Lochs from Stormblood come to mind as it seems like half its zone areas on the map never ended up being used for anything. There is definitely a lack of local lore that maybe players could read or find out about, but instead its just a lot of empty void. Was Yoshi trying to make us come to our conclusions for some of these things?

10) PVP gradually losing its maps, Dead PVP Modes, and lack of PVP variety:

PVP should be one of those things that should be a good filler between major expansions, but all there is left is Frontlines and Crystal Conflict (before that being the Feast). The problem is Rival Wings which in my opinion offered more diverse gameplay, but instead players like myself is getting pigeon holed to play Frontlines for eternity and honestly don't find this fun at all after a certain point because that is all players want to do, I feel the Developers unintentionally dumbed down PVP because of how simple Frontlines is (and thus people want a quicker reward and also because of the achievements, mounts, and gear being more regulated to FL and while RW only has two mounts and a few achievements).

Now long time ago there were other Front Line Maps with different objectives, but these got removed for various reasons. To me this seem like a bad move when players could use more variety, and not having it taken away later. Same case for that one Rival Wings map that has been locked for years all because there was a balancing issue they never fixed for so long. Also removing the Feast Maps doesn't make much sense, why delete variety?

Finally PVP should not be boiling down to CC, FL, and RW. They had years to expand on this, and there is a lot of fun PVP modes they had not tried yet that other MMORPGs do. Better yet make something that is very original that no other MMORPG has yet to try (to our knowledge).
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There is so many things Yoshi's team has excelled at with this MMORPG, but there is just as many glaring weak spots that either he is intentionally ignoring and is aware of or he is not aware of how some players actually feel about this game, the curation of questions seems to be a bit of a major problem from what I understand.

1. Having an inclusive environment and diverse jobs is pretty hard, particularly for end game- if you maintained the current challenge then diverse jobs for msq and other content would be pretty dang neat... but a disaster for savage or ultimate without some new expectations (all players must multi-job) or systems. One system for example is a technical but balanced kit is created for savage and ultimate based off the free range chicken variant that is MSQ (similar to PvP, this adds a lot of dev concerns but could certainly allow an unbalanced but characteristically unique theme'd gameplay for MSQ and a very well tuned experience for savage/ultimate, that might be purposefully requiring 'technical execution' as well). But like with FFXI, with high job diversity, you'd not get an invite in some content if you only had one job (or highly not sought after, "friends including you" doesn't count).

Personally would like more diversity, just that there WILL be consequences and if it's multi-job then you will hear from people asking for less diversity whether they know it or not lol (because they want their job to be valid equally as all other jobs in all the same content).

2. Similar to above, but in this sense always has been the case- 1.0 removed unique effects unfortunately, also would prefer legendary like affix system over just adding elements.. personally. Like socketing glistening scales to dragoon boots that causes each jump to give you an x% max hp boost and while the shield is active you move y% faster.

3 Always been the case, if we're talking overworld. And.. almost always otherwise. Unique jobs with challenging normal content will absolutely produce job gates though. If we keep the similar 'ease' that we have now you might get away with unique jobs, but if you made stuff harder AND made jobs more unique-- say hello to a bias you have not seen before in FFXIV.

4. Certainly far more approachable.. for me it was fine but I could see someone who liked it more complicated being annoyed, particularly as now there are more people due them being both easier to play but also easier than ever to level. Making gil from crafters less like massive waterfalls of wealth and now you need to pay attention to the markets and work with smaller margins. I imagine a lot of negative feelings is losing that throne due to the barrier and the much tighter margins..

5. I've wondered if horizontal-lite might help, though I wouldn't suggest doing the last bit with green gear... people upset about crafting changes will be impacted further as that was one of the last bastions.

6. I would be okay with half or even a quarter for very high reward highly crafted experiences. I also think even if they didn't do that they should add Armory EXP bonus to the system and at level cap make them reward tomes, many really don't feel like the time it takes to complete them... even when some of them are quite funny or informative.

7. GW2 has some fun examples of 'FATE' like content, I'd love to see SE view that game again. Bringing the best FATE ideas out of the Eureka like contents would be nice. FATEs also, imo, need to be more dynamic as they're either in season and melted or out of season and usually painfully slow.

8. Tying squadrons to content such that it is alive again might be nice. One idea was to create a battle board that you helped the GC establish outposts, trading lines, etc, with your Squadron-- might go into a previous dungeon with some modified layout, perhaps Dynasty Warrior like vibes, as you clear out and make steps to do things like harvest magically imbued water from a deep dungeon, or create a forge in a lava cave, needing to protect them on occasion.

9. Moving post launch exploratory content onto the world map might be nice way to take advantage of that, although to be honest a lot of the quests you mentioned do have lore about those areas.. :P

10. If you allow people to queue for too many different types it'll make the queue long and therefore PvP not worth doing. I do hope they could address achievements that get bungled by this though. Also, imo, PvP should be able to produce gear with stats - it might be like crafting gear where you can upgrade it with tomes, but having it be a tangible progression route I feel would help.

Only it wasnt future proofed, that endless amount of players are gone, you are alone out there more often than not, the BIGGEST problem with exploratory zones are their short shelf life...which is, I am surmising, why they didnt go that route this time.

Blue Mage, Squadron, further Epic Epic Echo.. I feel they could bring them back into accessibility. Blue Mage would be interesting due to some of them having elemental implications and also a place to learn spells- and just more content to use Blue Mage with which is good for its own reasons (similarly I believe DD should be added), but I'd take any solution that allows the content to be addressed reasonably (without having to source a discord party or wait a very long time in PF lol).

[VelKallor]

Squadron

Duty support is, I think, the next evolution of Squadrons, which may explain why they havent gone into any Squadron improvements...Ill also add, having used both, I find the AI for duty support a HUGE upgrade. I was..pleasantly..surprised, when I trialled Duty Support in a low level instance. Absolutely better across the board.

[Shougun]

Duty support is, I think, the next evolution of Squadrons, which may explain why they havent gone into any Squadron improvements...Ill also add, having used both, I find the AI for duty support a HUGE upgrade. I was..pleasantly..surprised, when I trialled Duty Support in a low level instance. Absolutely better across the board.

Strong disagree with that last statement, but would agree that trust system (duty) is far smarter as squadron will dodge for no one lol.

Properly leveled squadron comparatively wipes the floor with the trust system's face and some players to be honest. It's exceptionally powerful and made leveling them feel very worthwhile. Meanwhile when I use trust and they dynamically do worse because I'm doing better I just wistfully remember how awesome my squadron was. Leveled multiple jobs with Squadrons as it was actually one of the better exp rates available.

But yeah the trust ai is certainly less dodo, I micro manage the squad for best effect.

[Absurdity]

Strong disagree with that last statement, but would agree that trust system (duty) is far smarter as squadron will dodge for no one lol.

Properly leveled squadron comparatively wipes the floor with the trust system's face and some players to be honest. It's exceptionally powerful and made leveling them feel very worthwhile. Meanwhile when I use trust and they dynamically do worse because I'm doing better I just wistfully remember how awesome my squadron was. Leveled multiple jobs with Squadrons as it was actually one of the better exp rates available.

But yeah the trust ai is certainly less dodo, I micro manage the squad for best effect.

Yeah I don't really consider the Trust system to be an improvement of Squadrons, it's simply a different system.

Squadrons were a bunch of nobodies that you picked yourself, trained them up, customized them and then used them to breeze through dungeons as a reward for your work.

Trusts are basically "story mode" for dungeons. They're NPCs relevant to whatever story you're currently doing and designed to take the scenic route through the dungeon, with some dialogue about whatever is currently happening around you. But your personal input on your team of trusts is pretty much nonexistent.


An improvement to the Squadron system would've simply made their ai not dumb as a brick and keep everything else the same, while adding more dungeons to use them in.

[aveyond-dreams]

The fact that they weren't future proofed is entirely on the shoulders of Yoshi-P. If he was actually in tune with feedback from the community and/or the game had a public test server then such issues would be identified well in advance and the game could be tweaked accordingly.

I'm pretty sure the reason we didn't get an exploration zone in Endwalker is entirely related to the fact that Yoshi-P is distracted by FFXVI. It remains to be seen how things fare once FFXVI finally releases. Though if Yoshi-P knew that 6.0 was going to coincide with a lull in content development then that just makes his decision to rush to the finale all the more bizarre.

Definitely starting to look like the whole "10 more years of FFXIV" was less an ambition of his and more of a demand passed down from the higher ranks in order to keep SE afloat. But now that nearly everything good or interesting about this game has been done away with, how on earth is anyone supposed to possibly deliver on 10 more years in a world left in the state Endwalker left it in and with content that only seems to get worse with time?

[VelKallor]

Definitely starting to look like the whole "10 more years of FFXIV" was less an ambition of his and more of a demand passed down from the higher ranks in order to keep SE afloat. But now that nearly everything good or interesting about this game has been done away with, how on earth is anyone supposed to possibly deliver on 10 more years in a world left in the state Endwalker left it in and with content that only seems to get worse with time?

Stick around and find out? How do you know what they have set up..whats in store? You dont and neither do I....except I have the patience to wait and see.

[Jeeqbit]

Duty support is, I think, the next evolution of Squadrons, which may explain why they havent gone into any Squadron improvements...Ill also add, having used both, I find the AI for duty support a HUGE upgrade. I was..pleasantly..surprised, when I trialled Duty Support in a low level instance. Absolutely better across the board.

Yoshi-P once said the whole point of Squadrons is that you're meant to command them, whereas Duty Support act independently because they are not under your command. He said more recently that he was thinking of merging them, but it's never been a high priority to do squadrons so it will probably be like when they made diving in Upper la Noscea.

[Striker44]

Stick around and find out? How do you know what they have set up..whats in store? You dont and neither do I....except I have the patience to wait and see.

He's also (as usual) acting as if his own personal opinion is somehow objective fact (it isn't). For me, EW has "left the game" in a state that I'm very much enjoying, and I'm finding the new ideas for content like Variant Dungeons along with the story itself to only be getting better with time. That's likewise just my opinion, but Aveyond seems to be in denial that people other than himself exist.

[Sebazy]

As much as I'd like to say no MMO ever truly dies, there was one worthwhile one that actually did the unthinkable and managed to die.
Rest in peace, Warhammer Online.

A little late on the response, but Warhammer Online actually has a community run server that's been pretty successful over the years. Look up Return of Reckoning videos on YouTube if you're curious++

[MonteCristo]

Definitely starting to look like the whole "10 more years of FFXIV" was less an ambition of his and more of a demand passed down from the higher ranks in order to keep SE afloat. But now that nearly everything good or interesting about this game has been done away with, how on earth is anyone supposed to possibly deliver on 10 more years in a world left in the state Endwalker left it in and with content that only seems to get worse with time?

7.0 would have to be monumental/game changing to achieve 10 more years + ff16 would have to flop