Arthars: FFXIV should take a few hints from Dragonflight

[SophiaDL]

bullshit takes from another bs youtuber, obviously devoured by OP

zepla = bs youtuber
mrhappy = bs youtuber
arthars = bs youtuber

it's almost like yall on this forum are a giant echo chamber and any single person (or streamer person) criticizing the game in any way is immediately the worst person on the planet

yall are actually weird at this point

[Elissar]

it's almost like yall on this forum are a giant echo chamber and any single person (or streamer person) criticizing the game in any way is immediately the worst person on the planet

That's not true. Perhaps the public from twitter do it, here, we have a bunch of weirdos with valid criticizing that share their ideas constantly...and the most annoying trolls in the internet.
In any case, it's always good to understand why said youtubers/streamers are doing what they are doing and WHEN they are doing
i will show some examples

[Sindele]

I think they are advocating g for a return to the old coil gearing method. Random drops and no books. Instantly increases raid longevity!

'til they all quit, anyway!

It's funny, because I really am sympathetic to some of the thinking that says 'yes, the market research and the retention data says one thing, but the slow rot that sets in to every game that triples down on it says something way more complicated'. I do think there's ground in the MMO space to reel back some of the comfort-first "QoL" adaptations that have become utterly ubiquitous. But truly, I think I am willing to die on the hill that says this isn't one of them.

Of course, tons of personal bias in that line of thought because I am so, so, so very over gear treadmilling (and, to nod to Fenyx, this feeling is intrinsically tied to why I spend very little time in Savage and have largely not bothered in years.) It's just that I am not only over how XIV does it - I am deeply over most of WoW's forms of it, too.

Well the current system in WoW he talks about where you do content, get gear upgrade that gear with tokens you get from doing content. When you find a better piece in that slot it will have reduced upgrade costs till it gets to the tier that your previous piece of gear was at. WoW also has dungeon drops upgrade to a higher ilvl depending on what patch the game is on, so the base ilvl drops from like heroic dungeons at level cap will go up as the ilvl goes up with new patches. It lets you pretty easily hit the new baseline to do the new content or at least a good starting point for it. Plus with the last major patch the story quest and quests in their new zone gave you a baseline set of gear as well to start upgrades on and to help you get into content without necessarily needing to go through a massive loot treadmill to do anything.

Obviously the dungeon part gets a little weird as FF14 doesn't really do optional dungeons anymore other than the 2 extra level cap dungeons in the x.0 patch and dungeons unlock as the story moves on in subsequent patches as opposed to WoW just having all of their dungeons scale up to level cap as you level so there is no real way to replicate how they approach that aspect. I like Xenos idea about letting Alliance raids drop equivalent ilvl as savage raids to provide alternate gearing (a basic level of horizontal gearing) or catch up gear and with it coming out 4-5 months after the tier has been going on it doesn't affect savage raiders and the loot is limited at release anyway.

The thing is: how does this really materially differ from XIV's treadmill? The sources differ, of course - dungeon gear automatically scaling and story/zone resetting the baseline are absolutely different approaches, but XIV has roughly-equivalent "advancing baselines" in crafted gear and the tomestone cycle, supported by the off-patch augmentations and Alliance Raids.

But, maybe that's the point. Maybe it's really just a matter of perception - where it feels more rote and formulaic because we've been doing it for years, even though loot systems in modern-day MMOs seem to coalesce back into a similar form near-inevitably. Maybe what's really needed is just that fresh coat of paint and shuffling the deck chairs. I don't see that as really 'changing gearing', but...? Food for thought, I suppose.

I wouldn't take anything from you seriously after you said you were good at " Cleric Stance " without any Savage clears during HW, it honestly sounds like you just hate every form of skill expression.

Oh, please tell me about all the deep skill expression present in gearing up. I would love to hear this one.

Did you think Sindele actually watched the video ? No, she just puts down everyone's ideas and acts mightier than thou but really she cannot come up with anything herself either.

I mean, one way or another, you're totally right here. I don't watch Arthars because I think he's obnoxious and very rarely has anything useful to say that I haven't already heard elsewhere, and I do very much love poking at the holes in ideas. As for why I don't often post my own, there's two main reasons: the first is that I'm familiar with what it takes to turn a glimmer of an idea into a production-ready concept, and that takes a level of work I'm not willing to put into throwaway forum posts; and the second is that my literal job description is to tear at the holes in both designs and implementations. It's a mindset that comes naturally to me, and I don't see much reason to turn it off.

Intriguing that you finally care about someone's posting career being overwhelmingly negative, though.

[Aword3213]

I wouldn't take anything from you seriously after you said you were good at " Cleric Stance " without any Savage clears during HW, it honestly sounds like you just hate every form of skill expression.

Maybe we shouldn’t take anything from you seriously because you don’t have any records of savage clears during HW on this account, either.

[Amenara]

The thing is: how does this really materially differ from XIV's treadmill? The sources differ, of course - dungeon gear automatically scaling and story/zone resetting the baseline are absolutely different approaches, but XIV has roughly-equivalent "advancing baselines" in crafted gear and the tomestone cycle, supported by the off-patch augmentations and Alliance Raids.

But, maybe that's the point. Maybe it's really just a matter of perception - where it feels more rote and formulaic because we've been doing it for years, even though loot systems in modern-day MMOs seem to coalesce back into a similar form near-inevitably. Maybe what's really needed is just that fresh coat of paint and shuffling the deck chairs. I don't see that as really 'changing gearing', but...? Food for thought, I suppose.

I think the fundamentally different thing is that you can get a baseline level of gear from damn near everything in the game. World quests will give gear, the weekly world events have gear, dungeons have gear, raids have gear, crafting has gear, etc. Then on top of that it can actually be relevant gear since you can upgrade the gear with their "token" system as just playing the game and doing all of those things that give gear also gives you the stuff you need to upgrade your gear. So you can take your baseline gear and upgrade it into a higher ilvl piece and iirc the tier of gear you get from world content is also influenced by your average ilvl so you will start getting better baseline gear as well from doing world content. In FF14 there isn't an equivalent. If you want baseline gear it's do the 4 raid fights for the tier (or alliance raid if still relevant), spend the tomes you get from doing dungeons and the raids, or craft it. Dungeon gear is really no better than glam because the ilvl it releases at is already obsolete since the crafted and raid gear immediately trump it, which I understand as you want to incentivize people to actually craft.

There is also variance in the gear as Arthars points out in the video that just doesn't exist in FF14. You may get a high ilvl gear that doesn't exactly have the secondary stats you want but it is still and upgrade over your previous piece you can use that and upgrade it without worrying too much since if you find a piece with better stats on it you can upgrade it at reduced cost. It is essentially built in horizontal progression that removes the concern about upgrading pieces that aren't your best.

[Sindele]

XIV just hands out tomestones directly instead. Parceling things out that way could push some content diversity... but then, this game's population has historically been hilariously over-the-top hostile to feeling "forced" into forms of content they don't want to do, even if it's just alternate pathing and people freaking out over their optimal substats being stuck somewhere they don't want to go get it.

The improved horizontal stuff is certainly the more interesting bit... though if I might indulge a bit of heresy (and arguably ruin one of my own points from an earlier post): I honestly don't think the game benefits from keeping substats around in the first place. I know, throwing all the stats in the bin would be truly heretical, and without gallons of numbers everywhere how can we call it an RPG - but it all just feels like a meaningless charade these days, doesn't it? Just about the only stat that has any claim to validity here is SkS which might be the last remaining form of "skill expression" in gearing... though that claim is only valid for the, like, twenty people who actually run the data themselves rather than getting their breakpoints from the Balance. Everything else tends to be a solved problem before it even really starts. Do the intangibles of optimizing substats and tiny-number-go-up still bring enough people satisfaction in XIV compared to the problems they bring? I wonder sometimes.

[Amenara]

XIV just hands out tomestones directly instead. Parceling things out that way could push some content diversity... but then, this game's population has historically been hilariously over-the-top hostile to feeling "forced" into forms of content they don't want to do, even if it's just alternate pathing and people freaking out over their optimal substats being stuck somewhere they don't want to go get it.

The improved horizontal stuff is certainly the more interesting bit... though if I might indulge a bit of heresy (and arguably ruin one of my own points from an earlier post): I honestly don't think the game benefits from keeping substats around in the first place. I know, throwing all the stats in the bin would be truly heretical, and without gallons of numbers everywhere how can we call it an RPG - but it all just feels like a meaningless charade these days, doesn't it? Just about the only stat that has any claim to validity here is SkS which might be the last remaining form of "skill expression" in gearing... though that claim is only valid for the, like, twenty people who actually run the data themselves rather than getting their breakpoints from the Balance. Everything else tends to be a solved problem before it even really starts. Do the intangibles of optimizing substats and tiny-number-go-up still bring enough people satisfaction in XIV compared to the problems they bring? I wonder sometimes.

I agree 100% about substats being pretty boring in the game and I think that they need a major overhaul for sure. I like how FF11 handles substats with things like "Triple Attack+" "Double Attack+" "Crit Rate+" "Haste+" etc etc as well as how WoW creates their tier sets that have the bonuses to your abilities based on the number of pieces that you have from the set. In WoW's case getting the tier sets can change up how you play your job as well which can add an interesting way of changing playstyles up for each raid tier (obviously it's not always a good thing). I think I would be a fan if SE added interesting interactions to your kit with gear to shake up combat a bit instead of having the same static rotation for 2 years with a few exceptions for random reworks.

[Batbrat]

I don't know what Dragonflight is nor am I interested. I'm sure this in relation to suggesting ideas but it would be easier to just suggest the idea then explain to me some other game I don't even know about. And stop telling us random peoples opinions and linking their videos, I'm not giving them any views. You'd think some of you were on their payroll, the way you link their linguistically challenged garbage seminars.

[SophiaDL]

I don't know what Dragonflight is nor am I interested. I'm sure this in relation to suggesting ideas but it would be easier to just suggest the idea then explain to me some other game I don't even know about. And stop telling us random peoples opinions and linking their videos, I'm not giving them any views. You'd think some of you were on their payroll, the way you link their linguistically challenged garbage seminars.

what a very weird take to have

[Saraide]

As a forum poster I am legally required to hate on content creators.