Dawntrail needs to better, not just more.

[ForsakenRoe]

You can play other games if you are unhappy. You can also go outside.

What if they ARE playing other games? What if they find more enjoyment in those other games than FF14 provides, or will provide with DT? What if you took the example of this one person, and extrapolate to the whole playerbase and ask 'how many people are quitting and not actually coming back, because there's not enough reason to'? FF14 does not compete with just 'other games' in terms of 'where the player spends their time', but with all sources of entertainment, streaming, youtube, netflix, other hobbies. Saying 'if you don't like it go do something else' is so horrendously bad a take I cannot really express how bad it is in words

On a related note, the 'other MMO across the road' did their presentation's deep dive on new features, and had things like 'new 1-5 player scaling content which offers new avenue for progression/gearing' (we could get this with Criterion, but that requires SE to stop being so scared of their players actually getting gear), 'Reputations are now shared across all your alts', 'Item storage now shared across all your alts', 'crafting can take resources directly from the storage, instead of having to take them out of the storage and THEN craft', they have an actual Glamor/Transmog/whatever solution already and it will be improved in the next expansion so that you can unlock appearances regardless of your class (so you can unlock a Warrior appearance as a Mage or vice versa, reducing the number of farm-runs required), Achievements and Flight Paths (Teleport attunements for us) will be shared (reunlocking flying on an alt in FF14 is a pain, if you've ever had to do that). Oh, and cross realm Guilds (FCs in our terms, CWLS exists but kinda sucks in functionality). Some of these issues are mitigated here because we have 'play every job on one character' but some people want multiple characters for RP reasons etc, and some of these are not exclusive to one game or the other (the 'craft from bank directly' for example)

It almost feels like the shoe is on the other foot: at first, FFXIV was the 'underdog', who built a playerbase by acknowledging they messed up in the past, and listening to players, having strong dev-player communication avenues, and working hard to build up to a stable point. WOW was the 'unassailable king' who just did whatever they wanted regardless of how disliked by players it would be because 'they'll play anyway'. Now it feels like it's in reverse, WOW is making big steps in player-dev communications, addressing QOL issues players have like 'accountwide rep' and such following the relatively unmitigated disaster of Shadowlands, and FFXIV is just spinning it's wheels, doing the same content we've seen 3 times already (another deep dungeon, can't wait for a 4th version of Pomander of Steel/Strength woo), possibly because they think they're going to keep all of the 'WOW refugees' that came over. Still waters grow stagnant, and the same is true of gameplay. If we just get 'the same thing again with a new coat of paint', as we do with things like Orthos (which is already dead on my DC), then people will leave and a good number of them will not come back. The biggest cheers at FanFest, out of the two of them so far, were for things like Dye Channels, the new Limited Job, and FF16 crossover because they are new content



Semi-related, my FC's housing ward in Ishgard. Every zone has several (at least 25 across all wards) small houses free. I've never seen as many plots available as this, and we're about 8-10 months away from the expansion still so it'll either get worse, or everyone left (med/large plots) is 'sunk cost fallacy' trapped by SE's awful housing system design. Which is probably why they don't change it despite all the requests for it. People love to rip on the MOP final patch lasting over a year, but we're in the same situation, worse in fact, because at least that last patch for them gave them a new hard raid to progress. We'd have to go by 6.4's release date for an equal comparison (since we don't have an ultimate in 6.5) which makes it even longer a wait. 12+ months of P12S... no wonder I see so many prog parties for the ultimates in PF

Trying to get developers who are good at making one formula do a 180 and create an entirely new formula in the time it normally takes to create an expansion is a recipe for disaster.

They can have a solid 'core' formula, sure. The problem is that everything beyond that core is ALSO formulaic. We can consider the story and levelling as the 'core' that can stay untouched. New expansion, 10 levels, you get a new skill/trait every 2 levels, you get a dungeon at every odd level. Fine whatever. But, what if they experimented a bit and had, for example, the raid tier have 5 bosses instead of 4? What if the 24man had more than 4 bosses (this one's a great example, they could have had 5 bosses on this last one but they smushed Nymiea and Althyk into a doublebattle) What if they take Variant dungeons, as a formula, and had that apply to regular dungeons, such that the route is chosen sort-of randomly from one of 3 or 4 'routes', giving multiple permutations of the dungeon? Even if they keep it as only 'one route' in terms of geography, how we actually go from start to end on the map, the mechanics of the boss can be altered, like how in Variant dungeons the boss mechanics change based on which route you're on. We fight the very large ninja Au Ra in Mount Rokkon first, on every route (all 12), but she has 4 sets of mechanics to pull from based on which of those routes you're on (4 sets in 3 arenas). So something like that could be done for other dungeons. Ktisis Hyperwhatsit could have 3 'routes' based on who comes with you out of the Ancient Squad, Tower of Babil could have potentially more because they have so many more characters present in the raid to pull from (Magnai, Lyse, Cirina, Sadu).

Here's a quick example: Tower of Babil is a good one. When you do it in trusts, you have your team of you and three Scions, and the rest of the raid split off to do some other stuff after the second pack done, just before first boss. So instead, what if SE had that dungeon, where you go as a team of actual players, and one of the NPCs says 'hey I'll come with you players' (randomly chosen), and based on who comes along out of Magnai, Sadu, Lyse and Cirina, the mechanics of the bosses are different. This means that the replayability of the dungeons is increased because you're not necessarily going to get the same mechanics on every run. Maybe they could even include secret things, like maybe Sadu is very good at dealing damage so she helps make packs die faster, but Magnai axe-cleaves a wall open to reveal a shortcut past a pack so you don't have to fight it, speeding up the dungeon run by a roughly equal amount, but in a different way. And maybe Lyse punches a console to force a Magitek Barrier to drop instantly, allowing what is normally two pulls to be combined into one bigger wall-to-wall. Three ways to make the dungeon faster, each with unique 'flavor' and thematic to the characters

When they announce the 8man raid in Tokyo, we'll be excited for the name, sure. But I will also be able to say there and then, that there will be 4 bosses per tier, 3 tiers, and the third boss will drop legs, chest and an item that upgrades the tomestone weapon (along with the drop tables for the other bosses in the tier). Also, that the gear from the Savage raid tiers will be 730, 760, and 790 respectively. Because the formula is THAT strict, and THAT predictable, we can make these kinds of predictions with ease. In fact, I'll also predict that the 8.0 raids will drop 860, 890 and 920 gear, because why not, every other expansion's raids since Savage was made have been +130 from their equivalent in the previous expansion, so all we need to do is just add 130 as many times as is needed to get to where we're predicting for. Heck, assuming the game lives that long, you could predict that 15.0's raids will drop 1770, 1800 and 1830 gear, though you'd hope that SE would squish the itemlevels before we got to that point