Are we expecting TO MUCH from 8.0?

[Veritas-Ancora]

100, this is me!

I'm not interested in doing Savage anymore. I don't find it fun. I don't want a "stepping stone" to savage. I won't be convinced to do savage.
I like having a bit of battle content that provides a bit more tension than the regular ish, but isn't "slam your head against the wall till you finally clear it" content.

100%. I'm tired of this gap between Extreme and Savage content.

Extreme is doable with Party Finder. Savage requires statics that know what the ffff they're doing.

I'd like to see more content that falls within that Extreme, preferably 4-player content.

It's not Criterion content either, the difficulty of that is about Tier 3 Savage.

But why can't Occult Crescent have a harder difficulty than slap an enemy once and get credit? Wasn't Eureka a lot harder?

[Drimn]

they have just implemented housing, low entry cost, available to EVERYONE, in a way that is smooth, well rounded and flexibly upgrade-able without even the threat of having everything taken from you if you cancel your sub.

Don't they also require a specific housing-only currency? I'd wait to see just how microtransaction-heavy it is before I would even consider moving, especially since you have to buy access to patch cycles rather than expansions. Also, their story's awful and their writing team suffers from Millennial Writing Syndrome way worse than the XIV localizers do.

8.0 has to slap. It HAS TO. The competition is actively sliding into their market. They cannot afford to just do a cookie-cutter expansion. The internet talks. Having to watch other MMOs innovate and move on, be on top of trends and technical progress, listen and communicate with their players will drive people away.

This I can agree with, but from the looks of it, SE as a company is more interested in cost-cutting than making sure 8.0 is going to keep the company afloat. I'm not going to expect much of anything because I don't think CS3's going to get the support they need from above to keep up. It's sad, because I could see 8.0 being make or break on a corporate level. At least if Ubisoft's any indication, they can sell themselves to Tencent rather than go bankrupt entirely if it fails.

[RedLolly]

The WoW devs straight up said they looked at everything FFXIV was was doing, our issues with it, and made it their goal to fix everything while still being the system we like making stuff in.

I finally got the hairstyle locked behind grinding Pilgrim's Traverse yesterday. I still haven't actually gotten to floor 100 and it's not likely ever going to happen because I took full advantage of how easy it was to grind iLVL 750 weapons for every job instead of trying to go the distance from the start. Yesterday, reset day, it took about 5 hours because of how long I had to sit in queue. (One player was in three of the 5 runs with me.) It's already dying content unless you intend to solo.

And I still don't have either minion, which I do want.

I will likely never experience the new Quantum boss. And I also missed the boat on Chaotic last year because I took a few months break around Christmas last year. I really wanted THAT minion, too! Still do!

I can only imagine how frustrating that is as a dev, too, to put months to a year or more of work into a new thing fir players only for the vast majority to chew it up, spit it out, and never touch it again in two weeks.


But, yes, 8.0 has to slap. We all agree. The devs agree.

[Myotis]

100%. I'm tired of this gap between Extreme and Savage content.

Extreme is doable with Party Finder. Savage requires statics that know what the ffff they're doing.

I'd like to see more content that falls within that Extreme, preferably 4-player content.

It's not Criterion content either, the difficulty of that is about Tier 3 Savage.

But why can't Occult Crescent have a harder difficulty than slap an enemy once and get credit? Wasn't Eureka a lot harder?

I did two ultimates with a pf and plenty of savage i would disagre with that yet the DDR patterns to lean all over and over again are life-draining.

[Absurdity]

100%. I'm tired of this gap between Extreme and Savage content.

Extreme is doable with Party Finder. Savage requires statics that know what the ffff they're doing.

I'd like to see more content that falls within that Extreme, preferably 4-player content.

It's not Criterion content either, the difficulty of that is about Tier 3 Savage.

But why can't Occult Crescent have a harder difficulty than slap an enemy once and get credit? Wasn't Eureka a lot harder?

As Myotis said, even Ultimate can be done in pf. Savage absolutely does not need a static, there are standardized strategies for PF every raid tier and it's cleared by randoms every raid tier.

What I can say however after raiding through PF in 6 different raid tiers over 4 expansions is that it can be incredibly frustrating and has become increasingly more so over the years.

As everything you do with randoms it's a roll of the dice whether or not you get people who are as committed as you to clearing the fight.
And because modern fight design is a lot more of a fail or pass check than older ones there is little you can do to prevent a wipe when you have players who just aren't very good at the mechanics, which can lead to hours of just repeating the same thing over and over with zero progress.

Not to mention the increase in people who simply lie about their progress and join parties they really have no business being in.

[Zakuyia]

Honestly after dawntrail...i dont really care...i been playing other games logging on to do pvp and waiting for 7.4 fashion outdide of that i feel like dawntrail really sucked all the fun i had my fc feels the same mind you these guys been playing since arr. Dawntrail manage to make me care less. Hopefully 8.0 is better but heck i might not even buy 3 day headstart if 8.0 introduction quest are boring. I usually buy 3 day head start but welll see.

[Hyperia]

I did two ultimates with a pf and plenty of savage i would disagre with that yet the DDR patterns to lean all over and over again are life-draining.

I am willing to bet that those PF parties are very tuned on their PF requirements so the barriers are still there, just in a different form.

[FeyFavilla]

Don't they also require a specific housing-only currency? I'd wait to see just how microtransaction-heavy it is before I would even consider moving, especially since you have to buy access to patch cycles rather than expansions. Also, their story's awful and their writing team suffers from Millennial Writing Syndrome way worse than the XIV localizers do.

While I am also side-eyeing Microsoft for shoving micro-transactions in the housing system please do remember that SE bleeds players in the cash shop for emotes and now individual set pieces as well. Not to mention the other big money sink in FFXIV - item storage. If there's any folks in here who are playing or have played WoW you will know that you can massively upgrade storage for each character. You have a bank - two technically - and your inventory size is determined by how big the equipped bags are.
In FFXIV you literally have to pay for retainer space and the extra chocobo slots. Monthly. It adds up. So if I can save all of that money and instead spend a tiny amount on my personal house, honestly, that is a worthwhile trade-off.

And as for the story, I disagree heavily actually. WoW is a 'show don't tell' game. While the actual text might not always be as well worded or cinematic as FFXIV likes to be the world's lore and history is insanely rich and interesting. I could gush for hours about individual sidequests. It is a world alive outside of the main character because there is no main character. You just experience the story as an observer. The MSQ is only a fraction of the writing that goes into the whole thing. I'll be honest, FFXIV writing has been just as bad or worse many times before DT but considering this is currently their main selling point they absolutely have to knuckle down and deliver a story worth all of the consumer-unfriendly nonsense that comes with it.

[Voidmage]

It is a world alive outside of the main character because there is no main character. You just experience the story as an observer. The MSQ is only a fraction of the writing that goes into the whole thing. I'll be honest, FFXIV writing has been just as bad or worse many times before DT but considering this is currently their main selling point they absolutely have to knuckle down and deliver a story worth all of the consumer-unfriendly nonsense that comes with it.

Maybe I misunderstood you but...
As much as I disliked the 7.0 story, the WoL being more than just an observer is what made the story actually what it was in the first place.
The player character mattering is what made the story hit home for people.
DT showed that a good chunk of people do not want their character to play second fiddle but want the final fantasy feeling.

The last thing I want is FFxiv to follow the WoW story telling.
FFxiv can and should learn a good number of things from the competition yes, but for the story it should stay true to itself because frankly if it turns into WoW 2.0 in that regard I am done with it.
I want the game to change in certain places and take risks but I still want it to feel like the game I originally started in, a final fantasy game regarding the story.

[Selsix]

What I can say however after raiding through PF in 6 different raid tiers over 4 expansions is that it can be incredibly frustrating and has become increasingly more so over the years.

I myself have cleared content via PF many times over the years but every single time it has never ONCE been an enjoyable experience. At the end of the day, this is a video game. Should the higher end content be easy? No, but the difficulty should be -enjoyable-. Trying to herd a gaggle of PF randoms through savage and even EXs on some occasion is the opposite of enjoyable. It's such a miserable experience I haven't done it once this entire expansion yet and now only bother if the tier has something I really want such as a unique piece of gear I desire for glam.

The JP PF experience is allegedly vastly different and while I wonder what makes it so one thing is absolutely clear to me. At least on the EN side, the current approach to difficulty has failed. The lion's share of players are not prepared enough to handle even current EX level content, let alone savage or ultimate. I believe this is largely in part due to the severe dumbing down of jobs and the sharp increase of content difficulty compared to normal mode. The current justification for jobs being so bare bones and brainless is because the high end content is as hard as it is. But what happens when someone hasn't ever played any of the harder content and goes through a baby mode story playing a baby mode job and then tries to do the hard stuff? They hit a brick wall. I have been playing this game since 2.0 open beta and while there's always been bad players (and always will be) I have never seen such a wide rift between the good and bad ones as we have now and I absolutely blame this on the way difficulty is handled.

To fix this, I feel three things need to happen:

1. Remove some difficulty from the high end content and put it back into the jobs. Less DDR spam, more difficulty and rewarding rotations with DPS/mitigation/heal checks.

2. Make the story content harder as you progress through it. Story dungeons/duties/trials should get slowly harder as you progress and we should introduce mandatory role specific duties. Note that I am not asking for them to make the story "hard", I am asking for them to have players ready to jump into midcore content by the end of it if they want to.

3. Add more midcore content. EXs are the closest thing we have, and they are not enough considering each patch only adds one of these tops. A good fix for this would honestly be if they repurposed the unreal system. Instead of just cosmetic junk, have it reward some sub-savage level jewelry or something to go with the current EX weapon and release a new unreal every raid tier alongside a new EX. This adds two "EX level" avenues of midcore content a progression-minded player is incentivized to do. Field operations are also another avenue they could rehash to be midcore.