In 12 years the game hasn't innovated

[ovIm]

Perhaps because for the most part they feel like it is speaking to a brick wall.

...

It's funny that some people spend so much time completely blaming the player, as if this problem would be even half as bad as it currently is if they actually elected to engage with the feedback properly beyond just platitudes.

Fully agree. The forums feel more like a void to yell into, with how much stuff from here gets blatantly ignored. Not just odd takes mind you, some good and genuine well meant criticism is often swept aside. (semi related, any one remember the reaction to the feedback from the White Mage Gauge back during its conception?)

Plus I'd argue that it is not the place of the customer to always provide constructive criticism. We are customers of a product. If a group loudly enough yells "we are dissatisfied", and the game developers really want to know why, they can send out feedback questionnaires en masse to paint themselves a more objective and streamlined picture without sifting through loads and loads of text. They could also just properly design the exit survey for when people do quit to properly understand why they do instead of assuming its because players don't have enough time to play anymore.

ETA: like, I really don't want to sound so negative all the time, and I truly hope the devs find a better way for us players to convey our feelings and our feedback for this game that is not "write in this forum and hope someone reads what you have written."

[Kaurhz]

Fully agree. The forums feel more like a void to yell into, with how much stuff from here gets blatantly ignored. Not just odd takes mind you, some good and genuine well meant criticism is often swept aside. (semi related, any one remember the reaction to the feedback from the White Mage Gauge back during its conception?)

Plus I'd argue that it is not the place of the customer to always provide constructive criticism. We are customers of a product. If a group loudly enough yells "we are dissatisfied", and the game developers really want to know why, they can send out feedback questionnaires en masse to paint themselves a more objective and streamlined picture without sifting through loads and loads of text. They could also just properly design the exit survey for when people do quit to properly understand why they do instead of assuming its because players don't have enough time to play anymore.

ETA: like, I really don't want to sound so negative all the time, and I truly hope the devs find a better way for us players to convey our feelings and our feedback for this game that is not "write in this forum and hope someone reads what you have written."

Agreed.. I have partly given up trying to give criticism.. These days I will just debate more than anything, as I don't really think anything will change.

I think a lot of the feedback is more constructive than some posters would like to admit... Perhaps a bit of tone policing.. But like, even if I find Valence's post a bit dramatic in terms of innovation... There's a lot you can infer from it (e.g., perhaps we should actually look at updating hunts/FATEs etc., -- Sure some are unique, but at the core they have gone unchanged since the games inception).

Tone aside, if someone handed this to me I would have a bit to work with... It's really up to the developers to determine what to infer from the feedback.

I don't think we need a better way to convey our feelings.. I just think there needs to be more engagement generally from the developer side, they can change it in 327427361 different ways... But if it's just a different platform etc., then as long as the engagement isn't there, it will just be same result, different method.

[Xieldras]

Agreed.. I have partly given up trying to give criticism.. These days I will just debate more than anything, as I don't really think anything will change.

I think a lot of the feedback is more constructive than some posters would like to admit... Perhaps a bit of tone policing.. But like, even if I find Valence's post a bit dramatic in terms of innovation... There's a lot you can infer from it (e.g., perhaps we should actually look at updating hunts/FATEs etc., -- Sure some are unique, but at the core they have gone unchanged since the games inception).

Tone aside, if someone handed this to me I would have a bit to work with... It's really up to the developers to determine what to infer from the feedback.

I don't think we need a better way to convey our feelings.. I just think there needs to be more engagement generally from the developer side, they can change it in 327427361 different ways... But if it's just a different platform etc., then as long as the engagement isn't there, it will just be same result, different method.

There is no exit survey either, so the truly only way to give feedback about the game is either on the official forums (where it is ignored and sometimes torn to shreds by other players) or on social media. We do not even get acknowledgement about what is being posted within the forums by the GMs. Is it even sent to the Dev team? General sentiment leans to no.

[honest_psycho]

To give my 2 cents:

- I want bosses (dungeons/raids) to do something else, ANYTHING ELSE than just an utterly boring raid-wide attack.
It's so insulting to my intelligence, especially as a healer, that I am not trusted with more complex mechanics.

Just do one of these to shake up the formula:
- let the simple AoE leave a DoT,
- let the boss pick one player who gets massive damage,
- let the aoe leave some nasty debuffs.


Also, innovate the dungeons already.
- 2 groups - Boss - 2 groups - boss - 2 groups - final boss is soul-crushingly boring.

Give us new mechanics like Doomtrain with changing layers, or more adds.

PLEASE TRY SOMETHING ELSE

[Reginald_Cain]

To give my 2 cents:

- I want bosses (dungeons/raids) to do something else, ANYTHING ELSE than just an utterly boring raid-wide attack.
It's so insulting to my intelligence, especially as a healer, that I am not trusted with more complex mechanics.

Just do one of these to shake up the formula:
- let the simple AoE leave a DoT,
- let the boss pick one player who gets massive damage,
- let the aoe leave some nasty debuffs.


Also, innovate the dungeons already.
- 2 groups - Boss - 2 groups - boss - 2 groups - final boss is soul-crushingly boring.

Give us new mechanics like Doomtrain with changing layers, or more adds.

PLEASE TRY SOMETHING ELSE

Having dungeons with double bosses like arcadion m10 or eden 6 would be cool too.

[Shurrikhan]

[

To give you an analogy, if you were to hand in a paper to a teacher/professor, and they turned around and said it was bad, redo it. That isn't helpful. However, if they said it was bad, but then explained how it could be improved, that is then the constructive part.

Haven't you been on threads where Valance has given break-downs of the problem and even spit-balled particular solutions?

Either you're leaving out your specification of 'in this thread' or this seems an ill-warranted claim.

Perhaps because for the most part they feel like it is speaking to a brick wall.

True, but then there's the sad fact that thinking that way (or, accepting that fact) then often leads to the kinds of posting that would actually be reasonable for the devs to ignore. Sort of the problem of, say, land being allowed to desertify because it's no longer perfectly productive and therefore finally becoming truly not worth protecting, etc. /sigh

[Shurrikhan]

The afore-promised $0.02:

1. Increasing the Reward-Viability of Optional Difficulty

Content now increases relative drop chances based on relative stat loss for within one's expansion and based on item level loss outside of the expansion (as not to be quite so drastic). For instance, a level 50 Extreme with an ilvl cap of 130 and a minimum item level of 80 run by a player with ilvl 700 gear would have an 8.75x drop rate at minimum item level and 5.38x drop rate if synced down to 130.

Similarly, a player losing 25% total stat value in syncing down to minimum item level roulette would have a [100/(1-0.25)]% --> 33.3% increase in drop rates.

This effect is split among those you are queued with. If solo queued, the bonus loot is apportioned and becomes a % chance of spawning a unique item visible only to you unless you pass on it. If queued with others, that pool is shared for everyone in that premade party to need or greed among.

Note that this has no impact on weekly-capped rewards, only spammable content.

2. Further Leveraging Duty Finder for Optional Difficulty

Create a second checkmark column for Variant (e.g., Minimum Item Level mode, Explorer Mode, etc.) Duties and Roulettes. A long press will allow you to set a variant specific to that duty; a short press will apply your default set of variants. You will now be able to match with others searching for that combination of duty/roulette and type without needing to use Party Finder.

3. Further Leveraging Party Finder and its Adjacent Capacities: Adventurer Board

Extend the Adventurer Card concept to create an Adventurer Board. This allows one to submit themselves preemptively to any Party Finder listing within matching conditions, allowing Party Finder leaders to quickly invite others. Additional precise sorting of [Active] quality, down to seconds since last player input, and of whether players are willing to see invites when there are already invites out for the same position (without which Party Leads would have to cancel previous invites or those invites would have to be declined before they could send another to such a player).

4. Improving High-End Duty Pug-Friendliness

Have First time bonuses include checkpoints (about half of final clear bonus) and contributed per player to reach that checkpoint for the first time (though at diminishing value per additional player to reach it within the duty's time). "Break" fights into a greater number of phases and mechanical exposure, each such "phase" carrying its own checkpoint and accordant reward, and track players through these for a more granular accounting of their progress. High End Duty Finder may now allow players to queue for and Party Finders to open themselves to each of these points of progress (up to 5 specific points or 4 points plus a default setting [of all, within X steps, current progress or up to Y steps earlier]). Players' later 'until reliably reclearing checkpoint' bonus is partially refreshed when entering a new party based on the number of less progressed players or those not partied with within the last few hours within their new party.

5. Increasing Alt-Friendliness (unlikely because the game is monetarily incentivized to remain designed in a player-unfriendly manner)

You may now mail items to your other characters. You may now use the "Resonant Echo" to set your Main Scenario progress to that of any of your more progressed characters; if you do so, a save point will be left for you to return to if you wish to return to your previous progress point.

Once a given gear piece has been purchased with weekly cap currency, all other items of that tier of that gear piece may then be purchased with uncapped endgame currency. This includes weapons.

6. Improving Glamour Systems (unlikely because the game is monetarily incentivized to remain designed in a player-unfriendly manner)

Glamours are now applied to the character, superseded by Job, not to one's gear. In this way, upgrading one's gear does not temporarily ruin one's glamour and all items can shed three pieces of data (Appearance, Dye 1, and Dye 2).

This allows enough space for a bimodal (0/1 or 1/1) hidden achievement for spiritbinding each piece of gear, after which its appearance is unlocked forever, freely applicable to any glamour via the Glamour Dresser or anywhere else at the cost of one Glamour Prism per item changed, as before. Replacing a dyed Glamour with another will allow one to keep or replace the Dye already in that slot.

7. Debloating Inventory Requirements (unlikely because the game is monetarily incentivized to remain designed in a player-unfriendly manner)

Materia are no longer items, but instead a granular currency (alike to Gil) of different types, while the amount of Materia in total an item may bind is determined by broad class of item level (just as now), forgoing the need for slots. For each additional point of Materia after that normal limit, the chance of acceptance (for "Overmelding") as decreases, with the amount of Materia simply being consistently channeled, slowing as each point's chance of acceptance decreases, replicating almost exactly the risk from before but without the item requirement. Ornate gear accepts 50% more materia than other forms of gear. Fees for using an NPC to meld Materia is applied on a per-point basis, making melding the already high value to its max (now that there is no waste of Materia or one's paid for service, only space for more secondary stat) a real enough option for players less interested in min-maxing but still wanting some Materia. To save data space per item, only two Materia types may be applied to the same item.

All items which are mere recolors of another have been collapsed into a single, now-always-dyable type. For instance, if a given dungeon really only drops Fending/Maiming, Casting/Healing, and Scouting/Striking/Aiming, or Fending, Maiming/Aiming, Scouting/Striking, and Casting/Healing, then that's just how many item sets that dungeon will have, with the stats of all. This also greatly eases alt gear-preparation.

As in 1.x, gear now has a level required to get its full value, rather than to be able to use it at all. Below the required level, it will have a relative stat value 2 levels' worth lower than that of an item of the same quality (be that NQ or HQ/non-crafted) for the player's current level. This forgoes the need to horde old items.

Weapons are now unlocked via achievements, from having won a consumable from Savage or upon defeating the tier-4 boss for X weeks in a row, instead of via special items.

Pages are now generalized by tier instead of specific to each floor, with the highest level of purchase on which to spend those now-generalized Pages determined by one's progress in the Savage tier.

8. Improving Content Choice

FATEs again (as in early ARR) now grant completion experience even to players not present in zone at the FATE's end, granted upon rejoining the open world (exiting any instances) if away during that time.

Variant Dungeons now give gear and tome rewards comparable to dungeons of their tier. Savage/Criterion Dungeons now uses a lower maximum item level and give gear (though likely of mostly recycled appearance) just 5 ilvl below Savage Raids from the tier of their release.

The permissible level ranged for entry into Diadem, Eureka, Bozja, Occult Crescent, Palace of the Dead, Heaven on High, Eureka Orthos, and each Variant/Criterion Dungeon expanded slightly, and all now give player experience.

The difference in player strength relative to mobs has been compressed in all older Expeditionary Missions by nerfing both mob growth and player growth, chance of missing or suffering a crushing blow due to level disparity has been removed altogether, and reward penalties for a higher-level player contributing have been made a granular curve with the full penalty not suffered until 4 times as large a gap in level.

One may now choose to opt out of Poetics in exchange for more EXP. When doing so, dungeons for/from previous level caps and a few other content forms end up giving EXP at near-identical efficiency to leveling dungeons.

9. General UI Improvements

Besides all the obvious already included in the likes of SimpleTweaks...

Armory Chests removed, and with it the need to shuffle items between it and one's inventory to auto-equip one's best gear (instead drawing directly from one's inventory). Inventory expanded to 255, with temporarily permitted overflow up to 400 at time of change (the remainder eventually ending up in permanent mail storage).

One's Inventory Pane is now additionally scrollable at a given height and width shown at a time and includes default and custom filters, including a default filter and the ability to set keybinds specifically for any of those. (For instance, one could open the inventory directly to all gear for the given expansion, or the best gear for each gear type, or the best gear for each gear type possessed plus (thereafter) the best for each gear type for one's current job levels (wherein something at-level would be better for now than something higher level). Search terms can be entered directly, filtering the inventory to just that. The scrolling inventory now also supports text-only or text-and-icon modes. This ultimately allows for faster searching and reduces the total data storage required, especially for players who opt out of setting grid positions in the inventory for each item (instead having everything just auto-sort).

Similarly, simplify NPC menus, instead allowing for quick filtration from a singular main tomestone vendor menu, for instance, by which to select tier, armor class, and/or Items (as opposed to gear).

10. Improving Player Rotational Understanding and Readiness

A personal relative potency parser has been added to SSS and a new assistive side-content, the Arcanists' Lab. Unlike the likes of ACT, this does not look at the actual damage or healing done but simply the relative potency, with the option either to spread the potential effects of critical hits and direct hits across all actions (Default) or to account for those only during actual critical hits or direct hits, and to ignore or include (Default) the effects of external [de]buffs.

The Arcanist's Lab is a turn-by-turn potency analyzer built for different fight lengths, wherein each turn can support one Weaponskill or Spell and up to two Abilities. This begins solo but later includes up to 3 others for various combat scenarios, offering increasingly stringent challenges by which to defeat the enemy pack in record time through careful target selection, understanding of their TTD time-til-death, and later also compositional choice (wherein killing a given enemy before it can overwhelm the tank or, opposite, use of CC may become essential).

SSS now also includes a new training system called, in a throwback to 1.x, Battle Regimen. This allows you to script out an opener or rotation to follow, allowing you to practice it carefully. To better support this, SSS now also allows for immediate resets, rather than needing to exit and port back in via the NPC.

11. Providing Options for Debloating and Easing the Setup of Hotbars

Actions whose engagement could be achieved virtually identically without their buttons have been pruned. This includes actions like Lucid Dreaming, Meditation, and Form Shift, in the latter cases in favor of, respectively, continuous progress towards one's next point of Chakra while the global cooldown is refreshed but unused (i.e., when a weaponskill could be used but is not being used) and Forms no longer being locked but simply losing up to 40% damage if used within 2 rounds' (global cooldowns'), maintaining identical effect without the need for Meditation and Form Shift before each pull.

All macros now queue properly up to their first actionable command per button-press. Within the Actions and Traits menu, players may now toggle on/off the ability to use unprepared combo skills, allowing players who prefer to use separate buttons for each step of a singular combo decision parity with those who would prefer to consolidate those decisions into one button per real choice.

Action Stacks can now be made by players and provide a more player-friendly alternative to macros. New default Action Stacks are now provided, such as for Tsubame-Gaeshi over Iaijutsu when the first is available, and for the various combos.

Players may now export/import their HUD Layouts and hotbar setups (with or without their related keybinds), individually or together, directly to/from each other in-game or via a string. Space for an additional two Keybind Layouts and an additional 6 HUD Layouts each has been added for client-side saving to ease experimentation, though as before, only the first Keybind layout and the first 4 HUD Layouts are saved online via the Backup tool.


12. Simplifying / Accelerating Tooltips

The game now supports options for compressed tooltips. Examples in the Spoiler box below.

Dia
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 90.
Additional effect: Unaspected damage over time
Potency: 90
Duration 30s

->

Dia
(Unaspected) 90p + 900p over 30s

____________

Living Shadow
Conjure a simulacrum of your darkside to fight alongside you.
Duration: 22s
Additional Effect: Grants Scorn
Duration: 30s
Simulacrum Attack Potency: 420
Additional Effect: Simulacrum is able to execute Shadowbringer and Disesteem
Shadowbringer Potency: 570 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies
Disesteem Potency: 620 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies

->

Living Shadow
Animate your darkside to fight alongside you, dealing a total of 3300p over 22s. 2nd and 5th attacks cleave for 428 and 465p, respectively. Unlocks Disteem.

____________

Holy Shelltron
Reduces damage taken by 15%.
Duration: 8s
Additional Effect: Grants Knight's Resolve
Knight's Resolve Effect: Reduces damage taken by 15%
Duration: 4s
Additional Effect: Grants Knight's Benediction
Knight's Benediction Effect: Gradually restores HP
Cure Potency: 250
Duration: 12s
Oath Gauge Cost: 50

->

Holy Shelltron
Costs 50 Gauge. 30% mitigation for 4s, then 15% for 4s more. Heals for 1250p over 12s.

{Work in Progress}

13. Further Combat UI Improvements
{WIP}

14. Further Control System Improvements
{WIP}

15. Revitalizing the Open World Through Bands and Dynamic Spawns
{WIP}

16. Related Zone Augmentations and Expansions (+ Sub-Zones, Delves, Caravans, Hamlets, Dynamic Quests, and Leve Integration)
{WIP}

17. Allowing for Enjoyable Open World Grinding (+ Non-Aetheryte Homepoints / Return Points, and Shard-able "Niches")
{WIP}

[Gaiinahat]

You know what's not innovative? Having octagon shaped arms and legs in 2026. They made the faces look so smooth with fantastic curvature. Why stick such nice looking heads on top of Roblox bodies? Come on, SE! We demand innovation!

[MsQi]

Edit: I'll add squadron AI in SB, that was new, and was extended into Duty Support.

Duty support is a regression. Instead of trying to make them play the content, they altered old content and created new content so they can just follow a script.

[Gurgeh]

The afore-promised $0.02:

1. Increasing the Reward-Viability of Optional Difficulty

2. Further Leveraging Duty Finder for Optional Difficulty

3. Further Leveraging Party Finder and its Adjacent Capacities: Adventurer Board

4. Improving High-End Duty Pug-Friendliness

5. Increasing Alt-Friendliness (unlikely because the game is monetarily incentivized to remain designed in a player-unfriendly manner)

6. Improving Glamour Systems

7. Debloating Inventory Requirements (unlikely because the game is monetarily incentivized to remain designed in a player-unfriendly manner)

8. Improving Content Choice

1. Its hard to know if I've understood this correctly because I've no idea what "loss" is in this sense, I've never encountered that term before. If I've got the shape of it right I don't think I like it, especially not if it's open to current high-end was well. It would further incentivise players to gatekeep eachother from content and lean on tomestone.gg to bring home the wins. It is not going you reward difficulty in a gradient, it's just going to incentivise optimizing party makeup in an exclusionary way.

2. If the intention is to remove the need for pf this is probably a good idea as long as it doesn't fracture existing mixed queus as there isn't the foot fall to fill 1 party never mind three different ones. Its not casual content that needs better DF support it's high-end.

3. Honestly this is why I'm posting. I'm not saying it's a bad idea but I personally hate it. This is a tomestone.gg user's wet-dream. Now you've got no chance of getting a place if your not logging your play and making it findable. The only way I like this is to watch from afar on YouTube and morbidy read these forums as the game continues to tear itself apart from the spectacle of awe inspiringly stupid self-interest.

4. Yes. Anything at this point. High end is unplayable if you also want to have fun at the same time unless you can commit to a static. Just change it. Couldn't get worse.

7. Do not increase inventory space but all these currencies that aren't currencies is just unbearable. Its so much unfun to have to do 30 min of weekend clearout. It also leads to me ignoring a lot of content, i just don't know what any of these things are for. Their tool tips are just useless, just lore, instead of 'trade with x for y'. If it can't be sold or desythned it just gets thrown, Im not googling every egg or whatever that I din't realise dropped from some hunt mark I happened to bump into by chance. I'm never going to have enough to cache in anyway. Hunts are so tedious. Fishing, no. Not if I've got to go and buy bait to have to throw it away at the end. I've got this bait box that doesn't actually hold my bait. F stupid. Materia. Have to sell it. Then i have to buy it back. F nuisance. So much of interacting with this game was such a nuisance.