Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[Positron]

2. ...Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, and Nyzul Isle?

Oh god, please no. At least, not in their forms. Don't get me wrong, I loved Limbus and Salvage (Dynamis and Nyzul? ...not so much), but the combination of sheer amount of time spent per run, with, most critically, the fact that with inter-run dependencies, only the people whose schedules allowed them to make it to EVERY SINGLE RUN ever had a significantly high chance of getting anything decent... I'd rather not see that in this game.

6. ...Sky/Sea...HNM...2hr...Race-specific equipment; Skillchains

Sky/Sea: Within reason, agreed.
HNM: No, please no. I'm pretty sure anyone who found those fun was lying to themselves to dull the pain of reality.
2hr: That could be fun.
RSE: Sure, but not the FFXI way. The FFXI RSE sucked.
Skillchains: THIS! Can we please have this!?

Edit: Had to edit quotes and remove some responses due to length restriction.

[Hyrist]

To elaborate on my views on an individual basis, and illustrate why I think FFXI is a bad example for anything more than the broadest of inspirations, let me breakdown.

Oh god, please no. At least, not in their forms. Don't get me wrong, I loved Limbus and Salvage (Dynamis and Nyzul? ...not so much), but the combination of sheer amount of time spent per run, with, most critically, the fact that with inter-run dependencies, only the people whose schedules allowed them to make it to EVERY SINGLE RUN ever had a significantly high chance of getting anything decent... I'd rather not see that in this game.

Additionally, Dynamis, Salvage, and Limbus were simply raids. We have raid content, and will continue to have more raid content. The system we currently have, with multiple dungeons and raids sharing similar or the same currency base to work towards unified goals, works fine. It just needs more variety. This will come with time on its own. We don't need FFXI's specific style of raiding to duplicate this.

Sky/Sea: Yes and no.

Yes to open world endgame content zone where a feel of wonder and danger are appropriately mixed.
No to making a gated elitism playground (Sea) or a spawn-camping nightmare (Sky) in order to enjoy any of the content that should be readily available to players. That means removing bottlenecks that get compounded on by competition..


HNM: Odin and Behemoth already exist. This will be our template for HNMs for the foreseeable future. What I would like to see is that we go a different direction - actually more towards Guild War's encounters that hold multiple objectives to split the zerg rush down a bit and have players work together without forcing people to compete for participation. The forcing to compete for participation was the worst thing FFXI perpetuated. If something is that popular, it should accommodate it's popularity somehow, rather than make it horribly cutthroat on who actually gets to play that particular part of the game.

Alternatively, HNM Leves and guildhests would be very intriguing as well, if people are wanting a more reserved experience. Point is, there are other, better implimented both open world and closed/instanced examples to large world bosses to simply pull from FFXI's HNM systems.

2hr: No point. This was part of the 'downtime' mechanics that weren't necessarily good to have around. Even the 15 minute timer was griped upon heavily for many skills.The 2hr system itself perpetuated a problem that, to this day, still persists in FFXI. Instead, I'd like them to revamp the limit break system - creating individual limit breaks that each consume only one 'bar' of limit to create a unique, powerful effect based on the Job using it. More on this later, actually.

RSE: Why? If you're trying to pull more uniqueness to the races, why not something related like quests related to races digging into their lore and backgrounds. As far as Race Specific Gear, we walked into the world with RSE, I can see more vanity sets show up with vanity pieces, but you just namedrop this without any real reason or purpose for it. So I must post the question why.

Skillchains: Skillchains died in usefulness due to the way DPS worked. In order for Skillchains to work, they would have to be on the level of Limit Breaks in terms of usefullness.

This is where I pick up on the 2hr subject. Instead of one player using all 3 bars of the limit break - make it so that each bar could only be used by one player, and for the full effect, you'd need multiple party members using their Limit breaks together, in a sort of combined skill effect Ala Chrono Trigger. And that the overall effect of the limit break depended on the Role combination (and possibly order) of the Limit Chain activated.

This would function far more effectively than what the Skillchain system did, (which fell out of favor unless you were self-skillchaining). Additionally, adding more context and player sensitive objectives that could visually assist in filling the limit bar would be great (an indicator to show what contribute to the limit bar also would help a lot in encouraging these actions). But FFXI's Skillchain/Magic Burst system ver-baitum? No, that would not work well here - as we have no elemental system to exploit, and should not have one to begin with based off of existing systems, and a static team system will simply mean that it is exploited in the most efficient manor.