Rant,Rambling and Drivel: Is it Fun Yet?!

[Royze]

snip(

Sorry for the lack of proper structure in my OP. It was actually a rant and I titled it so to not mislead anyone. I just typed out all my frustrations in one go and didn't even bother reading over it.

They need to cater to low-man and big group play as well. Big man groups should be the default. Low-man groups should be an option once people are geared and skilled enough to do it with few members.

There needs to be intrinsic value in the content. Right now we rush through content because we want nothing other than drops.
This would mean the writers having to spend more time creating the realms lore, story, identity and intricacies.

Again, I must reference XI. Look at the amount of depth in the lore there. And yes, a lot of it was available at launch.


Just a response to those who said I didn't make any suggestions. I highlighted the type of content that has proven to be successful and withstood the deterioration of time. These are better than suggestions, they're guiding principles. Macro, not the micro.

SE have been looking at all of this like pigeons pecking seeds off the ground, where what they need to do is get airborne like a hawk and look at the larger picture - "where is this going and what hurdles are we going to face". Well, that may be too late. They might actually get a sobering "How the f_ck did we mess up again?"

[LineageRazor]

Again, I must reference XI. Look at the amount of depth in the lore there. And yes, a lot of it was available at launch.

While I don't mean to defend the storyline for FFXIV (it's a bit wretched), FFXI had FAR less at launch than FFXIV did. The main scenario ended with the defeat of the Shadowlord (and it took a couple updates before that content was even released), the entirety of the world consisted of four cities, about a dozen overworld zones, several dungeons, and a bunch of quests, only a few of which provided any lore and were mostly fetch quests or talk-to-the-npc.

To be sure, the zones and dungeons were in general larger than the areas we have in FFXIV, but they were also more boring, both in appearance and in the fact that traversing them took so long.

Don't take this to mean that I don't like FFXI - I loved it, and still play it fairly regularly alongside FFXIV - but FFXI had more content at launch than FFXIV? Absolutely not. It had less, but folks were far less likely to complete everything because it took so much longer to DO anything.

I just wish FFXIV's storyline was as interesting as the Shadowlord storyline was. The cliches in FFXIV run fast and furious, and I don't think there was a Garlean NPC who I coudln't tell exactly what they were going to do long before they did it. ;_; The primals are kind of cool, though; I enjoy how each seems to have different motivations while still resorting to brainwashing and enslaving their patron races to do it: Ifrit wants conquest and to be worshiped, Ramuh and Titan both want to protect their people, and Garuda's just flat-out insane. Yeah, the Beastmen are far more interesting than the evil empire.