Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[Exstal]

SE not trying to attract the WoW crowd. They are extremely dumbing down WoW and putting a FF skin on it to attract the people who though WoW was too hardcore of a game to play.

World of Warcraft is so dated. It's such an ugly looking game.

[Grizzlebeard]

World of Warcraft is so dated. It's such an ugly looking game.

Fun Ugly is subjective, don't forget that.

Yeah.

/10 Marmosets

[Felessan]

Issue is though, our debuffs are "after the fact" deuffs. The only direct debuffs we have are from Warlo...Summo....Arcanist, everything else is on weaponskill use or a "combo" - Someone who specializes in it would go a long way to adding depth to this game.

We have debuffs that increases all type of damage, we have a number of ability that reduces damage from mob, we have slow/gravity debuffs, bind, evasion down, buff for magic resistance, several shields etc.
Yes, some of them have additional damage or included in combos, but they are still the same debuffs/buffs as in every other mmo.
And the only reason to include buffer/debuffer class is for someone who likes to play to buff/debuff only, and it has nothing to do with "complexity" of the game.

It's not even 'complex', it just ...makes the game not feel so mundane battlewise. I mean Maplestory has more depth to its gameplay in comparison and anyone who's played it knows that's just a spam fest.

You know, FF14 combat in depth has nothing with spamfest. You can spam, but you result will be below average.

You do realize this exists in XIV right now, right? It's not a 'FFXI situation" because FFXI was not the first nor last MMO to exist.

Ok, you can say it's a situation for oldschool MMO that only hardcore crowd played, that have a very little playerbase where all that "insane grind", "lockouts" and all-content-wide elitism considered to be normal, so no casuals would dare to step into this territory. It was proven that it is bad for general population and for game to be "success in masses".
And not, FF14 does not have anything like this outside fashion items and super ultra hardcore part of 0.0001% population. You don't need crafting gear to pass through T9, nobody forces you to make Novus with best possible stat. Nobody really cares about how much money you got.
The maximum you might be asked for is a food, but it's cheap and spending like 20k a week is a joke as SE did bothered to provide constant stream of money for everyone, even though it's rather small, but it's still enough for basic activities like repairs, teleports and minimal food.

[Malamasala]

nobody forces you to make Novus with best possible stat.

This part is always backwards in MMOs. If you don't want to put effort into the game, you'll get hard mode because you will have weaker gear. And if playing hard mode is not putting effort into the game, then what is it?

Meanwhile you always have hardcore people complaiing that wearing all the best gear with ten melds on each makes the game too easy and hard content should be added.

The company that solves this dilemma first, will probably become legendary in the MMO history.

[Felessan]

This part is always backwards in MMOs. If you don't want to put effort into the game, you'll get hard mode because you will have weaker gear. And if playing hard mode is not putting effort into the game, then what is it?

Even within hardcore those who likes "farm months worth of gil to buy gear to make a progress" is a minority, the rest prefer actual complexity in organization, cooperation and quality of play of each member.
This is why for most part crafted gear is a little upgrade over drop/token items, and even those opportunities that existed in 2.0-2.1 were delayed/scaled down in 2.2-2.3 (we did not get crafted accessory in 2.2, only in 2.3, and even after we got it - it has 1 less stat, so you no longer can get hp *and* damage stats on par with top accessory that made crafted ilvl70 accessory so good) .

And making Novus have nothing to do with pushing efforts to the edge. Novus is not top weapon, HA is. Novus was introduced when the most dedicated already cleared T9, making all those efforts obsolete if you really pushing it for "the best gear". Novus is just an intermediate weapon where you can play with secondary stats, and as such it's out of the "top" territory and all those BiS talks. You can spent all those 10 mil for best combo, but it'll be mostly for your own joy and sense of acomplishment.
There is an explicit limit of how much of upgrade you can get for money and it intentionally kept low.