Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[Kazama]

Snip

*Lights torch and hurls pitchfork at Velhart*

Actually I agree with a lot of what you said. I don't want people to think I'm saying roll back to 1.x or make this FFXI-2. Both of those games were riddled with issues of their own flavor. What I do think can and should be brought over aren't defining features either. They basically boil down to this: Horizontal gear progression and alternate stat paths to open up antiquated content, some open world danger (Every other MMO has this), some endgame that carries consequence for failure (BCNM) and the same with the story missions (PM Missions). I think every suggestion there would be beneficial for both aisles of this debate.

I've always been an advocate for NMs and in 1.x they solved the XI problem. Then they added hunts in ARR and completely broke it again. I don't think hunts are an archaic feature because what they did is add a content that gives a generic reward that everyone and their mom wants. Think about it, Glamours, housing and Chocobo items for the casual/cosmetic crowd. Relic gear for those catching up to endgame. Sands and oils for the progression/hardcore crowd and money for everyone? It was a massive oversight not anticipating that something added for everyone would get overrun and abused and they are taking a ton of public heat for it. They need to stop adding generic farming content and add a little specificity to it. People always bash the "Collect 10 rat pelts" type of quests and for good reason, but that's basically what we have on a large scale, instead it's "collect XXX Tomestones" then do it again.

One of the larger issues here is that they keep generalizing every single piece of content to make it both accessible and desirable to everyone. When that happens it trivializes all of the content instead of one small aspect.

The one thing I will criticize though is your comparison of Coils (Savage is pointless) to AV/PW in XI which were ultra endgame and also not launch content. Coils vs. maybe Dynamis? Even that required something like 500k pop item, was 18 man, timed and hard for a lot of people, dropped gear that was viable from 2003 all the way to 2010 and even included a weekly lockout. That's just one comparison that was available at NA launch. There are at least 10 other things that were on the level of coils and every single one of them posed just as much challenge and remained viable all the way until cap increase.

I don't mind that they made XIV follow the WoW formula, many Korean MMOs did the same yet still managed to provide a game with much more depth and longevity. If SE weren't completely attached to the subscription model FFXIV would already be free to play. Out of 140 FC members about 1/4 haven't logged in in over a month, 1/4 in 2-3 weeks and the remainder only login 1-2 days a week and the most of them are comprised of FC statics, officers and newer players. Those don't include people who actually said they were leaving, left the FC and quit the game. This is after many left to try ESO and Wildstar and most of them quit those already, a lot of people are giving up on MMOs all together and if FFXIV's expansion doesn't address a lot of things it's looking like I might as well.