SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[Avarghaladion]

First off, I'm not trying to attack any of your position, but I would like to rebut. I'm no FF fanboy (only really like a handful of them), and as someone who loved FFXI, i can say with great certainty I give XIV no breaks for the numbing casualisation of it (Yah, Casualisation is a word now).

I called myself a fanboy but that'd be the category I fall into as well, especially with all of the latest FF titles. Loved XI and played it until just before the last expansion but in general it's the older NES/SNES titles I'm nostalgic about. Noting the casualization is an astute observation. Even coil feels casual, just less so.

Voice acting is a decent idea in MMOs, but alltogether one I don't consider a must have. I can take or leave it... if anything the chance of getting a squeeky lalafell will just throw me face first out of immersion way more than bringing me into it. I have an imagination and the ability to read just fine, and for a reason.

Another good point. I went off the rails a bit there about voice acting and I think my rage at the VA is because of the bad writing and that there is VA in some places and not in others. Find it jarring and inconsistent and it bothers me. Feels very half-assed. I don't really care about the non-combat VA so much but when they have an actor for a character and they don't do the few combat lines they have, it's a piss off. More immersive to have VA combat dialog as opposed to an annoying pop-up window or chat log entry and I do feel that immersion should be a priority in a MMO.

I'm on Sarg too, and I have not once, a single time since I resubbed about 2-3 months ago, experienced any Lag or disconnection issues outside of the recent DDoS attacks... IDK if people actually experience this or are just parroting it.

It's certainly not gamebreaking anymore in that outside of the DDoS I don't have issues at all in combat, even on tethered cellphone internet or crappy rural hotel internet. My point here was more about how the server capabilities seem very limited for a AAA P2P title. Take DCUO for instance. It's a F2P with millions of users but it's still able to put everyone pretty much on the same server in a given region and it's combat is vastly more fast-paced and reactive. In comparison, XIV can get chuggy as balls if you get too many people in the same area and it feels to me as though the servers are pretty baren, even Sarg. I mean Sarg's one of the busiest ones and I hear from FC members coming from elsewhere that some servers are just ghost towns with nearly useless PF participation.

I agree with you 100% here... but thats the name of modern MMOs :\

This is definitely true, but in my experience other moden MMOs with a vertical progression model don't make you grind as hard for it. I'd have no problem with the disposable nature of rewards if it wasn't for the comparatively excessive grind. We either eat mega-RNG in coil or we get an item a week with Poetics =/ There's Nexus and beyond... but it doesn't look like they'll ever be that much better than the disposable stuff. I resent when what amounts to a never-ending stream of trash drops is gated as a time-sink that, really, makes up the core gameplay.

Also, agree with you 100%. but I think most players would disagree with this... most modern MMOs have that very "safey" feeling open world thats more a decoration than a place for content.

You could be right but I'm not totally convinced. Again, in DCUO, if you let your guard down you can get curbstomped in seconds in PVE open world and mobs chase and CC you. A solid glass cannon build with some CC can survive pretty much anything but it's certainly never a guarantee. Path of Exile, another F2P, does throw armies and armies of trash at you but it's punctuated by the occasional randomly generated mob that -will- get your blood pumping, especially in hardcore mode where death is permanent. Also in PoE hardcore I'd never feel safe AFKing outside of town.

To me, in XIV where death is completely meaningless, there really should be some sort of sense of peril... I shouldn't be able to literally slow-walk into the heart of beastmen/empire strongholds without fear of death. Hell, even Star Trek online has threatening trash. I can't think of another game where I'd feel totally safe running buck naked through a lvl 50 zone as a naked lvl 1.

Welcome to humanity, honestly.

Unfortunately, though in my experience XIV's been uglier than other MMOs I've payed.

I happen to enjoy it...

Yes, coil's story is decent, I will agree. In general though I find the story quality is nothing compared to XI. Like you said, CoP was very masterful and heartfealt in both script and execution. Gameplay served to enhance the plot and it was very immersive. To me it really just feels like they don't care about the XIV story much at all.

What would you suggest? I'm no fight designer, so while I could brainstorm some ideas, I can't imagine them being completely random.

Doesn't have to be completely random but some degree of randomness is required. In XI I'd look up what barspells I'd expect to use but I'd certainly never be able to memorize a whole fight by glancing at a paragraph of text or watching a 5min video.

Right now, every encounter is based on a set move rotation. Every mob uses the exact same abilities at the exact same times every single time you fight it. The simplest way of spicing things up without breaking them, which is what I believe pretty much every other RPG in existence has always done, is instead create move-lists with action use probabilites with checks and balances in place to keep things fair. Basically, checks and balances should exist to keep a mob from doing something back to back that isn't survivable but everything else should be fair game. Examples: You can't let Titan Mountain Buster twice in a row, or do back to back to back Tumult, but there's no reason he shouldn't be able to Landslide randomly or drop back to back bombs. Same for every mob: If attack = Cleave or heavy AoE, add delay before next cleave or heavy AoE. Anything that's forgiveably survivable a mob should be allowed to spam. Additonally, they could randomize the duration or cast time of certain attacks (ie. make Raffie's Blighted Boquet cast time vary from 4-8 seconds or something like T7's voice timers). Anything to keep players more on their toes.

Really all I want is a reason to have to play with my eyes open. Fights can have some scripted moves but the fewer the better. Also, if we had a probability based attack system like I described, mobs could have more moves and fights'd get a lot more interesting. The flipside is they'd actually have to test and QC content more but it's what I expect in a game for which I'm paying a monthly fee.

Edit: Additional complaint. Being charged unneccesary fees for basic account admin that's free in other games.
Edit 2: You -could- let a mob cleave or heavy-AoE back to back as long as the programmed rules provided sufficient time for a healer to make it recoverable. Again, the key here is quality battle programming. Thingfs need to be programmed to be fair but fun and clean. It needs to flow. It needs to feel unpredictable but still natural.