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

[Duelle]

People complain about MMO's being grindy, and the same people want to put merits into the game? You guys -really- don't know what you want. Also, there is no creativity in merits, you will do the optimized set up like everyone else and you will see at the end of the day you just added an unnecessary extra grind to the game. Again, ask for more refreshing, different forms of "content", not potential game breaking changes.

Given the base design for ARR, there's not much that I can think of that I would not hate down to the bottom of my soul.

If asked about issues with the game's distribution of gear, I'd point to the fact we've had a handful of bosses and loot tables to go through per content patch. This number I expect to get bigger as the game ages, though. I wouldn't be opposed to implementing overworld bosses that drop current-patch gear (for example, Behemoth changed to scale with player level and drops one piece of ilvl120 gear per full party when killed); loot rules would have to be changed so that you get the loot roll window without having it tied to treasure chests.

[Velhart]

Adding new or interesting content will not work without a major change in the backbone of the game.

They can add 100 unique dungeons, 50 8 man instance boss fig...."Raids". 10,000 strong unique voice over quest in the expansion.

But if there is still 1 max level raid and dungeons are for nothing but token gear... the game has the same problem as it has now.

You need complexity in a mmo, you need grind in a mmo. The goal is to make them fun. Easy, Ultra balanced, simple = boring and extremely limited of a game. MMOs should start off ultra simple and get more and more complex and deep as you get to endgame. If a player cannot figure it out THEY DESERVE TO FAIL AT ENDGAME. the catering to the lowest common denominator is why game are getting more and more blah as time is going on. Complexity and depth + alittle bit of unballanced > ultra simplistic and perfect balance.

May I ask why you need to change the backbone to add new and interesting content? Developers said themselves the current system built right now was specifically designed to allow them to be open on how they approach content. Your argument seems invalid and I like to think the developers know how the backbone of their own game works before you or myself do.

Adding a variety of top gear raids and content is not a bad thing at all, however you have to consider the time it takes to make these things, its a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Yoshi-P just said in an interview recently that putting so much into one patch is possible, but they have no luxury in doing so. They have things set up right now where people expect something new every 3-4 months, and they have been able to deliver on that for the most part. To make more content per patch for your "options" argument sets the game back months, like WoW does now releasing a major patch every 6-7 months. People will not like that, SE is not at a place in FFXIV where they can do that and people will be willing to deal with it. It isn't like WoW where they have created a 2nd home for these people, people who will complain, but wait that long of a time for content. WoW just has that special grip on people. FFXIV is no where near that luxury yet. So while yes, it would be nice for multiple areas to get the best gear in, you have to look at it from a developer stand point, not a entitled standpoint. FFXIV devs give us much more than a normal MMO development team does rather if you believe that or not.

When you want complexity, you have to take with a grain of salt that your game just became a niche one. Depth vs. Complexity, like the video I posted said, the more depth you have with the least amount of complexity possible is good game design when approaching a broad audience.

As much as I loved FFXI, it faulted on being too complex for it's own good. It threw you all the rules at the beginning and barely and leg room to learn as you progress. I played a Warrior and FFXI was basically my first game into the MMO world. I had no idea where to go, how to work anything, how to earn myself more gil. While I don't believe in hand holding, it just threw everything at me and was left confused. I even remember my first party in the Valkurm Dunes, I had no idea of the Tank <> DPS <> Healer system. I go in there and I was expected to tank. What the hell is a tank? You can say there is a sense of charm and wonder figuring things yourself, I call bull on that one. Its like making me play Chess and I never played it before and I have been given no explanation of how it works. How am I suppose to know the Knight goes in a -L- shape?

Now lets jump to FFXIV, while its not perfect in it's own right, it does go out of it's way to explain and teach a new player what you are, what your role is, and not throw you out there with a sword and be like "Okay do something!". Having no sense of direction is just as bad as too much direction. People even complained in 1.xx that the sense of direction was near non-existent, and a beginning tutorial would of helped.

Before I go too off topic. You don't exactly know the difference between easy and depth. I dare people in here to try Dwarf Fortress and see how many play the game without quitting after a short period of time. Complexity doesn't make things magically fun, it makes it frustrating and something people don't want to deal with. That is the beauty of FFXIV's design for better or worse is that people can engage in the -content- without the worry of dealing with their mechanics. What I see people are asking for in their design for FFXIV is basically this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVfzWpmyXXk

So basically, you should rely on the depth of content to be where the difficulty is, not complexity in how you need to manage your UI and gear. If you are so bored with things, it might not be the game, it just might be you are bored with what is around you. That is your opinion, but saying that the game isn't complex in it's mechanics enough seems like a poor argument. Completely changing how the backbone of the game works helps absolutely nothing and only causes more problems. This why I will say again, the developers will never take your pleas for this seriously.

If people can convince the developers why the current system is broken (Hint: It isn't at all) and not just boring, then please step up and give your take on it. Elemental wheels are not here because they are unbalanced and can easily break fights. Don't believe me? Play FFXI and 1.xx, hello manaburn parties. Don't have BLM? Sorry no invite for you. Hey notice in FFXIV no one is getting thrown out? Because it doesn't have stupid crap like elemental wheels holding it back. Sure DRG's are in need of a fix for Final Coil, but look how easy in theory it is to fix without too much complication of conflicting with other jobs. You don't have to consider elemental wheels or several different combinations of stats. Its there, simple to manage.

Its just kind of sad how many people don't appreciate this. The simplicity of the system goes way beyond what you think it is, both on player side and developer side. But nope, lets put FFXI's system in, you know, that one that has not been able to give any form of balance since the first day it came out? And still struggling to do so even to this day? Yea guys, lets put that in there. FFXIV 1.23 had the same exact issues, only preferred jobs for certain situations, how horrible game design that is.

Not saying how I look at the approach of MMO's are perfect, but people seriously need to consider from all angles why a certain system the way it is before you cloud your mind with senseless entitlement. FFXIV: ARR is by no means a perfect game and clearly needs some improvements here and there, but thinking changing the backbone of the game is necessary is completely false and only delusional if you think so, scraping the bottom of the barrel to find any excuse. I've said this since beta, the developers will not listen to destructive criticism unless you can in fact prove the aspect is broken. Help improve what is there, and suggest new things that an improve that is already there, not tear it down and start anew.

Crying out loud, i'm just a damn broken record. Alright now here come the pitchforks from people. >_>

[Tiggy]

*Slow clap*

[Avarghaladion]

In general, I haven't seen most people wanting things to be made that complex... just any sort of change to give the gameplay even the slightest bit more depth. The game has potential and there's a good foundation but there's just not enough here to run a decade of status quo additions. I can't think of a more simplistic MMO in regards to virtually every aspect of the game. The areas where they do try to add complexity are silly (ie. colouring your choco, changing the appearance of your equipped gear, dying certain gear). It plays kinda like a last-gen, single-player hack 'n slash only with every fight being completely identical every time you run it and with less than half the content. Of course people aren't going to have ongoing appreciation for that, especially not when they're paying a minimum of ~$144/yr for it (forcibly so if they own housing and don't want to lose it). We pay way more for this than any number of big budget titles and SE's quality control is quasi-existent, at best.

Also, I believe your statement here is very inaccurate:

Now lets jump to FFXIV, while its not perfect in it's own right, it does go out of it's way to explain and teach a new player what you are, what your role is, and not throw you out there with a sword and be like "Okay do something!". Having no sense of direction is just as bad as too much direction. People even complained in 1.xx that the sense of direction was near non-existent, and a beginning tutorial would of helped.

If SE did such a fantastic job of teaching people their roles in XIV there wouldn't be i110 players with no idea how to fulfill their roles' basic requirements, let alone how to optimize those roles in a very simplistic game. I feel your perspective here is coloured by the fact that you're personally a more experienced gamer in the MMO realm now, so you can catch onto things faster. XIV does provide "direction" in the form of the extensive hand-holding quest chains, but it certainly doesn't provide any more guidance than XI or any other MMO. Even the class/job quests that are designed to test one's ability to apply what they've learned just pump players full of echo until they clear them.

Finally, the "here's a sword, enjoy your adventure" approach is a bit of RPG flavour whereas XIV is very very much an extreme case of a traditionally scripted JRPG to the point where there is zero customization and the path is essentially linear. I suspect the reason they chose to follow a more western RPG model in the past has been due to its ability to grant longevity and diversity to a long-running title. XIV is almost 100% pure JRPG. Pretty bold move but as everyone and the dev's are gradually realizing, making content in a totally linear system you're trying to draw out for years and years and years and years is a real whore. They're utterly dependent on every cheesy method under the sun to stall the playerbase as much as possible and as frequently as possible in pretty much every facet of gameplay.

[Lancerz]

I played ffxi from 2004 to 2010 and you know what made that game great? There was always something fun to do with friends. The only thing you do in FFXIV is log in and grind armor and just when you get all your guys geared, they give you a new armor set.

The armor treadmill is getting old SE, please make the game more fun! I have had about all I can stand with the armor treadmill. I highly doubt that I am going to resub next month. There are so many great games coming out from now to well into the new year. More then enough to keep me busy over the winter!

This is exactly how i feel, I just resubbed to check it out and yeah the same thing. Doubt I'll keep playing myself, I agree FFXI I always had something fun to do, not just log in and do the daily roulettes...

[LunaHoshino]

If SE did such a fantastic job of teaching people their roles in XIV there wouldn't be i110 players with no idea how to fulfill their roles' basic requirements, let alone how to optimize those roles in a very simplistic game.

I'm pretty sure there would be, considering there will always be people who just plain suck at learning and remembering things no matter how many times others try to teach them. All they need is a couple of friends who can carry them through things or enough gil to pay their way through.

[Avarghaladion]

I'm pretty sure there would be, considering there will always be people who just plain suck at learning and remembering things no matter how many times others try to teach them. All they need is a couple of friends who can carry them through things or enough gil to pay their way through.

There will definitely always be those people but it still stands that there's no more job-performance guidance in this than in any other MMOs. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that's a bad thing. I feel any RPG or really any game in general should let players learn and discover on their own as much as possible or at most through the use of conveyance.

[Riardon]

People will still make mistake and muck up everything even when you make them play with 1 skill only. I met people in low lvl dungeons who told me its very very hard to dodge things. What? c'moooon. It's those stiff people who never move from their positions and expect to press 1 button and do everything. Stupidity cannot be fixed with any patch from any company. For this wait for human brain 2.0 to be released.

[Velo_Vandore]

Do you think the existing Materia system could be put to better use in endgame? I was disappointment by the limited situations Materia could be used in this game, and also the lack of flexibility. Perhaps the disappointment comes from the fact that I was expecting something similar to FFVII's Materia system, where you have a huge variety of options, including stat boosts, spells, skills, and other special affects.

Without requiring additional raids to be released simultaneously, why not give the end game raid gear materia slots, with special raid level materia that also drops from the raids / ex primals. I think the materia would need to be un-tradeable to ensure players aren't able to buy top level gear, however I see no issue with DoH being involved to meld.

If the materia will be special raid class, why not even throw in some interesting options like enhancements to specific job abilities, instead of just secondary stat boosts. I'm thinking along the lines of the options in Lord of the Rings online for enhancing the legendary weapons. Perhaps tomes gear could have the same thing too.

I understand balancing content is harder the more variables you add. For example, we don't want a situation where you're given multiple options for gear enhancements, but not really free to do so - like one particular enhancement makes certain instances too easy to beat cheaply, or not having a particular enhancement gives a massive disadvantage in certain instances. I think this can be achieved however, by allowing each player to achieve the same goal in different ways. For example, to increase dps by a set amount, you could choose to reduce the cooldown of one skill, increase a stat, increase the potency of a particular skill, add an additional effect to a particular skill. Through testing each option should be adjusted so that any combination can achieve a similar dps output. This way the player is truly free to make choices based on their own personal play-style.

[Avarghaladion]

Do you think the existing Materia system could be put to better use in endgame? I was disappointment by the limited situations Materia could be used in this game, and also the lack of flexibility. Perhaps the disappointment comes from the fact that I was expecting something similar to FFVII's Materia system, where you have a huge variety of options, including stat boosts, spells, skills, and other special affects.

Without requiring additional raids to be released simultaneously, why not give the end game raid gear materia slots, with special raid level materia that also drops from the raids / ex primals. I think the materia would need to be un-tradeable to ensure players aren't able to buy top level gear, however I see no issue with DoH being involved to meld.

If the materia will be special raid class, why not even throw in some interesting options like enhancements to specific job abilities, instead of just secondary stat boosts. I'm thinking along the lines of the options in Lord of the Rings online for enhancing the legendary weapons. Perhaps tomes gear could have the same thing too.

I understand balancing content is harder the more variables you add. For example, we don't want a situation where you're given multiple options for gear enhancements, but not really free to do so - like one particular enhancement makes certain instances too easy to beat cheaply, or not having a particular enhancement gives a massive disadvantage in certain instances. I think this can be achieved however, by allowing each player to achieve the same goal in different ways. For example, to increase dps by a set amount, you could choose to reduce the cooldown of one skill, increase a stat, increase the potency of a particular skill, add an additional effect to a particular skill. Through testing each option should be adjusted so that any combination can achieve a similar dps output. This way the player is truly free to make choices based on their own personal play-style.

I've thrown some pretty tame ideas out in this thread in the past about how they could add gameplay depth with minimal effort but really the addition of any variables whatsoever would be welcome. As rough as 1.0 was before they started fixing it, I never felt this pigeonholed. The materia system was closer to how you've described and you could make choices with your gear to optimize different things for different situations. People do argue that it's harder to balance, which is true, but this isn't a tiny company. We pay a hefty subscription and their current model requires pretty much zero effort to go into maintaining game balance on account of there being only one "correct" way to play any job at any given time. Every job is pretty much a reskin. They axe murdered any concept of situational gear or abilities. Even killed the elemental wheel, a staple of RPGs and JRPGs alike. Kill Ifrit with Fire! Kill Ramuh with Raiton!