Discussion on the future of Final Fantasy XIV content & variety

[Drazzan]

Hello everyone,

I've been struggling to put this down into words, but having had a discussion with a few other people, I feel it's high time to actually try.

Let me preface this post by explaining that I genuinely love Final Fantasy XIV, I've played from 1.0 right through till now, and plan to play onwards, I love the Free Company that I founded, and I love being within the world. But I am concerned. Yoshida mentioned in an interview yesterday that they wouldn't add any 1v1 because it could disrupt the balance of PvE with how skills work - now putting aside the fact that skills already work differently in PvP, why can't we have this? Just for the sake of having fun? We don't need a reward progression structure, just more content to play and have fun with. But there seems to be more behind the lack of content variety that I would like to talk about.

Throughout the 2.X series, it was almost a staple formula for what we expected in a patch; Main Scenario, Side Quests, Beast Tribe, EX Primal, 3 Dungeons, 24-Raid OR 8-Raid. Although this seems something that is likely to continue through the 3.X series as well, which isn't bad, I love new content, but lets talk about each of these a bit further.

Dungeons: Thematically and visually, the Dungeons are great, throughout Heavenward it's always refreshing to push through these Dungeons and complete them. However, every single Dungeon follows the same pattern -> Trash -> Mediocre Boss -> Trash -> Mediocre Boss -> Trash -> Final Boss - an incredibly linear pattern. Why is it not possible to have some variety? Are the developers so focused in their way of working that they don't want to try anything new? Is it a if it isn't broke, don't fix it situation? Why can't 1/3 of the new dungeons be "Hard", and mean it, with challenging content and bosses that reward a surplus in Esoterics or whatever?

I was genuinely excited at the prospect of using Flying Mounts in Neverreap, and journeying to these Islands in any order you see fit to progress - alas it didn't turn out that way, and was instead a linear path. Remember 1.23 Toto-Rak with three different final bosses depending on the route you took through the Dungeon? Fantastic! Of course repeating it a thousand times wasn't, but there was interesting variety - even doing the Temple of Qarn puzzle each time in FFXIV still makes me happy. "Flame Left, Strawberry Right. Because Strawberries grown in the RIGHT conditions!".

Those that played 1.23~ will remember the difficulty of Cutter's Cry, Aurum Vale and Dzaemel Darkhold, not so difficult as to be impossible or gating, but hard enough to be challenging and to have to play your role correctly to complete them. Even in the 2.0 Alpha, we had Tam-Tara Deepcroft with side-paths and sub-bosses that weren't part of the critical path. This was removed however, as people found it "too confusing". Why can't we have this back?

We were told before that Heavensward would be more difficult and designed differently because A Realm Reborn catered to people who are new to the MMO genre, and Heavensward is for the players, those that have progressed - yet nothing has changed in the new content we've seen so far.

Story Content & Gear Something that I expect to never see the light of the day is any form of challenging story content. I LOVED progressing through Final Coil and hitting them milestones of story, it felt rewarding, and it felt right. One of the best applauded moments of the Main Scenario of Heavensward was the Halatali Instance, and the Hinterlands battle with the Goblins Instance - the first due to progressing through a solo dungeon with NPCs, it was new - and the second due to everything happening and the little difficulty presented by it, depending on the job you were on.

With Alexander, and now Savage, I feel little push to go through this content aside from gaining very small ground from vertical progressed gear that is not required for anything but min-maxing - this gear won't be crucial in the future, nor will it give an edge in future content, as it will likely be replaced in Patch 3.15 or similar. I hate to bring up FFXI, as I know the sort of response it can receive around here, but when you got a piece of end-game gear in XI, such as Byakko's Haidate, Relic, or what-not, it was a permanent piece in your arsenal for months or years to come - it was worth it - and that's without even mentioning the Horizontal Progression, and multiple end-game sets that was present in both XI and 1.23.

Group Content Am I the only one that wants challenging content for smaller groups? Yoshida mentioned before that ARR was focused on 8 man hardcore content, and it would likely change in the future where they would make either four man hardcore content, or maybe 16 man - I believe this was an interview. But with Heavensward now here, it seems likely that the norm from 2.0 will continue here too. While the 8-man content is good and challenging (absolute gear checks aside), there is a missing difficulty outside of anything 8-man that I think needs filled. I would love to do hardcore 4-man content that requires everyone to be playing at their absolute best.

Content Variety We always know what to expect with new content (3 Dungeons, New Raid, etc,etc) and that's why I'm genuinely excited for the Free Company Airship stuff mentioned previously because it's something unseen and new. To me it sounds like a sort of procedurally generated terrain that allows your FC to explore as a group to find new items, enemies and so on. This is brand new content that sounds exciting and engaging. Assuming it's more difficult than a Peisteskin Map - and while difficulty isn't the be all end all of design, it certainly helps in making something feel rewarding. Looking back once again to 1.23, we had Chocobo Caravans and Hamlet Defence which while boring when repeated, were still something new and interesting at the time.

Conclusively, I would like the patch formula to change, I would like content to be a bit more difficult, and for everything to not be catered towards absolute completion on a daily challenge - outside of just vertical gear progression (Savage) that is quickly replaced.

Do we want to be sitting here two years from now, excited for 4.2's brand new linear 3 dungeons, 1 raid, side quests, and main scenario? I'm genuinely worried that the developers are scared of trying something new for fear of alienating their playerbase, so they will be playing it safe from now on.

tl;dr - Content variety is all very same-y and we know what to expect. Patch formula hasn't changed, and content looks to be continuing the same trend in Heavensward - I hope at some point it changes to cater the midcore crowd.

Edit: I also forgot to mention the whole PvP thing - for the sake of lore (which I understand is important) they would rather stick to that than give the players a free 72-man PvP that FRIENDS can play together and have fun with. Queue times would be reduced, you could still get EXP/Marks for your company, there is literally NO negative to creating a FREE 72 Man PvP. Restricting EVERYTHING to GC with no option to play in pre-made groups with friends is making PvP very undesirable.

[Gilthas]

I hate to bring up FFXI, as I know the sort of response it can receive around here, but when you got a piece of end-game gear in XI, such as Byakko's Haidate, Relic, or what-not, it was a permanent piece in your arsenal for months or years to come - it was worth it - and that's without even mentioning the Horizontal Progression, and multiple end-game sets that was present in both XI and 1.23.

And you know what I hate when people bring up FFXI's horizontal progression? That they always pretend like it was this spectacular and perfect system and completely disregard the major problems such a system brings with it.

If you keep gear relevant for years, they need to prevent players from getting all their gear rapidly and being "done with the game". This means poor drop rates and lockouts that would put FFXIV to shame. I'd rather have FFXIV's system where I get new gear periodically to FFXI's system where you got 1 or 2 upgrades per year if you were lucky. I spent 3 years on FFXI's endgame chasing a Ridill, Adaberk and Haidate. Only got the Haidate because they fixed Ullikummi. Don't want this crap ever again.

[TheUltimate3]

Dungeons: If I had to hazard a guess, I think it's more or less because they expect their players to not have patience for that. You use Toto-Rak as an example of having 3 paths to a boss, most people I know can't stand Toto-Rak, partly because of that. Go a certain way, and the whole dungeon feels longer, which doesn't help that they all look exactly the same which then makes you feel like you are on Namek. From what I can gather, people want fast dungeons and don't want to spend more time in a single one than they need to.

In terms of dungeon difficulty, yeah just about the same deal. A dungeon is really hard so long as the people going in are not super juiced. Make a dungeon that is super hard at the beginning of the level grind, and people won't do it. By the end however, you'll be so massively juiced that the original challenge is gone.

Story Content & Gear: And you shouldn't expect super challenge story content in the future, mainly because quite a few people was livid that the true resolution to the Seventh Umbral Era storyline was locked behind top end raids. Some just want to experience the story and not have it locked behind a raid schedule, hence Alexander (Normal).

Now with Savage, as a dirty non-Raider such as myself, I would think the point of Savage was the difficulty in actually doing it, not so much the story and what not. Different strokes for different folks of course but for those banging their heads in Savage now, they do so knowing full well that the stuff they are going to get will be replaced and yet they are still in there doing it.

Group Content: Yes there should be harder content for 4 man groups. I'd think more along the lines of Mythic (WoW term. Bite me.) 4-Man dungeons, anything more (like a 4-Man Alexander or 4 man Primals) is just...not necessary.

Content Variety: This one has always been the weird one to me. They add new stuff, and they add it far often then I see most games do, what else can they add and how much do people want them to add at once? Does the game literally have to have a dozen different things to do at level cap to be enough, only to add more completely new things each subsequent patch? Can they even do that?

[Drazzan]

And you know what I hate when people bring up FFXI's horizontal progression? That they always pretend like it was this spectacular and perfect system and completely disregard the major problems such a system brings with it.

If you keep gear relevant for years, they need to prevent players from getting all their gear rapidly and being "done with the game". This means poor drop rates and lockouts that would put FFXIV to shame. I'd rather have FFXIV's system where I get new gear periodically to FFXI's system where you got 1 or 2 upgrades per year if you were lucky. I spent 3 years on FFXI's endgame chasing a Ridill, Adaberk and Haidate. Only got the Haidate because they fixed Ullikummi. Don't want this crap ever again.

FFXI was not perfect, I can admit that, but Horizontal Progression at least gives players something to aim for. Even looking back to 1.23 there were multiple varieties for people to work toward, there were AF Sets, Meld Sets, GC Sanction Bonus Sets, Darklight sets, Militia Sets and so on - Gear still came out regularly, it's just that there were multiple choices at the level cap for what you wanted to specialise in. If I recall properly, BLM could either go for Crit Rate Set, Magic Attack Set, Potency Set, Recast Timer Reductions, Ability Buffs, Intelligence Set and so on - so there was possibilities there.

[Drazzan]

Dungeons: If I had to hazard a guess, I think it's more or less because they expect their players to not have patience for that. You use Toto-Rak as an example of having 3 paths to a boss, most people I know can't stand....etc

While this is true, Item Level Sync exists for a reason, if they were more stringent and strict about its use, it would maintain difficulty of existing content instead of everything eventually becoming a face-roll.

[Gilthas]

stuff

Gear also came out regularly in FFXI too. Actual upgrades on the other hand...

[Ibi]

FFXI was not perfect, I can admit that, but Horizontal Progression at least gives players something to aim for.

The way you phrased this makes it sound like you think Vertical Progression does not give anything to aim for. Could you elaborate on why you think that's the case?

Also, it's worth linking some of the better answers to the reddit cross-post of this thread:

/u/rainzer explains why we don't see content catered to the small hardcore population and why we don't see more challenging content for small groups here. tl;dr: Developers will never be able to create content fast enough to satisfy that subset, classes aren't balanced close enough in small group content.

/u/SCDareDaemon explains why we don't see more complex dungeons here. tl;dr: Players have shown time and again that they'll always seek the path of least resistance.

/u/Steftiffe provides some hopeful quotes for Yoshi-P's plans for the future here, along with sources.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

On the subject of 1v1, and from someone who LIKES PvP: No.

Why? Because I don't even like being stopped for Triple Triad matches. I don't play it, I'm completely disinterested, but refusing a match is like kicking a puppy in front of children, it seems. And from a Machinist's point of view: tanks are well, tanks. Healers can heal, of course, and every DPS but my job has access to some kind of self heal. So yeah, I'll pass on dueling. I stay pretty well geared, and neither want to face someone over/undergeared, or be synced down just for a 1 on 1. There's also the lesser broached topic of harassment, which we all know how to handle, but it still needs to be said. So, politely, no.

[Savagelf]

sound to me you want ffxi time gear. which not a good ideal. basic your post is more please make ffxiv into ffxi-2 which won't happen

[Drakeos]

Acually i LOVE the idea of random bosses per run (aka one could be using mechanics to defeat the boss or one could be spank and tank ? then switches around with different rare bosses (or unique final boss if they ever get it) for newer future contents