So, pretty dead lately....

[Aeyis]

You can't get 2-4 hours of enjoyment each month? Just basing that off of other types of entertainment just as a movie or something along that line.

Even a B-movie has way more quality per hour. Due to the nature of MMOs.

[Ortamus]

I'm afraid 3.1 isn't going to help.

-1 Gold Saucer minigame (will be a stupid grind like Chocobo racing/triple triad because we can't have any minigames that are fun by their own right)

I can't agree more with this. I want to slap them for taking my second favourite Final Fantasy location and using it in the way they have. Who in the blue hell is testing this stuff? Yoshi P says the Golden Saucer is fun. Where by? Did he play "Skin Change We Can Believe In" and say "Outstanding, this was full of laughs and excitement, players will love this and shout my name in endorsement! And I want data on that. The players need to know I'm loved."

When I saw the notes about the upcoming game I was disappointed on a huge scale because it has Grind written all over it. I've said it before on this forum. Use the mini game ideas from Pokemon Stadium because they were real fun, forget rewards and titles, just something we can play with friends and have fun with.

[Ashkendor]

forget rewards and titles, just something we can play with friends and have fun with.

Then people bitch that it's "not real content" because there's no rewards.

They can't win for losing.

[Ortamus]

Then people bitch that it's "not real content" because there's no rewards.

They can't win for losing.

There is no greater reward than fun.

[Phireblast]

Only reason i'm continuing my sub is because i'm a raid leader. Some people actually want to progress in Savagexander, and I feel it would be a complete dick move to up and leave, especially since finding (competent) people in my server is a massive pain. 3.1(which we might not even see until OCTOBER tbh), doesn't look very appealing to me outside of the story.

-Void ark. wee something i'll find cool for the first week then start getting bored of it because of bad people and loot not dropping
-Airships. On paper, it honestly sounds nothing more different than a glorified treasure hunt.
-Relic. If they shoehorn crafting in this shit again, I might not even bother. Crafting is its own section of endgame content, let's keep it that way please.
-Story. Probably the only appealing thing here since things improved in late 2.0. However, this is only very much so temporary.
-Gold saucer. I'm convinced at this point there's nothing they can add there without making the games feel like a chore.
-Dungeons. Great, two more glorified hallways added to the list for esoteric capping.
-Beast tribe. I never liked them, but I might do it anyway for mounts i'll probably never use.

[TheUltimate3]

Out of curiosity, but what content could they possibly make that will make people "not bored"?

[Glasya]

Out of curiosity, but what content could they possibly make that will make people "not bored"?

To reiterate,

"FFXI" might be a dirty word around here but the developers could stand to take a few leaves from its book. Notorious Monsters, dungeons you explore within a time limit, dungeons in the overworld, frontier work helping out NPCs and defending caravans/fortifications from legitimately dangerous mobs, enemy raids on towns like XIV used to have with the Atomos events in 1.0.
I say all that and I've never actually played XI. But I wish I had. Because it sounds awesome.

You've also got stuff like the Gold Saucer.
Here's another idea: Add combat GATEs to the Event Square rotation. Then add Battle Square as a sort of roguelike Light Party dungeon with dynamic iLv scaling and increasingly difficult waves of enemies with RNG-handicaps. Make the final boss harder than Savage Coil/Alexander even without handicaps and award like 1 million MGP for clearing it all (with the assumption people wont for a long time). Then add slightly sub-raid level gear to the MGP vendor so it's a viable method of obtaining gear. Any worse than the equivalent of i200 in the current patch cycle, or without auxiliary effects/procs, and it's pointless though.
The reason people love FFVII's GS is because the rewards are good and the minigames are fun in their own right. XIV's is an embarassment, and all the protracted RNG/grind bullshit does is alienate people. Yoshi is deathly afraid of people having fun, but if Chocobo racing were more like Mario Kart I'd be playing it right now.

[TheUltimate3]

To reiterate,
Here's another idea: Add combat GATEs. Add a Battle Arena as a roguelike Light Party dungeon with dynamic iLv scaling and increasingly difficult waves of enemies with RNG-handicaps. Make the final boss harder than Savage Coil/Alexander even without handicaps and award like 1 million MGP for clearing it all. Then add slightly sub-raid level gear to the MGP vendor.

And how does any of that equate to fun and will last x amount of months between patches?

Just bouncing from these ideas. Combat GATEs will just go the same as normal GATEs, big for a month then forgotten.

A battle arena wouldn't be bad, except I honestly cant see them getting dynamic ilvl scaling to work (it will either be really hard or braindead easy. No in between), but it'll still be hot for a month then fall off. A final boss harder than Savage Alexander but the end rewards being sub-raid level gear? Yeah that'll never happen (Like really. It can't.)

The idea of putting gear for MGP is an interesting one, I'll give it that. But these ideas (at least to me) don't seem to fix whatever the problem people have is. They can add this, and people would still get bored and complain there isn't anything to do.

[Glasya]

And how does any of that equate to fun and will last x amount of months between patches?

The onus is on SE to create and implement ideas to keep people amused. I'm just spitballing here. Ultimately people are looking for something to work towards that isn't a horrific grind of stuff they've already run a million times (see: the relic, which didn't have a single unique fight/dungeon aside from Chimera/Hydra).

A smorgasbord of different content should be available when one logs in; "Do I want to do X? Or do I want to do Y? Or Z? They're all viable forms of progression."
I know it's a pain in the ass to implement/balance, but we really need auxiliary effects and procs on gear. It's the only way to inject any kind of variety into endgame gear. And when you have diverse gear you can create different ways of handing it for individuals to gear up in-tandem over the long-term.

[Xatsh]

The onus is on SE to create and implement ideas to keep people amused. I'm just spitballing here. Ultimately people are looking for something to work towards that isn't a horrific grind of stuff I've already run a million times (see: the relic, which didn't have a single unique fight/dungeon aside from Chimera/Hydra).

A smorgasbord of different content should be available when one logs in; "Do I want to do X? Or do I want to do Y? Or Z? They're all viable forms of progression."
I know it's a pain in the ass to implement/balance, but we really need auxiliary effects and procs on gear. It's the only way to inject any kind of variety into endgame gear. And when you have diverse gear you can create different ways of handing it for individuals to gear up in-tandem over the long-term.

The issue with gear is the devs need to try to perfectly balance everything.

It is a trade off in the end. Do you want perfect balance between all jobs within a role or do you want uniqueness and the ability to add more variety.

Yoshida has made it known his views are balance is extremely important more so then variety. For me I would rather have imbalance to a degree if it removes the restrictions.

Atm our stats on gear you can literately figure you by taking a excel spread sheet and dragging columns down. That is poor game design in my eye. IS it balanced yea, but it is a bad thing in the end the loss is just too great.

Honestly in the end Balance only matters in PvP. If you try to balance everything in PvE you remove something from the game. Not only should we have a large variety of stats. Why is there no elemental weaknesses, dmg type weaknesses (We have the resistances in the stat menu already so it is built into the game), Why does the environment and weather not effect the spells/attacks. Older mmos did this, why is a state of the art mmo so stripped down of features? It all comes down to over worrying about balance. Perfect Balance for PvE is a bad thing.