Thoughts on how to improve the game

[Chayala]

I'm sure that many people have complained about things in this game without having actually thought about how to fix things. Or even what the root causes of some of these issues are.

In this thread, try and identify things YOU think are wrong with the game and how they could be changed or modified to make the game more engaging. I'll start with a few.


1) Party size. I think that the party size should always have been 6 and 12 rather than 4 and 8. This would then mean TWO groups of 12 would make 24 for raids as they are now so that wouldn't require many additional changes. The amount of DPS to heals and tank ratio is always significantly skewed to the DPS side in MMo's. Even more in a game that has no real accountability for the DPS. Tanks and heals can be pointed at because HP bars drop (even if the fault is the DPS dropping stuff on the tank, or the DPS standing in stuff dying). So with a shield that their fragile emotions might be hurt, and the lack of allowance of a parser being allowed in this game since 2.0 DPS really can do whatever they want even more because of... Well look to 7. This would also allow for more support roles. This would take some work now but I feel it would allow a bit more room in groups for people to do things, and would help alleviate DPS ques AND stop people rolling tanks just for the ques and don't put their effort into the job. While this might take enough balancing to make it more of a thing for 4.0, if people KNEW that something was being done to alter que times and give the devs more room for player customization (In this case a support class would be more significant than in a 4 person party because at most in a 4 person party they buff 1 real DPS. Which would make them either useless in small groups or super OP in 8 man).

2) More varied effects of failed checks. Having debuffs or an additional phase added to a boss if you fail a check would be a nice way to allow recovery if they handle things well. An easy example (From back when it first came out) If Titan's heart wasn't broken, a large AoE could have been thrown out, and he could have had a buff that changed the patterns of his weights of the earth. If your mechanics were up to snuff and you just didn't have the DPS by gear or whatever, but were able to deal with the tank busters and other such things you could have won based on managing more and more difficult skills as the fight went on.

3) Develop some more original story lines. Put down the old FF games, get off the TV tropes looking for ways to make it "different" but still pay "homage". The characters in this game are flat and mostly unlikable. FFXI proved you could have a damned good story in an MMo. And it did it forever ago. I've been told that TOR has fairly good story as well, but that's not something I would know.

4) Implement some stuff like BCNM's in FFXI. elite type challenges that can be handled in multiple ways, that give good loot and other effects.

5) Invest in some more servers for housing. You say you have no money for it but let's not lie here. You could EASILY add more zones for houses but you refuse to do so. Although let's be honest here. You've dumped more money into failed projects than all but maybe capcom? I mean how much is the current bill for FFXIII VS... I mean. FFXV?

6) make your progression a bit more horizontal. Way back when in the hard modes, I thorough that it would have been so much better if there was an effect per primal weapon. Some sort of defensive proc or effect on titan's weapon(Maybe something for those who sometimes miss important dodges and keeps em alive once in a minute), Ifrit would be good for burst damage, while Garuda would allow attack speed or damage over time procs as you used them with the same item levels. This would have kept all the primal popular as different classes/players would gravitate to them rather than just going for boring Ilvl upgrades. Allowing more fights to stay current and have purposes means more people willingly go to them meaning that people are less likely to say they have "nothing" to do.

7) Open world content. Fates are there but aside from marks and spirit binding this whole game's open world is a little pretty (Tera is more imo. And their dragon ladies are definately a whole lot more dragon), it feels almost dead. Most fates fail or succeed matter little. They are a thing that feels slow, and not fun minus a few exceptions (the bridge one with the three stage kidnapping, and the bee hive defense/capture). FFXI had two things that could easily be implemented using a system similar to fates. One such fate is almost in place near camp Tranquil. Campaign and besieged would be wonderful additions. Large scale defenses with NPC's who we might actually come to know and remember. If we lose, in a small town, NPC's that might take a few people to clear out spawn and everyone involved in the reclaimation mission will get some nice exp/money and perhaps some other reward. If we lose on a larger scale settlement with an Aetheryite, why not have an NPC or more than one be kidnapped and we have to go rescue them. More EXP more active, more fun.

8) Doing stuff at cap level. People always try and find excuses not to do stuff at cap level (Guilty) and try and switch to jobs that can get exp. Even if it would help their friend out because it feels wasteful to not collect EXP when you can. So, in place of this, why not allow friends list people who group have an item that both can wear that will give half the exp that would be earned by one person to their friend? Or conversely, have your exp gained at capped level directly add to your rested bar little by little so that the exp does not feel wasted.

9) Many of the quests that you do while you level are storyish and shouldn't be repeatable. But the kill quests that require you to just slay X number of mobs to keep them in check, or collect some materials for an alchemist or a cook or something SHOULD be repeatable based on job. Giving people more options even if questing is slower than grinding fates would allow people to kinda do what they want and more options are options.

10) Inventory. With all the crap you need to hold if you're combat and non combat stuff it's amazing how much crap you'll get. more in game storage would be wonderful without having to pay for it on the mog store. I mean, this is a sub game and not a f2p one right? I know WoW gets away with it, but when they implemented it they had more content and plenty of ways to get equivalents of things through the game. When that shifted well.. Go look at the Like/dislike ratio of that stupid flying arcane cat thing that they released to cash shop during some of the worst of the WoD content drought. I don't disagree with a cash shop but I disagree when there is a cash shop but the game is significantly behind in it's content development, even more so when if the game has been as successful as SE has made it out to be that they've really not put any money back into it and keep it with a super small team for development.

Bitch if you want in this thread. But if you're going to bitch at least come up with at least semi-reasonable ways they can fix it. Tell me to quit if you think that I'm wrong about things. I just might. I only came back because my friends said the game had markedly improved. I've yet to see it.

[KitingGenbu]

I agree with most of your points. Alternatively to your 8th point, they could just implement a merit/capacity point system similar to 11 to battle the blandness of being capped. Sure it would mean more grinding but at least you'd be getting stuff to further strengthen your character on a lasting basis since gear doesn't really last long. The main reason why I dont stay consistently subbed to this game is because I do not feel there much depth. XI kept me playing for years because it did take a while to get halfway decent at all the classes you leveled and it further changed how classes played with those systems in place, to a degree at least. I would kind of lean more towards the capacity route personally since it requires you to play the class in order to get the points for it.

[Chayala]

I like the idea of merits, but they can't even give us gear with different uses because they're afraid people will "Require" them. So I'm not all that hopeful when it comes to the whole merit thing cause "People will demand I have X merits in X skill to get into this fight!" Although provided they are balanced well (Which with this team I doubt could happen) it would be wonderful to have and would be an alternative to 8. Thank you for sharing.

[KitingGenbu]

I like the idea of merits, but they can't even give us gear with different uses because they're afraid people will "Require" them. So I'm not all that hopeful when it comes to the whole merit thing cause "People will demand I have X merits in X skill to get into this fight!" Although provided they are balanced well (Which with this team I doubt could happen) it would be wonderful to have and would be an alternative to 8. Thank you for sharing.

Valid point, but it could honestly work how capacity points work in the sense that you're able to get everything and not just choose which. Since we didn't get passives yet I feel it would be a great addition as well as incorporating enhancements to existing abilities/passives (i.e. lower cooldown, increased potency, etc.)

As for the merit system, that might be difficult as you said since it tends to add new abilities/skills. Honestly, it would save them a lot of time just to remove the pvp skills and use them in the merit system. With pvp skills removed, just have certain existing skills do additional stuff or alternative effects when in pvp. Cuts development time that way since you're working with existing assets.

[Chayala]

To be honest I don't think this game is really made for PVP. It's an afterthought, and a rather bad one at that. They should really worry about the primary gain first before PVP and then once that is in a good solid state then work more on PVP, but since WoW had PVP arenas and other games have PVP (even if it's an honest disaster.) this game has to as well. Just as the world has to be 100% soloable and you have to be able to see everything because you sub, rather than invest into a character and deep story line to make you love the game. I miss the golden age of DAoC before EA got it's grubby mitts into the decisions and screwed up everything then took half the people working on it and forced em to make Warhammer. Copies of games that follow too closely tend to not do as well. They always seem to be the "New Coke" of the MMo's when they come out and most just go straight back to coke classic. I mean WoW had a tremendously bad expac this last go around(Like, super terrible) but i'd still say the writing was stronger than this one even with all the stupid plot holes.

On another note, here is hoping that when they wake up a few more people will give some suggestions, not that anyone who can do anything cares enough to read these.

[KitingGenbu]

To be honest I don't think this game is really made for PVP. It's an afterthought, and a rather bad one at that. They should really worry about the primary gain first before PVP and then once that is in a good solid state then work more on PVP, but since WoW had PVP arenas and other games have PVP (even if it's an honest disaster.)

I agree. To me the combat feels a bit too clunky for proper PvP, but again that's me. Also the three-way split for pvp was never a good idea (which people want this removed). Even one side vs one side isn't working so well with WoW since they had to implement the mercenary system to increase balance between sides. Even if SE doesn't remove the GC restrictions, they could at least have a merc system to alleviate some of the frustration.

[Moqi]

I'm just gonna list the reasons why I left and I what they should do if they want me back.

1) Remove token caps and lockouts. This is not a facebook game! All they do is slow down the very few people who would farm content to death in a week, that's it. For everybody else, it means that we have no way of catching up whenever we have a bit more free time. This game is supposed to be casual friendly but its mechanics are anything but that. There's not going to be a mass unsubbing if you let people get their gear whenever they want because it still requires time and almost no one is going to deprive themselves of sleep and food to get it in a day.

2) More midcore content. It's all either too easy or too difficult (and requires a static). Not much else to say. I'm talking about EX Primals difficulty.

3) Ease on the grinds. Some grind are just there to be grindy and it's so annoying because most of the time it's something you only do because of what comes after (which is fun). But if it gets too grindy, it's not worth it anymore because at the end of the day it's still just a game and there are plenty of fun games outside. So balance your stuff. I am talking about Gold Saucer (especially triple triads) or end game crafting/gathering and especially...

4) ..glamour. Let us glamour any piece from any class, it's a stupid restriction that doesn't even apply to everyone since a lot of DoM is not even DoM locked. And a shirt is just a shirt. Why does it requries millions and countless horus to obtain... see above. If something as insignificant as a shirt is too hard to get, it's not worth it anymore. You don't want your whole game to be like this.

5) More horizontal progression. This means get rid of most ilvls (Void Ark, Raids and token gear and crafted gear+materias should be all the same ilvl so you can mix and match) and give some secondary traits to gear that affect your skills. Raising the ilvls only means slowing us down because we gotta grind again before we attempt stuff, and for that, see above.

6) This is more of a summary of a lot of things I said above, but let us use all classes! What's the point in leveling them if we cannot use them because the gear comes out faster than we can obtain it? By the time I have my whm all geared up the ilvl is raised. Maybe I can manage to half gear another class but that's it. Everything is left behind and by the time I get to them I have new tokens to get to gear my whm again. It makes it all feel pointless and not worth it.

It's like SE fears that we're going to unsub because there is nothing left for us to do if they removed the lockouts, but the way they put them, we have nothing else to do because we are limited to one class, and what we can with that class is limited by the lockouts themselves. You know what I'm gonna do if I gear the whm in a week? I'm gonna gear my brd, and then use it on content, and then level up my ninja with a friend who's leveling a tank. There are so many things we could do if SE would just let us.

[Chayala]

I understand what you're saying Moqi and I both disagree and agree with your thing on the gated tokens. Perhaps gate the tokens for a little while upon release and then remove the gate after a bit? Another thing that I didn't think about is that yes, you often have people who complain about nothing to do because they have capped on the tokens that they need and thus can not earn more no matter what they did. If they wanted to keep a cap you could probably put a cap on Dungeons as what it is, and then cap different events giving alternate sources AND caps allowing people more reasons to do content after capped on stones.

[Moqi]

This is what happened to me basically.


Used WHM most of the time, loved it (still do), then leveled up Bard to try new things. ATMA and lights came, and it was impossible to use anything but my WHM if I wanted to progress. After a while, it wasn't worth sacrificing other classes and activities for it (couldn't even level other classes because dungeons and fates give light) so I put the relic away and did other stuff while still gearing up my whm with the token weapon. After more time passed, the difference in ilvls from my WHM to my BRD became too much (couldn't gear both properly) and I barely used my Bard (or summoner, I had that to 50 as well but only ever used SCH because of the shared gear) anymore, so I took up crafting classes. The way to 50 was smooth but then bam, another huge grind wall in materias and tokens for masterbook, got to 2* recipies, but the stuff I wanted to glamour requried super costly drops from the MB or rare, random mats form maps. Is it worth spending weeks of faming or hunderds of thousands of gil for a shirt I'm gonna wear a week before I decide to change my look? No, so I put that away as well.

What's left to do? Cap my tokens with my WHM and that's it.

If they wanted to keep a cap you could probably put a cap on Dungeons as what it is, and then cap different events giving alternate sources AND caps allowing people more reasons to do content after capped on stones.

Sorry I don't get what you're saying.

[Chayala]

A different cap from different sources. Perhaps 450 from instances/roulettes (To keep people interested in them as a whole). 300-400 from doing small raids(Because they give higher item levels to begin with), and then further separate it into larger raid content. This way if you did absolutely everything you coudl get a far larger amount, which would be more time put in and spread out. This is just thrown out numbers, but if you split them up rather than the 450 we have right now, but we might be able to scrape together 1200 or so if you are willing to do multiple avenues of attack rather than just spam dungeons. This way they can ensure that there are people wanting to do ALL parts of the game rather than doing the most efficent way to cap stones and then saying "Done" for the week.