FFXIV and Risk vs. Reward

[RyuRoots]

What? If Heavensward did anything right, it was the storyline. It was leagues ahead of the filler story that was ARR, and better than 2.0.2-5 (2.55 topped it though). Everyone I know feels the same way to, the story was fantastic. Now 3.1's story?... yeah, that was shoddy to say the least. But I suppose 3.1 has been a disappointing patch all around for most.

See, you had me and then you had to go and be so mind-warpingly wrong that I don't even have words to adequately capture the depth of it.

[Colorful]

See, you had me and then you had to go and be so mind-warpingly wrong that I don't even have words to adequately capture the depth of it.

I will cry for the monumental loss that is the great RyuRoots.

But I'm basing this off the increased amount of complaints on both the official forums, Reddit, and my in-game friends. Yoshida set us for disappointment, "We had to play it safe for 2.0, but we'll try new things with 3.0", "We had to play it safe for 3.0 as it was our first expansion launch, but we'll bring new things with 3.1", and then we got... the Diadem. Content hated by a substantial amount of people, a 90 minute grindfest that had my fingers hurting after 2-3 runs. The 3.1 story was a setup chapter, in a similar vein to Alexander part 1, but no one liked that either. Duty finder was broken, Anime weapon and the side quest line was delayed. Oh, and last but not least, no Ishgard housing.

Void Ark is probably the best piece of content for me since 2.4, great story, great boss design, great music, etc. I don't think it makes up for the Diadem and the dungeon we had to give up for the Diadem (I find dungeons infinitely more fun than that piece of content).

[Kaurie]

See, you had me and then you had to go and be so mind-warpingly wrong that I don't even have words to adequately capture the depth of it.

Well.. 3.1 story wasn't that great. I mean, especially compared to 2.4, 2.5, 2.55 and 3.0. I'd give it a 6, as it was mildly interesting, but had no real spins, twists or character development, and it was light on humor, action, romance, and drama.

Features wise? 3.1 has been pretty disappoint.

New Dungeons? Quite uninteresting / easy
New Void Ark? Way too easy, no coordination needed, the entire epic feel of the 24-mans was just absent - the best part of this is the story
New Exploration Missions? Would be nice if we actually explored in these. Nah, let's just stand still and kill mobs with zero to few mechanics in the same spot for 90 minutes, wipe our eyeballs clean of blood, and queue up again!

[Voltyblast]

I recommend deleting all of the posts and just edit the first: you can bypass the (idiotic, yes) word limit that way.

[Saccharin]

"But Cina, how annoying would it be if I had to actually fight stuff that aggro'd me while I was running through Sea of Clouds!?" Okay, sure. You're telling me that while you're doing beast tribe quests or crafting or whatever, you'd rather just run away or burst it dead and move on. Does this make the world feel real to you? Does it make you feel like you're challenged at all, or that the world is a place that might harbor some danger? What if some enemies aggro'd to smell, sound, use of magic, or low HP? What if some enemies only came out at night or got stronger when the weather was rain or heat wave?

What if this stuff actually mattered? What if you could still burst that poor Paissa in 3 moves but a rather testy Bull Dahlmel could oneshot YOU if it was around? I do not argue that every enemy have 10x the HP they have and 10x the ATK power. No, I argue that the range of strength be bracketed and that enemies spawn that are easy for players to defeat, and some that are difficult, and some very difficult. This adds more flavor, more variety, and most importantly, more risk.

Yip, that's right the playerbase for ANY MMO is casual and in FF14 case it's very casual. Have a look at the Savage Alex thread to see that they are likely going to nerf AS3 (maybe 4) because the 'hard core' crowd just isn't big enough.

If mobs were unique and compelling then by all means make them more challenging but the variety of mobs of the same type are almost identical in how you approach them.

If they had 10x the health where's the challenge, that's just grind - tediousness is not compelling game play.

So if an enemy only came out at night what you would have is people camping it until 'night occurred' similar to what we have in hunts. 100 people on one mob might sound fun but as we know it has issues in practice.

If a mob attacked you at low health, where's the fun in that likely dying due to 'RNG'. If it was attracted to magic is that fun for melée and magic users.

I think they have that already in these single boss fates but no one does them because there's no reward.

Harder sound since on paper but it has repercussions.

[Devils_Lawyer]

In terms of making mobs more "fun" then i used to play a mmo where every time a killed mob would re spawn it had a certain chance to be given a special "bonus" to its statistics.

It could be anything from more hit points, increased physical/magical defense, increased damage dealt etc.

Maybe not a very big overhaul but at least something that would make 1 mob stand out a tiny bit from his/her million identical copies.

[KitingGenbu]

In terms of making mobs more "fun" then i used to play a mmo where every time a killed mob would re spawn it had a certain chance to be given a special "bonus" to its statistics.

It could be anything from more hit points, increased physical/magical defense, increased damage dealt etc.

Maybe not a very big overhaul but at least something that would make 1 mob stand out a tiny bit from his/her million identical copies.

I suppose you could relate that to the NM popping mechanic done in diadrem just in the open world to a less degree. Killing a certain enemy type having a chance to spawn a special enemy type (which was also done often in XI) that drops something good.

[Evtrai]

Yip, that's right the playerbase for ANY MMO is casual and in FF14 case it's very casual. Have a look at the Savage Alex thread to see that they are likely going to nerf AS3 (maybe 4) because the 'hard core' crowd just isn't big enough.

This is a terrible misconception going on around in about why there's low savage clear numbers, and one that seems to be segregating to make the developers think this is the case.

Alexander isn't that hard, the fights is boring, people already knew what was happening, the bosses are extremely bland, people stopped raiding mainly because the new raid is incredibly boring and the boss designs being uninteresting and the fact that they recycled the mechanics as far as going to make the boss nearly identical to first coil snake boss didn't help at all, this alone ruined most of people's motivation to continue trying, the fact that all classes are now DPS, healer and tanks included, all this did make groups I know loose interest, and it did for my group.

OMG GUYS! REMEMBER THE MANIPULATOR??? WHERE YOU FOUGHT IN THIS ROOM THAT LOOKS THE SAME AS THE OTHERS!? so epic of a fight, what a memorable boss.

I recently for fun went with my group to do a full run of binding coil of Bahamut and remembered how amazingly designed the fights were, mechanic wise they were pretty awesome, and they did have DPS checks aswell but also ability checks which Alexander does not have, it's literally the worst raid I have played in any of the MMO's I have been, the fact that it's "Hard" had nothing to do with the actual reason the Alex clears are low.

[Saccharin]

This is a terrible misconception going on around in about why there's low savage clear numbers, and one that seems to be segregating to make the developers think this is the case.

Alexander isn't that hard, the fights is boring, people already knew what was happening, the bosses are extremely bland, people stopped raiding mainly because the new raid is incredibly boring and the boss designs being uninteresting and the fact that they recycled the mechanics as far as going to make the boss nearly identical to first coil snake boss didn't help at all, this alone ruined most of people's motivation to continue trying, the fact that all classes are now DPS, healer and tanks included, all this did make groups I know loose interest, and it did for my group.

OMG GUYS! REMEMBER THE MANIPULATOR??? WHERE YOU FOUGHT IN THIS ROOM THAT LOOKS THE SAME AS THE OTHERS!? so epic of a fight, what a memorable boss.

I recently for fun went with my group to do a full run of binding coil of Bahamut and remembered how amazingly designed the fights were, mechanic wise they were pretty awesome, and they did have DPS checks aswell but also ability checks which Alexander does not have, it's literally the worst raid I have played in any of the MMO's I have been, the fact that it's "Hard" had nothing to do with the actual reason the Alex clears are low.

SE haven't come up with these conclusions by reading forums they have access to sever logs and can see where, why and when people are struggling with it and they will direct any possible nerfs to address those roadblocks.

Boring is an excuse to give up. If this 'bored person' was progressing without any issues they'd stay but because no progress is being made then there's the litany of excuses. If you've been raiding for a while there tends to be encounters that are very similar to old one. FF14's combat system is fairly simple so it does limit the types of encounters you can make.

[Evtrai]

SE haven't come up with these conclusions by reading forums they have access to sever logs and can see where, why and when people are struggling with it and they will direct any possible nerfs to address those roadblocks.

That's true, SE has been amazing so far in interpreting the data.