FFXIV is in a Prime Position to Make Some Drastic Changes

[Cilia]

My thoughts:

1. Relic / Anima Weapons

-They're not strictly bad for what they offer. The main problem with them this time around is that they were released very late into the content cycle due to the difficulty of Gordias Savage, causing many players to freak out because 3.2 isn't far off and we've barely started. If we had the quest back during, say, 3.05, it wouldn't be so daunting because we know every even numbered patch raises the maximum iLv; here we have from 3.15 to 3.2 to get it done, while raiders have had from 3.05 to do Gordias Savage. In fact, they purposely delayed the Anima Weapon quest because raiders were having a hard time with Gordias Savage, and made it more difficult because of it.

For the most part, the grind would be far more bearable if it were released earlier, but to keep Gordias Savage weapons as the best and make sure people knew who had cleared the hardest content, they kept Anima Weapons shelved because you'll get the crazies who pump theyselves full of caffeine and get the equivalent iLv weapon in 3 days. (This still doesn't address the money issue most casual / solo players, the target audience of said Anima Weapons, likely won't be able to overcome.)

2. Horizontal Progression
-... is a waste of development costs. If you provide a greater variety of ways to progress, people will simply pick out the most efficient methods / paths and deride anyone who doesn't follow suit. As it stands the few ways of vertical progression we have get dull, and gear resetting every even numbered patch does get predictable and old, but adding in horizontal progression will not help - it's just going to annoy raiders who will need to run old content over and over again to gear up replacements / substitutes and scare away casual players because they can't necessarily make progress for a given amount of time.

Look at World of Warcraft's scrapped "Paths of the Titans" from Cataclysm: a perfect example of horizontal progression that was scrapped, most likely because if you deviate from the one that gives your class the most pluses people will not touch you with a 10 foot pole. This isn't much of a problem to casual players, but it is for people looking to get into the raiding scene... meaning so as long as the game is built around the raiding scene, vertical progression will continue to be a thing.

3. Competition

-There is competition among raiding Free Companies to see who can clear the content the fastest. There always is. Gordias Savage was just too hard for most this time around, leaving FCs to devolve into glorified chat rooms, but that's not the intended purpose.

I agree, there could be more done with Grand Companies (make branching parallel story paths for each?), but this game isn't built around PvP to the degree any other MMO is. There's no faction rivalry, and the PvP is given an excuse plot so people can go fite other players.

Either way, for every winner there must causally be a loser, and nobody wants to play a game to lose. Should there be more competition among players? Yes and no: it does help create an in-game identity and a group to identify with, but it also breeds a lot of negativity and butthurt if you aren't on the winning side. (I've not a competitive bone in my body, though, so take this for what you will.)

[Lexia]

He didn't mention housing.

[Zadist]

I really hate the way relics were implemented into this game. Sure I love being able to actually get one and it is too far into the process to change it now. But. Relics or Ultimate weapons have always been hard to obtain in previous Final Fantasy titles and for good reason. As I stated before that it is too late to do anything with the relics they could implement Ultimate Weapons that are much harder to obtain and have the relics as the easy Oprah giveaway option.

[Cherie]

This game is a success at the moment. Everything is the way it is because it is what makes people pay to play this game. Like you mentioned how awesome Rift was, and all those other games. You know what happened to cool innovative games like that? Flops! Wildstar? Please, we all know what happened to that game. Don't get me started on rift though, I loved that game... but it probably was too unapproachable for some. Easy MMOs sell! That's the difference. If this game swapped up the elements so much, we'd have another Rift or Wildstar and it would just die a horrible death like those and probably go free to play.

This game is fine. Official forums always say their MMOs suck. I frequented Rift and WoW forums, same deal. Once they start going into death throes by putting the relics on the cash shop or something, I'll get worried. People don't want innovation, they want the things they like copied from other games. They want it to be easy and require little effort or thinking. Just look at how first person shooters or football games work (rehashed over and over)! :P Hey, FFXI went on for what, 12+ years? These guys have incredible drive and willingness to make this MMO their life's work. I think it's in good hands.

[Alberel]

This game is a success at the moment. Everything is the way it is because it is what makes people pay to play this game. Like you mentioned how awesome Rift was, and all those other games. You know what happened to cool innovative games like that? Flops! Wildstar? Please, we all know what happened to that game. Don't get me started on rift though, I loved that game... but it probably was too unapproachable for some. Easy MMOs sell! That's the difference. If this game swapped up the elements so much, we'd have another Rift or Wildstar and it would just die a horrible death like those and probably go free to play.

This game is fine. Official forums always say their MMOs suck. I frequented Rift and WoW forums, same deal. Once they start going into death throes by putting the relics on the cash shop or something, I'll get worried. People don't want innovation, they want the things they like copied from other games. They want it to be easy and require little effort or thinking. Just look at how first person shooters or football games work (rehashed over and over)! :P Hey, FFXI went on for what, 12+ years? These guys have incredible drive and willingness to make this MMO their life's work. I think it's in good hands.

Those games did not fail because they were innovative, they failed because players got bored. Do you know why they got bored? Because there wasn't enough to do...

Do you know why players are moaning about FFXIV? Because they are bored because they have very little to do.

The game is not fine. It was great during the 2.x cycle because the content releases were fresh and interesting and regular. It's been going steadily downhill since the expansion launched and this can be easily traced by just looking at the delays to patches and the shrinking amount of content in each. Couple that with everything still following the same formula as the 2.x cycle and most of the new content already feels stale when we get it.

If easy sells then why are so many people complaining that everything is too easy? The devs even acknowledged in the latest live letter that there's no difficulty curve at the moment; the game just jumps from stupidly easy to insanely hard (savage) with little in between. That is why we're seeing so many players bored at the moment. If savage is too hard for you but everything else is too easy then you're screwed at the moment, and unfortunately a LOT of players fall into that bracket.

The OP isn't even asking for anything drastic. It's a request for some ability to allow us to customise our playstyle in some way. This is a basic feature of pretty much every MMO out there and is one of the best ways to help players keep the experience fresh and interesting. Right now once you hit the level cap your gameplay NEVER changes until the next expansion. That's a huge flaw in my opinion.

[Krylo]

1. The Relic Grind.

It is a lot of grinding for what you're getting, yes. Too much, probably, even, but this is a complaint that was already mentioned in the live letter. Their excise was to make it a similar amount of effort as the raid weapons, and with the raid being as inaccessible s it was this time, that resulted in a stupid grind.

Whether you accept that excuse or not (it's a bit half-baked, in my opinion), the fact remains that they plan on cutting down the grind (and raid difficulty) for the next tier.

2. Player choice in both gear and progression is basically nonexistent.

Have you played any of the games you're listing?

Rift did it 'right', sure. There's so many builds that finding the 'best' ones is difficult and, usually, isn't widely known until near the end of a balance cycle. Which means there's some meaningful choices! Great, right? Well sure, except that it couldn't maintain a subscriber base. Why? Most common complaint was that it was inaccessible for most people. There were too many choices, and no elitistjerks, or whatever site/group to give people their builds for them with any kind of authority. And so it went F2P and added the option of having your build decided for you by the game.

SWtOR streamlined theirs, and they did it because the old system was a complete mess with drastic rebalances coming almost every patch--relearning how to play my character over and over again during these times is a big part of why I quit (despite the fact I was playing a class they kept buffing). And, from what I understand (I've played a few times since, but not for long), their new system is still a mess leaving certain classes extremely undertuned. It also went F2P and is clearly struggling, if you ever play it.

ESO only has a couple viable builds per class, and they are, for the most part, the difference between a tank, heal, and DPS tree. Further, it's an action mmo, akin to Tera, and can't really be compared to a straight hotbar mmo. Same with BnS.

I haven't played the others but there's one other important point to be made:

As you said, they are all niche MMOs. FFXIV is not. And there's a reason for that, and part of that reason is that it is accessible. Part of it is you don't have to carry five gear sets for every class and build macros to swap items in combat for every attack. Part of it is the fact that you don't have to relearn your entire class every month when the developers realize a couple talents synergize in an unexpected way and redo your entire talent tree. Part of it is the fact you don't have to go searching online every other level to make sure you aren't breaking your character, only to find out that your choice at this level is meaningless and will never affect your play.

Asking FFXIV to implement mechanics that main stream titles avoid, after having had them and finding they don't work well, and that only niche games have, is asking FFXIV to become a niche game. Maybe you'd like it more, but the majority of people won't.

3. Competition should not be shied away from.

PvE competition looks like hunts. A bunch of people fighting over limited resources with nothing really mattering other than who gets there first. Or PvE contested areas in many games where everyone ignores it and no one cares (SWtOR, WoW, and others I've played have done this and I've never, in my decades of gaming, seen anyone actually participate in these mechanics other than incidentally while moving through the areas for other reasons). PvP requires development time and rebalancing of classes to work in a PvP environment, which is never the same as PvE balance, and also trends to be for a smaller portion of the player base, as PvPers tend to gravitate toward more PvP based games.

And I actually like open world PvP. I played almost exclusively on an open PvP server in Rift (I had a PvE server character to play with family that disliked PvP). I loved it.

However, I've seen many games go to absolute garbage trying to balance the two, and either breaking one for the other, or just having an unsatisfactory experience all around. It's best to focus on one or the other.

And again, PvE competition tends to either be ignored or just frustrating with no reason to improve.

If you really want to compete go download a parser and try to have the highest DPS, or whatever, in every dungeon you run. Just don't be a dick about it to the other people in the run.

[Shyle]

I agree that skill trees for the abilities (such as what Blade and Soul uses) could be a good way to inject some personalization (sp) to each player/class/character. For instance, in BnS, my force master has several skills, each offensive (and some defensive) skills have their own tree that can change the ability to maybe do spash damage, or add a 10s DOT or just do more damage if the enemy has a certain debuff etc. But in order for something like that to work, I think the hard-code rotation combat system would need to be altered too.

I think the only way that this game is going to get a breath of fresh air, is for the new content patch (which will only sustain the player based for 1-2 months until the next content patch, as it is with theme-park MMO's), as they've already dug themselves in with the antiquated systems and concepts they took from WoW. It would require a LOT of work to implement many things that are suggested.


Edit to add to this quote:

Asking FFXIV to implement mechanics that main stream titles avoid, after having had them and finding they don't work well, and that only niche games have, is asking FFXIV to become a niche game. Maybe you'd like it more, but the majority of people won't.

Sorry, but FFXIV is a niche game, it's niche for FF players/fans, what you're meaning to say is "casual", it's a casual game, it's accessible and easy to learn and play, but it's definitely niche. Also, mainstream MMO's definitely are *not* avoiding talent trees, some actually have gone REALLY deep into them (see path of exile). While I agree that there's always the optimal builds etc, that doesn't mean that talent systems are worthless or detract from the game. Some games like WoW and wildstar support multiple build sets that allow players to change on the fly to accommodate the encounter. Then I mentioned blade and soul that does it a bit differently (modifying the skills/abilities rather than building the skillset). GW2 just had their first expansion, and seems to have expanded on the skill builds and such. There have always been multiple builds that were considered the Meta for encounters for each class (dependent on play style and what activity/encounter they were doing).

[Valoiz]

Everything about this game is vertical, and streamlined -- It's a huge problem, that needs to be addressed.

.

Agree 100%

[myahele]

The fact that we can meld materia into Tomestone gear in 3.2 will be nice addition in terms of optional customization,so I am looking forward to that.

But with how quickly things get outdated in game (which then means it'll be needed for relics in the future) I am getting rather bored with it.

[Lorielle]

The fact that we can meld materia into Tomestone gear in 3.2 will be nice addition in terms of optional customization

This is NOT customization. Materia is NEVER about Customization(Not in ARR anyway). People will be melding their primary and secondaries if they can. DPS Crit and Det. BLM Spell Speed/Crit. SMN Det/Crit, etc. You stray from this, and you're doing your melding wrong. Sadly this extends into Crafting and Gathering too. You need to meld specific gears to reach minimum stats for Star Tier crafts until you can get the higher gear to alleviate some of the materia(which ultimately goes to waste anyway)

Edit: I just remembered. There IS some customization in materia in this game. Ironically, it's only in PVP with the Resist Materias.