Suggestions: Keeping the Game Fun

[TheUltimateSeph]

The game is already endlessly fun. SE has done an amazing job making an amazing gaming experience with FFXIV. From the unique dungeons to the incredible trials and raids and of course the beautiful Relic Weapons that we go on an awesome journey to obtain and build. Not to mention housing and gold saucer and pvp, crafting, diadem, etc. There are endless possibilities for fun. If you aren't having fun with the way the game currently is I'm sorry. I don't know how anyone could not be having fun playing. If it's getting monotonous perhaps mix up your activities in game? Take a break from the stuff you usually do and try something you haven't done yet or something you don't do often.

[Alahra]

Final Fantasy XI was an extremely successful MMO, and not many people seem to realize that.

The counterpoint to this is that Final Fantasy XIV is more successful than Final Fantasy XI, and that's in part because it evolved beyond many of these things, which seem to be less popular among the overall MMO customer base.

FFXI was indeed rather successful for its time. As far as I'm aware, it had become the #1 MMO in the States (though MMO's were much smaller back then) before WoW's launch in 2004—and WoW completely and utterly dwarfed every single accomplishment that FFXI ever made in terms of subscriber numbers. There's a reason that this game is so much like WoW in many respects, and there's also a reason that it has a larger subscription base than FFXI ever did.

I consider us fortunate that this game has managed to hold on to as much of FFXI's spirit as it has, and while I wish it had held on to more of it, I also realize that it would probably be a less successful game—and given the need for the game to be a runaway success following the failure of the original FFXIV, A Realm Reborn couldn't afford to jeopardize its success.

I will always love FFXI—I keep my subscription active almost out of respect to it. But I have also become rather fond of FFXIV, and in many ways, it's a much better game than FFXI ever was, and it's attracted more players as a result. I'll take a larger community (to a point—not like, WoW large) if it means sacrificing some of the things I loved about a game that had a much smaller audience.

Honestly...FFXI has a ton of content to do now. They've done a pretty phenomenal job of keeping it updated over the past few years, and if you ever feel like a trip down nostalgia lane, it's probably worth checking out again, at least for a little while. I'm 2/3s of the way through the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline, and at some point I'll stop playing FFXIV long enough to actually get it done, but it's a great way to cap off an amazing game that I'll remember forever.

But one thing that going back to it over the past 6 months or so has taught me is that there is still a ton of stuff I love about this game that FFXI doesn't have (like, actual character customization, for one >.>), so despite my love for FFXI, I want FFXIV to be its own game. I have seen that the developers do have the ability to create content that is reminiscent of FFXI in Diadem—and my hope is that they can iron out all the various issues with it to give us something that has a lot of that same spirit without all of the other nonsense dragging it down and keeping it inaccessible to the modern MMO player.

[Waryax]

If I remember correctly, 1.0 was a lot more like FFXI and most of us probably know where that ended. Not to say that there weren't other major problems too, but the devs have made it quite clear that they're not going to make FFXIV into another FFXI, rather they want to do their own thing.

[Metathetical]

Elemental Damage - [...] Black mages should have every elemental attack spell that comes in three varieties: single attack, DoT, and AoE [...] Attack spells should all have the same potency, unless used on a monster that either resist or outright absorbs the damage

This would be a great way to add hotbar bloat without adding much depth, because 90-95% of the time the enemy wouldn't resist or be weak to any elements so you'd just pick whichever element you like the most and go through your rotation. And for the other 5-10%, you'd just... do the same rotation but with the right element. The only times where it might possibly be interesting would be if you had mixed elemental resistances in the same pack.

Think about the other single-player FF games: elemental weaknesses basically never forced interesting choices, it just became 'equip this weapon to deal double the damage' or 'only use fire magic'. That's boring.

Like I said in the post, there can be an optional land mass or zones where people who enjoy this at least have the options whereas those who don't can continue with the way things are now.

So why would people go there? What incentive are you going to give people to do the harder content?

[MagiusNecros]

Think about the other single-player FF games: elemental weaknesses basically never forced interesting choices, it just became 'equip this weapon to deal double the damage' or 'only use fire magic'. That's boring.

So far BLM is pretty much only use Fire Magic. So yeah BLM can be pretty boring. Where all the fun spells at.

[Kaurie]

This would be a great way to add hotbar bloat without adding much depth, because 90-95% of the time the enemy wouldn't resist or be weak to any elements so you'd just pick whichever element you like the most and go through your rotation. And for the other 5-10%, you'd just... do the same rotation but with the right element. The only times where it might possibly be interesting would be if you had mixed elemental resistances in the same pack.

Think about the other single-player FF games: elemental weaknesses basically never forced interesting choices, it just became 'equip this weapon to deal double the damage' or 'only use fire magic'. That's boring.

It wouldn't need to add skill bloat. For example, we already use a lot of stances and (borrowing from GW2 here) we could have 4 elemental stances. Each stance would change 5 skills on your hotbar (similar to how diurnal/nocturnal affect your skills). You then would have 20 skills on a total of 9 buttons.

These stances you could change in combat, and I'd have them follow roughly the following:
1. GCD, low damage, basic attack i.e. Fire I
2. 20 s CD, high damage, single target attack i.e. Fire IV
3. GCD, aoe damage i.e. Fire II
4. 60s CD, Armor, provides different effects by element - (Fire provides little defense but burns attacks, earth high defense, water/ice chills/heavies, air increases evasion) 10 s duration
5. 120s CD Self-serving support buff, shares a CD between elements (i.e. fire = haste/ss, air/thunder = crit, water/ice = self heal or MP regen, earth = removes debuff)

Then have each element have the following effects:
1. Fire causes burning, water causes dropsy, earth causes bleeding, thunder causes shock, ice causes chill
2. When a mob is weak to an element and its status effect has been applied, all elemental damage received will hit for the weakness bonus (i.e. if weak to fire, you cast an Ice spell while it is burning, it takes the extra weakness modifier)
3. Have the elemental debuffs affect other spells. For example, a bleeding enemy who has been hit by
a water attack will bleed faster (higher potency per tick on bleed)
a fire attack will be cauterized (instant damage equal to the amount of both bleeding + burning debuff)
a thunder attack will result in extra thunder damage per spell

This will result in various best methods depending on the weakness of the mob and your party composition. For example, 1 BLM would apply bleeding with earth, the next BLM would use water to increase the dot potency, then both BLMs would use thunder. However, if there was a single BLM it would be better to use earth for bleeding, water to increase potency, and then fire to cauterize and repeat.

This is all just a random idea that is in part taken from Elementalist in GW2 (mostly the first bit)

[MagiusNecros]

snip

I like it. Adds a bit more depth and strategy.

Edit: I think what HW is missing is traits for levels 50-60. For BLM I think these would be sufficient and solve my complaints and save us skill bloat. Mind you these are just ideas. Still I'd want meaningful traits for all classes out there and not just BLM.

Enhanced Intelligence 4 - Increase INT stat by 8.
Enhanced Surecast+ - 30% chance of instant recast. Prevents interruption from damage, status effects, knockback, draw in, Death to get off a final spell before you die.
Enhanced Scathe+ - 50% chance of double damage. Pretty simple.
Thunderstorm - Thundercloud Proc becomes an AoE Thunder on proc(basically a free AoE flare). 5 yalms. But let's be honest these guys are saving T4 for a expansion just for this purpose. And the only reason it isn't a thing is so Summoners have the AoE DoT schtick. Especially with DeathFlare.
Magick and Mend 3 - 4 stacks. 40% increase to base action damage and healing. Under AF4 Fire spells have a chance to inflict a burning DoT. No save(nothing is immune to it). Under UI4 Ice spells have a chance to Freeze(Bind but they can't be freed, move, or attack until duration is over) however bosses are immune.
Enhanced Lethargy - Enemies susceptible to Slow and Heavy are now petrified. Creatures once immune to Slow/Heavy are no longer immune. They are however immune to Petrification.

QoL change - Ley Lines is bigger. Thanks.

[Shurrikhan]

1. Fire causes burning, water causes dropsy, earth causes bleeding, thunder causes shock, ice causes chill
2. When a mob is weak to an element and its status effect has been applied, all elemental damage received will hit for the weakness bonus (i.e. if weak to fire, you cast an Ice spell while it is burning, it takes the extra weakness modifier)
3. Have the elemental debuffs affect other spells. For example, a bleeding enemy who has been hit by
a water attack will bleed faster (higher potency per tick on bleed)
a fire attack will be cauterized (instant damage equal to the amount of both bleeding + burning debuff)
a thunder attack will result in extra thunder damage per spell

One of the ideas I was playing with here on the forums back in 1.x was the idea of stacking elements. In other words, in addition to HP, each mob would additionally hold another factor of a floating value and type, called element. The trick to it was making it so that only one element could be present at a time, while still allowing for interplay and elemental synergy. In other words there would always have to be a conditionally dominant element, such as Ice>Water/Lightning>Fire>Wind. The second was that the concept didn't really allow for Rasp--Earth element (the only real example of which is petrifaction)--or simultaneous Shock (lightning element) and Burn (fire element).

Additionally, it needed Heat as a secondary element, at all times, in order to pursue synergy (Fire + Water = surrounding Steam, + Ice = Mist > Frost + Wind = Blizzard, etc). For the most part, heat alone would do the trick, or a combination of Heat (probably just called Fire) and Moisture (probably just called Water), though that would disallow future Earth/Lightning synergy or conflict (e.g. a statue spawns in heavy Earth element, and has increased defense based on that value, but it can be stripped directly, or more efficiently, by lightning magic).

[The most accurate would be four element values held--Ice/Fire, Water, Lightning/Earth, and Wind, but that would be akin to holding five times the health bars for each mob at all times...]

And last is of course the player element. People would actually have to time when to blow Fire on a Ice'd enemy. Each element diminishes over time, but at different rates, and, especially in the case of Ice and Earth, different conditions. (Ice and Earth both decrease with enemy attempted movement, based on their attack power.)

Ice slows movement speed and increases Wind AoE damage to the target; Earth slows movement and action speed while increasing defense and magic defense (except to Lightning, which negates Earth element); Fire functions as a DoT and increases Wind AoE damage around the target; Lightning does damage over time with a chance at paralysis and chaining; Wind buffs and expands Fire AoEs; and Water does nothing on its own, but sources Ice, Steam (Fire + Water) and Mist (Water + Wind), and may expand Earth effects (as a ground AoE, and increases Lightning vulnerability.

Just some thought-munchies.

As a avid FF fan, it still rubs me the wrong way when i used Fire spells on bomb-like mobs xD It just looks...wrong, though i reckon it would be a complete mess to add mob weaknesses to the game now.

I actually wouldn't mind the idea of using Fire on a Bomb if I could just buff so much it blows itself up early (away from the party). Similarly, it would be nice if I could overcharge a Garuda-esque wind creature's charged attack with wind magic as to make it aim elsewhere... but that's even more complicated than the above pipedream.

[Nandina]

. . .So why would people go there? What incentive are you going to give people to do the harder content?

I never implied that there wouldn't be rewards or anything, just another way to obtain it. By optional I meant, people who don't prefer that type of content don't have to do it. Just as those who don't prefer to do Binding Coil or Alexander Savage don't have to do it but still have ways of acquiring rewards. None of this has to be the norm across the board for everyone. And like the poster said above me, black mage is even more boring now lol. And as far as most monsters resisting elements, newer enemies can be made to have elemental weaknesses and affiliations.

As for the hotbar issue, I personally feel there's adequate space. I personally reserve cross hotbars 1-4 for my classes. And if this is still too little space, which I doubt, there can always be saved hotbar sets, like a different 1-8. I play on PS4 so if you're on PC it may be diff for you.

[Metathetical]

So instead of going F4 F4 F1 F4 F4 F1 B3 T1 F3 repeat, you go... fire 1 forever because the boss doesn't have any elemental resistances or weaknesses and so there's no reason to use any other spell (except maybe whatever the fire DoT is). How is that more fun?