Why FFXIV endgame is flawed and how it could be great, one players opinion

[Jetstream_Fox]

Everything requires other people. The only thing you can do on your own is the open world junk (which is the same for all mmos).

They even made crafting require other people, I love it.

Umm what? You can gather your own items and craft your own items, the only excluded items are specialist items which is a small numbers of crafts in each class. I'm in a solo FC mostly because I need extra storage space and even FCs are able to be leveled up alone, ya you need 3 signatures but that's as easy as asking a friend to make 3 alts and since there is no minimum member amount to keep FCs up, it can be solo content. Furthermore on FCs you only need 3 other crafters to use airships/skins, a very very small amount of content.

Raiding and PvP are the only things that need people on a larger scale, I'd throw dungeons in with them but they only need 3 other people which is the same as airships/skins. So when you look at the things that actually require 4+ players it's a very small amount of content, where as 4 player and under content is about 98% of this games content.

[Phileas]

I dont think i like any of these changes. It all sounds very flavour if the week. I do not wish to spend six hours in an instance no matter what was available. I love the fact i can queue for bosses when i want and it will take at most an hour for each attempt. If they changed that dramatically i dont think i could play anymore. Regardless of the vast number of things they add. Spreading things too thinly, like they did with the diadem produced nothing but boredom for me.

Improve boss mechanics and find more creative ways to test player skill. The only thing i truly want are a greater variety of bosses.

[Rowyne]

I do agree with Foxy.
The reason why I prefer FFXIV end game scene to other MMOs, is BECAUSE the boss in a box design. If I had 6h a raid day, I could be doing Wildstar instead, where cleaning the raid WOULD feasibly take 6h a raid-day, because their raids are "proper" old school raids - with lotsa trash, bosses and corridors with multiple teleporters. Boss in a box design is far more user friendly. You go in, you try, you go out.

I have to say I agree. While the old days of WoW and blocking out 8 hours on a Saturday to make your way through Molten Core evokes a type of nostalgia, it's not feasible for many people anymore. Even 2-3 hours of clearing raid wings and crawling through citadels is something I'm happy to get away from.

The tradeoff is that this game has some boss fights that last almost 15 minutes (the biggest struggle in Twintania used to be the fight against raid fatigue). I'd rather put my stamina into complex boss fights than moving through endless corridors of trash. Because once you learn the fight and are getting the boss down consistently, you can get into a farming groove, whereas long raid crawls will always be long and tedious, no matter what. I felt that many turns of Coil were designed with just enough dangerous trash, mini-bosses, and exploration to give you that feeling of immersion without wasting your time.

But the OP is right about one thing, Alex feels too much like boss in a box because of uninspired design. The story is so lackluster compared to Coil. I honestly don't care about evil goblins and cheese... or books... or whatever they're after. Sad that I don't even really know, but I watched every Coil cutscene in rapt attention. Alex doesn't feel as dangerous or (pardon the overused word) epic as Coil. That definitely needs to see improvement, but maybe not through such complex means as the OP is suggesting.

I, however, remember once upon a time there was talk of dungeons that would be completed by solving puzzles and not be the same every time. That would be interesting. Again, I would rather see the crawls left to dungeons or other types of content, not raids.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

People are not interested in the diadem because it is plain dull and boring (you basically had to bash mobs in order for monsters to spasn), and flawed on a game design standpoint. I can hardly call that exploration. Exploration cannot take place in an instance where you have to enter with 7 people, with a hard timer, with no real points of interest. The diadem are merely floating rocks in the sky, you can hardly find that compelling and interesting as an exploration field.

Give us an interesting maze in which you d have to explore in order to find interesting bosses (and even maybe with puzzles to get to some parts of the maze), and that will be what exploration is.

I used the Diadem as merely an example. Look at all the devs attempts to get players to partake in more open ended content, be it fates, expansive Heavensward zones or whatever else. People simply don't want to sink that much time into 'adventuring'. At least, not those who participate in high end raiding. They'll do it to collect the highest ilvl gear and go back to farming the bosses again.

Assuming most of the dedicated raiders are still playing FFXIV, which is a long shot. I no longer bother with raiding in FFXIV because it is just boring.

Considering it boasts the second highest active sub-count for MMOs and Midas is receiving heaps of praise, I suspect many still do. Just because you find FFXIV's end game boring does not mean everyone else does. I know more than a few-- and plenty more indirectly-- who raid consistently.

The diadem died because it was poorly implemented and extremely unrewarding. There are other MMOs with similar content where it is very popular, but in those games there's more structure, more of a purpose to going there, and it rewards you very nicely.

Honestly if there's any other form of endgame content I'd like to see it's Nyzul Isle from XI. XI had so much variety in its different forms of endgame content. I don't know why SE isn't adapting them for XIV.

Probably because this isn't FFXI. The stuff that once worked there may no longer attract people of this generation. Case in point, you put marathon level bosses in a MMO today and you'll be torn to shreds for it on forums. I won't disagree the Diadem was implemented horrendously, but it still illustrates a general player reluctance to bother with expansive content. A primary example of this is dungeons. Despite frequent mention they should make more, how many people consistently run them outside their dailies? When the devs only have so much of a budget to work with, it's a matter of picking and choosing what will work. At the moment, they can't afford any more gambles after the backlash to 3.0 to 3.1.

I can't comment specifically on Nyzul Isle because I haven't played FFXI. So I'll leave it there.

[Stanelis]

I used the Diadem as merely an example. Look at all the devs attempts to get players to partake in more open ended content, be it fates, expansive Heavensward zones or whatever else. People simply don't want to sink that much time into 'adventuring'. At least, not those who participate in high end raiding. They'll do it to collect the highest ilvl gear and go back to farming the bosses again.

Fates are devoid of all entertainment and interest (they are merely a zergfest, of no gameplay value) and heavensward areas are desperately empty and lacking of point of interests.

They are not especially big, and you generally explore them linearly with the quests (one might also add that most of the secondary quests were dull and boring). Their level design isn't particularly interesting and there is no real reason to partake in exploration.

The issue doesn't lie with the players. The issue is the sloppy game design in FFXIV. Also, if players only paratake in farming to play the ilvl and the glamour game, it is because there isn't anything else to do in FFXIV. In the old live letters, it was common for SE to feature the gear to be released in the following game update, but not the content.

Considering it boasts the second highest active sub-count for MMOs and Midas is receiving heaps of praise, I suspect many still do. Just because you find FFXIV's end game boring does not mean everyone else does. I know more than a few-- and plenty more indirectly-- who raid consistently.

Yeah, especially when almost no players watch heavensward on twitch and there is absolutely no good coverage of FFXIV news in the video game press (at least in europe and the US, but last time I was in Japan I can't say I saw much of FFXIV). As a player who took part in wow raiding when everything was about that (before LoL release), I can tell you almost nobody care (and I can understand why).

Currently, 5k players watch WoW on twitch, even when the last content update was month ago. Currently, there are about 245 viewers on FFXIV, as the last content update was only a few weeks ago. Obviously, people care about FFXIV. Furthermore, the % of players who partake in raids, and savage, is very low, so I don't really think it is valid to use subscribers number to prove that FFXIV's raiding is popular.

Finally, it is not very hard to be the second game in terms of subscribers when there are only 2 games on the market, currently.

[mirta000]

snip

1. Map abandonment happens in EVERY MMO. FFXIV is actually still on the better side of this, as Fates do indeed exist and a lot of optional quests and gear (like the relic for example) still get you out there.
If you want to remedy open world, it would be great if you not only identified the problem, but also suggested a solution, or named an MMO that does better.
2. WoW is the giant of MMOs. Period. Nowhere will you find a game with a bigger player base and a bigger ex-player base. Unlike FFXIV that has 5 million registered accounts in its lifetime, WoW has about 100 million. Heck most people that stopped playing WoW still look at gameplay footage, because they remember the game and sometimes feel nostalgic for it.

Now lets compare twitch viewership with other very popular MMOs that are not WoW

currently 50 people are watching GW2, 4 people are viewing Elder Scrolls Online, 60 people are viewing Tera, 4 people are viewing Blade and Soul DESPITE them having had a major patch recently and all the hype surrounding it coming out. The next most hyped thing? Black Desert Online. Not out yet, has a huge following, only manages 249 viewers on twitch.

EDIT: Yoshi P is streaming upcomming content on youtube right now and it has 2011 viewers.

3. That being said twitch viewership has nothing to do with how many people enjoy raids. So instead of trying to modify what people find to be enjoyable content already, why don't we suggest how to make open world zones interesting?

[Theodric]

Twitch is hardly indicative of a game's success - especially when a lot of people don't care to watch other people play a game.

Many people have put forward reasonable ideas as to how open world content can be made more appealing and engaging. As a rough example, look at MMO's such as Wildstar, ESO, GW2 and WoW which actively encourage exploration within every zone. Ultimately FFXIV is a Final Fantasy game. What have FF games been recognised for throughout the franchise's history? Rewarding exploration. It's not unreasonable for people to desire more of that - especially when it can easily be added alongside new linear raids and dungeons.

Environmental hazards, secret treasure caches (that spawn in random locations, just like hunts), achievements and so on. There's an unmarked 'quest' in Western La Noscea that rewards a minion if you bring an elixir to a specific NPC. More stuff like that would be wonderful - since it gives people a reason to go out and explore, even if they're just ticking things off of a checklist.

[Leigaon]

I don't see it as really flawed, as much as it is something that a lot of people haven't really experienced to compared to their past experiences in MMO's. A person will always be more critical to what was their favorite because it doesn't live up to it..and still request changes. Most of the time the requested changes are reverting it back to the way people are custom to playing.

Do not get me wrong, sometimes old techniques into something modern gives it new life. I came from the forbidden FFXI, so I'm guilty of this too. I have to take a step back and realize people are trying to create something new. A lot of what I tried to compare to that game is already in there.

Right now, it is a dance. Yet, what was really that different from say Proto-Omega? It had 3 phases, different stances that change at a set %, adds spawn. Just had to Esuna a lot more, stuns, adds. Then in the end you got a chest with a chance of getting something. What I realized that made it different? Is that you had a set of people where they would work for gear with you.

This is almost like a single player game that has group elements to it. Mini-bosses could be no different than glorified trash mob for the most part. But, maybe that would be a good point to take? Take elements from Raids and put them in with a mini-boss.

I do think that they could have raids that offered different paths. In 1.0 there was one dungeon that you only had time to take one of three paths to take. You could offer the same thing to the raids, push back the 3 month constant updates to put more time into things..and at the same time add Horizontal progression so things are not so obsolete. I really thought Crystal Tower was going to be something very long lasting, for years. I was wrong.

[Stanelis]

Twitch is hardly indicative of a game's success - especially when a lot of people don't care to watch other people play a game.

Actually it is, as the number of viewers on each game follow the current trends on video games (LoL, the current most popular game, has 100 k viewers). If a game is interesting to the players, people will watch it on twitch.

Now lets compare twitch viewership with other very popular MMOs that are not WoW

MMORPG is a dying genre, due to how sloppy the game design has became in the genre since WoW 3.0 (because most game either follow the old Korean MMO design, which was never popular in the west, or the way WoW have been doing things for years, and is loosing subscribers over it).

Very popular for you maybe, but not to the world. Also, for the record, black desert online has 2700 viewers currently.

1. Map abandonment happens in EVERY MMO. FFXIV is actually still on the better side of this, as Fates do indeed exist and a lot of optional quests and gear (like the relic for example) still get you out there.
If you want to remedy open world, it would be great if you not only identified the problem, but also suggested a solution, or named an MMO that does better.

There are lots of ways do do this. A game like skyrim does a really good job at making exploration interesting.

But no, FFXIV isn't better at handling map abandonment. The main issue isn't merely the way you leave area once you complete a map, but rather the lack of point in exploring a map for the first time in FFXIV. Also, heavensward areas don't really feel like a coherent world, due to lack of logical transitions between the areas.

3. That being said twitch viewership has nothing to do with how many people enjoy raids. So instead of trying to modify what people find to be enjoyable content already, why don't we suggest how to make open world zones interesting?

Want to take a look at the numbers of players per server who completed BCOIL T13 in 2.X ? Because we do have the numbers and they are pretty low, and the numbers regarding savage alex are even lower (most people I know just stopped raiding or FFXIV altogether when they banged their head for 100 hours + on alex savage T3).

[Cidel]

They tried to do something different with the Steps of Faith and look how well that turned out.

Oh, it turned out the way it did for several reasons, not because trying something different is a "bad thing:"

1) It was shoved down the throats of players used to content that was literally face-roll up until then because it was how they were designing story content thus far.

2) Messing up led to a long, drawn-out "It's a Wonderful Failure" that players had to keep playing through since there was no "restart" option- even if you knew there was no saving the run. Which was part of the reason why...

3) Many players who had completed this trial left immediately if it popped up on their roulette. Players didn't have the patience to run this when there were quicker alternatives for the same rewards in the roulette (oh yeah, this didn't actually drop anything, did it?)

4) It gated the conclusion of the story, and access to the new expansion, which makes #1 and #3 fairly problematic.

"Trying something different" isn't the problem so much as forcing your less-skilled and coddled players to suddenly have to put in 100% more effort than what they're used to if they want to access the next wave of content.