I just don't get it.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

By no means do I intend to white knight CoD here, but one of the main advantages perceivable there is that any progression is essentially horizontal. Leveling gives more options, to increase the complexity of how you interact versus other options equipped by other players. You already start off with basically balanced classes from the start. It's less about instant gratification in terms of rewards, etc., as it is about instant action, immediately getting to a position where you can see where you really stand, with a full range of interaction within that environment (your class vs. any other, even if you do not yet have access to every class). The same can be said for mobas like HotS, DotA2, LoL, or FPS-objective games like Overwatch or TF2, or just about any other arena skill-based game. Seems a little bit weird then to be putting that example in line with a vertical progression model like XIV's, where unranked PvP (luckily there at least) is one of the few places where gear doesn't especially matter. They're fundamentally different, especially when so little of XIV, and most notably while leveling, depends on skill far more than gear.

Now, in the sense that a model was proven to work and then gets milked into a dry husk of a corpse, sure, XIV does certainly follow that idea, along with the majority of MMOs released since WoW's success to some degree or another. And like most, they forget that WoW worked as well as WoW did back then because it was WoW, and not especially due to its model.

To be honest, I almost wish that instant gratification action was the case with XIV. I don't mean that in the sense of wanting to be level 60 immediately (it didn't even take especially long to get all combat jobs to 60 as is), but simply that I'd like to be challenged, at appropriate escalation, from the start. Give due support and additional intermediate content for struggling players, rather than glossing over or trimming down mechanics to avoid conflicts.

/rant

[Critical-Limit]

I myself would love it if we instead had nuclear explosion style of progression instead of the ladder we have now.

By nuclear explosion, I mean more horizontal for a slightly longer period of time. Then after a good while climb a new tier and have like 7 ways to get new gear so we aren't stuck grinding as little as one to two options.

[Keramory]

See that's where i disagree with being unable to please both hardcore and casual mindsets for this game (ffxi and Ffxiv). In the exact same way we have relic weapons and raid weapons... We can add large expansive dungeons/landscapes with camping NMs (made a recent thread on it but no one posted on it sadly).

I'm not saying take away the gear progression we have now. Maybe tone it down a bit at most extreme... But for the love of God give us "hardcore" players the option of what we love. Us idiots want to go through some real world nightmare to camp a znm against 3 other parties? Let us! Your content for tomes and relic is still there! It's not going anywhere! If anything the next tome level progression is pushed back an update, which frankly it should be anyway.

[LineageRazor]

After reading through this thread, I'm a bit surprised at the number of people who seem genuinely confused at the notion that there could even BE another way for an MMO to function. While my MMO experience is admittedly not broad, the one other game I played extensively (FFXI) had a single, stable level cap for roughly three quarters of its fourteen-year lifespan. It also had no ilvls (at least, not until the final expansion) - one piece of level 75 gear was typically as good as another.

Surely, then, 90% of the playerbase must have geared up in the top level 75 gear in the first couple months, and then quit the game for a decade? Of course not; FFXI had a healthy, thriving population for the great majority of its lifespan. FFXI presented a wide variety of options for players to gear up their level 75 jobs, and with each expansion and update added more gearing options. Different options had different stats, and in many cases a piece of level 75 gear that was useful in one situation would be less so in another, so players were encouraged to pick up several different kinds of gear for the same slot.

And it wasn't just level 75 that had that kind of variety. There were plenty of lower-level instances that yielded up equipment that was useful both at low levels AND a high levels - and these instances were NOT faceroll easy. Level 40 instances could be just as challenging or MORESO than a lot of level 75 instances. Leveling wasn't just a means to reach endgame where the REAL game began - in FFXI, the real game was the WHOLE game, leveling and all.

I'm far from one to say FFXI was a flawless game. Dear God, no, it was deeply flawed in so many ways. But it was definitely an MMO, it was definitely fun, and the way it did things was completely different from the way FFXIV does things. The formula used in FFXIV is not the only way, and given how ridiculously boring gear is in this game I'm convinced it can't be the best way.

That said, I think it's something we're just going to have to put up with. From its core, itemization in this game is tough to play around with. Every piece of gear, down to the tiniest accessory, comes packed with PRIMARY STAT. This means that lower-level gear can never last beyond its prescribed duration, no matter how interesting its sub-stats are. This, unfortunately, also means that finally getting a piece of gear from difficult content rarely provides any kind of thrill or sense of achievement, like finally getting that E-Body or Pimp Hat could in FFXI - gear that you could be confident would be useful for years to come, both as a trophy AND as usable gear.

[karateorangutang]

See that's where i disagree with being unable to please both hardcore and casual mindsets for this game (ffxi and Ffxiv). In the exact same way we have relic weapons and raid weapons... We can add large expansive dungeons/landscapes with camping NMs (made a recent thread on it but no one posted on it sadly).

I'm not saying take away the gear progression we have now. Maybe tone it down a bit at most extreme... But for the love of God give us "hardcore" players the option of what we love. Us idiots want to go through some real world nightmare to camp a znm against 3 other parties? Let us! Your content for tomes and relic is still there! It's not going anywhere! If anything the next tome level progression is pushed back an update, which frankly it should be anyway.

But adding gear content is a much smaller amount of work for the dev team then adding open world content into the game. I think it's asking for more than you realize. Adding relic into the game was as simple as adding drops to old content, creating some craftable items, and putting in some fetch quests. Adding ZNM's, BCNM's, Einherjar and all that stuff is large content that would require balancing and entirely new mechanics and systems to be added into the game.

This would simply not be cost efficient for SE.

I'm all behind them making a game to satisfy people like yourself, but i guarantee it wouldn't survive.

[Moqi]

Just look at that other relic thread where OP talked some sense and everyone jumped on him to justify all those hours spent to obtain a weapon that was just as good as the one that took no time to get.

It's not that they don't notice it, they actually love doing the same stuff over and over. If it's not a predictable, reskinned grind, most of the playerbase isn't interested.

[Krissey]

My real end game is glamour and looking fabulous never gets outdated.

[MerleSirlos]

I just don't get why you complain. (to take the words you used)

I've played MMORPG for more than 10 years, my first one and the one I spent most time in was Ragnarok Online. And like most gamers, the one I spent more time in became the one I use as reference when trying to compare things.
No game is perfect, no game is flawless. But what is a big flaw for you can be the biggest selling point for someone else. In the same way, what looks like the best idea in game design can be the worst flaw for someone else.
As much as I love RO, I don't think I would play it again in the same way as I did in my current situation. Games change with time, so do players.
FFXIV is a nice game if it's your first MMORPG. It is also a great game if you can only play 2-3 hours a day or only in the week ends. It fits well with me because of work and I would 100% recommend it to people in those 2 situations.
But for people who plan to play it 8+ hours a day I would most likely tell them to look for something else, they would get bored in one week after each patch.
Like everyone I have things that I would like to change, but there is probably 10 or 100 times more people that would be against it. You can't please everyone, you have to stick to the majority. (and that doesn't mean you shouldn't propose them by the way). Add to that that most of the time the player base themselves will ruin something they ask for, even when they don't mean to.

As an example, the possibility to customize more your character stat wise. It's something I loved back in my days in RO where you spent quite some time on some simulators to check how to divide your stat points on your main stats while keeping in mind what gear you were aiming for (and it was builds that you would keep for a long time since we rarely got new items). It was difficult to find two persons with the exact same stat distribution and gear choice.
It's not something that would work well now. The player base in general kept becoming bigger and bigger and we have a lot more tools now that we can use. If a system like that was used in a recent game, I can pretty much bet I can find a reddit post listing the best build with math to prove it, 20+ pages of people debating it and in the end 90%+ people following it.

[Iagainsti]

I couldn't agree more. I feel most people get an older mmo in there head and wish FFXIV confirmed to this nostalgia.
There's times where I wish this was more like ffxi, but I played that while in university. Flash forward 10 years, in my late 20s, career, responsibilties, etc. I don't have all nighters to clear a dynamis/sky run or hours to camp an nm/ xp party.
FfXiv fits my schedule much better and allows me to enjoy an mmo with friends.

[Iagainsti]

iPhone contd.

I also think people forget how different the system was in older mmos. There were no telegraphs, a lot of enemies followed looser scripts, and most combos could be macro'd. I could work on a term paper, cram etc. while leveling because I only had to stand still and press 3 buttons to do 10+things from my submenu. You can't do this in ffxiv, meaning when you're playing, you're actually playing(unless your crafting ;D)