Quantity vs Quality Updates

[odie]

I know that many still feel like they don't have a lot to do in the game, and they want more content. But do we? Or do we really want fleshed out quality content that would keep us coming back to it? I've seen many posts in live letters where SE's reasoning for not doing something is that it would be too much work, or too much time to make it happen. But when we get something, even though its usually pretty nice, it quickly becomes old to us.

As simple as bringing butts back to designing entirely different races. SE stated that it would be too much work to redo the armors to accommodate our rears or to make a race that used a different body style than what we had. Yes...we got the Au Ra...but what happened ended up disappointing those who though we were really getting something different. The females are basically miqo with scales and horns and the men seem too much like the elezen reworked in the same way.

Progression is being tied somewhat to redoing old content such as fates or rerunning old dungeons. We find ourselves doing the same tome grind over and over again. I was really disappointed at one point when the MSQ required guildhests to progress.

I am very happy with the game, but I feel like it could really benefit from having the team sit down and rework some of the things that just aren't really working the way that it could. I feel like if what we got was put together a little better we would enjoy it more, and we wouldn't have to worry about going back and doing fates and dungeons with a carrot dangled in front of our faces. We should be going back to them because they are fun. It's working for us now, but how far down the road can FFXIV go by repainting things we have with a new color or giving it a new name. I would personally be fine if we had to go without certain updates for the sake of really making the content stand out and make us fall more in love with it.

And if those don't make my point, how about those of you wanting better graphics updates. If SE won't rework the models and graphics for butts and races, do you still think they would rework the graphics for the sake of reworking the graphics? Because I don't.

Still happy with the game, but I just feel like it could be more with a little bit more love from the devs.

Do you want more updates, more content faster? Or slower updates with better quality content?

[Tint]

i just want that they get rid of "catch up content". we don't need content to catch up the top raiders (or in other words: fed up with high ilvl gear for almost no effort), we need content for the mid-tier playerbase.

[Antanias]

i just want that they get rid of "catch up content". we don't need content to catch up the top raiders (or in other words: fed up with high ilvl gear for almost no effort), we need content for the mid-tier playerbase.

Agreed 100%, I feel like the middle ground could be stronger instead of being a sinkhole between too easy and difficult.

[Starkbeaumont]

i just want that they get rid of "catch up content". we don't need content to catch up the top raiders (or in other words: fed up with high ilvl gear for almost no effort), we need content for the mid-tier playerbase.

Imo were savage stands now it kinda feels like wasted resources sometimes. it might just be an impression but it feels like even less ppl are doing it this round. and just going from my experience, it's not even much fun to begin with.
One of the reasons is obviously the normal mode. you know the story; you know the bosses already even if they do different (sometimes even ridiculous) things in savage. Then you have the alexander graphical design which is most of the time super boring. Even the first 5 turns of coil had more visual variety than all 8 floors of alex together.

How to fix that? well maybe not waste resources on stuff like diadem. it could have been a good thing but the way it was implemented it was just bad. and SE could have known this, since they should know their player base by now.

Maybe make it just one mode again for the raid. if not many play savage, it isn't really needed, rather make one mode that everyone can beat with a bit of effort.
why not a 2nd raid during the odd patches, with a higher difficulty than the even one.
make raids actually one zone, cut out one boss (three should be enough), but add some random mechanics from boss to boss (turn 3 style?).
the 24-man raid shall remain aswell though.

I like this game a lot and I actually want to play it more not less. but recently I'm not really looking forward to the raid days of my static, cause wether we beat savage or not, if feels like a chore with no real rewards. (with aczually having fun being the biggest possible reward)

[Genaxx]

Better quality content definately.

Sadly they wont listen to forum posts but money talks.

[LadyVal]

Sadly they wont listen to English forum posts but money talks.

Fixed that a bit for you.

I personally would like to see more middle-ground content too. Like, fixing dungeons to actually require a bit of thought, and not as just a means to an end for tomes. Like idk have a dungeon drop a random coin after every run, with there being 8 different coins, and if you get into a run where between 4 of you, you have all 8 coins, it unlocks a secret boss that gives bonus tomes or a special glamour piece but is especially challenging, and if you fail it, you have to wait until another group has all the coins between them again. (The coins, of course, being kept in the Key Items tab so they don't take up actual space.)

Perhaps adventure-style content, where you have 90 minutes to get from point A to point B, and have challenges and camps in between. So maybe get plopped onto an island in the Sea of Clouds, and you have to recover a downed airship. You fight some mobs that respawn, and you reach an arch that you can't pass until 10 minutes have passed. In the meantime you can farm the mobs, or do some gathering. After you pass the arch you're in a natural arena and have to survive 5 minutes of mobs rushing you, and then you reach the second camp, and you progress to the next obstacle. Obstacles would be randomly generated from a specified pool so no adventure is ever the exact same twice. And make a moderately challenging set-up available for DF, and a challenging set-up available for premade parties.

I would also like to see an alternate take on raids- I used to play DDO and in that game, raids were entire storylines that you could play through once a week, iirc. So instead of getting one big boss rush we get a storyline that involves us going into an 8-person dungeon, and then a 16-person dungeon, and finally it culminates into a massive 24-person boss battle.

Obviously I'm no game designer but I'd just like to see more content with a narrative, something with a goal other than just "Oh I have to run this dungeon to get tomes and my new gloves."

[Jpec07]

Sadly they wont listen to forum posts but money talks.

Actually, this is patently and demonstrably false. There is a large array of instances where intelligent discussion and well-written posts have come to the forums, and places where simple suggestions were given, acknowledged, and then wound up in the game. Look at the Death of the Strength Tank in 3.2. Look at the countless minor UI tweaks, and compare them to the threads in the UI forum.

SE very clearly does pay attention to our feedback.

I think the disconnect is that we don't really know exactly how much effort it takes to do the things we're asking. We don't have access to the source code, we don't know how it's built, and we don't know what their development cycle is like. What may seem like a simple request might represent hundreds of man-hours of work (and I suspect they have a pretty small team, compared to some other MMOs).

[RiceisNice]

Better quality definitely. While FFXIV is the fastest updating MMO I've played, it's also the one where the contest loses its novelty in the shortest amount of time. As someone that's been playing since 2.1-2.2, the new patch cycles lately is only giving me the novelty of "new content" for 2 weeks at the most (or 3 days as far as 3.1 was concerned) before it devolves to grinding and daily tasks (which itself is very static and non-dynamic). The two dungeons are incredibly monotonous, and they'll more-than overstay its welcome by the time it even goes into the lvl 60 roulette next patch).

It also doesn't help that the foundation of the expansion can be the cause of the very lackluster updates; the raiding scene has taken a big hit that I'm doubtful it'll even recover from until we get cross-server matching/linkshell, crafting/gathering is in an even downer slump than ever because of favors and what crafters can actually make, and they can't really add anything interesting to FC crafting the way it is right now.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

While I agree, I don't see that much changing. There are just too many players that don't want to do anything that takes effort. When coil normal was the lowest raid difficulty, people spent months to clear and months to farm. Now with Alex normal being the lowest difficulty it takes 2 hours to clear and 5 weeks to farm the whole set. So it's really not that suprising to me that people are getting bored faster than they were before. Because of community feedback this game will prob never have any content that takes longer than a couple hours to clear. The best you can hope for is some kinda hard "mode" with crap rewards that hardly anyone does (savage, minimum ilvl, ect) Every bit of "endgame" will be some kind of watered down version that can be cleared in minimal time with minimal skill. While i love the game, I'm not sure if I'll be buying the next expansion because the endgame is just dull imo.

[Marxam]

This game seems to have emphasized glamour as the true end game in 3.0 compared to 2.0. The only point to doing savage outside of bragging rights is for dyeable gear and bis is almost non existent as no content outside of savage requires it. I've stopped raiding due to work hours and have been forced into the mid-core group and I gotta say the biggest flaw is that anything in the category is rng gated. Bird farming, relics, and pvp to name a few. The problem is the current story is so short and I play games for the story first and content later. They also need to stop with making "new" content that makes you go into old dungeons. If they are going to do this route make it interesting. For example, find a hidden mob that spawns randomly in the dungeon. They also need to un-sync CT so I can run it 8 man.