Quantity vs Quality Updates

[Reaperking386]

What we need is a middle ground. The problem with content is that it has to reward you with something or else no one will work for it. Gear is the main reason why people do anything now, but it is pointless if no gear is provided. Glamour rewards are also pointless since that is what gear turns into anyways.

We need more:


Side quests: Side quest stories are a great way to enjoy the game and take a break from all the dungeon grinds and raiding for gear. Final Fantasy excels in story and should take advantage of their strengths to make that a huge things.

Rework Diadem: Diadem was a great idea on paper, but fell through because SE did not account for players completing things for reward and ignoring the feel of exploring.Diadem also failed to be interesting to players since all it was made of was trees and rocks. Nothing in Diadem was really worth exploring. As soon as SE fixed the drop rate, Diadem became a ghost town. I Believe that it needs to be re-evaluated and suggestions from the player base should be heard in what they can do to give that hunk or rock life again.

Grand Companies: We know they are coming soon, but they need to get here faster and have amazing story and reward.

Hunts: Hunts have no rewards besides tomes and has not been updated since Heavenward first arrived. It needs new items such as, housing, music, pets, mounts, glamour, and character updates. We also need stronger monsters besides S ranks to fulfil our thrill for the hunt. Bosses that would require the presence of the entire server and even so possibly more.

Crafting: It is just as bad as grinding tomes. There needs to be a story in place to help crafters at least feel the are progressing in story rather than mindlessly getting someone scripts to update their gear.

[Belhi]

/snip

In the question of Quality vs Quantity it sounds like your asking for both:P

The problem there is it brings in the third factor: Development Resources. It takes time, money and people to make content. If they are going to produce more or higher quality work in the same amount of time there is going to need to be more resources to full that content. Story driven content in particular takes a fair amount of time to make. In a time factor side quests don't consume much time to play but take quite a bit to create.

That said its possible they could come up with new ways to tell story which require a higher time investment. Perhaps they could have tied the crafting disciplines in with the story of Idylshire's development and growth.

[Shurrikhan]

How about simply... more foresight? Some inkling of a plan where small, individually interesting steps move us towards a final goal, rather than merely hanging on via hand-holds identical to the last whole cliff's worth?

[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)

[Joe_Schmoe]

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

As one who grew up with games that were centered on this kind of stuff, it'd be kinda nice for designers to go all-in on quality over quantity for once. Heck, I've played idle games that were more creative than that.

Not to mention having constant updates sounds to me like desperation, having to keep players interested for fear of them packing up and leaving for another game, which just makes them look bad. Might as well do it good the 1st time.

[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."

[Ryuko]

I definitely agree that we need more mid-core content. For people who aren't interested in raiding but clear all the 'easier' content early on, there really isn't much to do. I realize that the new savage isn't quite as hard as the previous savage, but I do think it's still a step up from original Coil difficulty... and by the point it was released, many people already quit the game. Most people in my FC were mid-core players who lost interest soon after trying their hands at the first savage and realizing that they just didn't have the skill/damage to do it.

I also think the new crafting/gathering stuff has discouraged people from doing it unless they have a lot of time to commit to the game every single week. Binge playing every once in a while is one thing, but having to cap your tomestones AND red scripts (for gatherers and crafters) is quite a chore. But if you don't do it, you're behind (but that only really matters for battle classes IF you are part of the small percentage of people who raid). Furthermore, only two new dungeons per patch (as opposed to three) makes tomestone grinding pretty stale as it is. I agree that quality over quantity is the way to go, but I am disappointed that the new dungeons added per patch was reduced from three to two.

I'm not sure what the 'fix' would be for mid-core content. I could say make the next 'normal' Alexander more of the Coil difficulty, but I know they specifically want to keep that content accessible to all. I just don't understand why the had to make it SO easy that it's a pushover. Even more casual players would appreciate a fight that doesn't require more than a few pulls to understand. There's really no middle bracket for players unless they are hardcore, and once you do beat savage... now what? I felt like Thordan Ex was tuned a little too high for mid-core content, and Sephirot Ex's hard enrage was a little too unforgiving (when the fight was first released). Lots of raid groups had difficulty beating his dps check unless everyone was alive and it was a flawless run. With better gear, the dps check is a pushover. I feel like Bismarck and Ravana were more at a mid-core content level (when released). Don't get me wrong -- I love a hard fight, but I also like when my friends like to play the game, too. Haha.

[Korbash]

I'd rather prefer they keep things simple. They should think of the sick and disabled players who play the game, and pay their subs, and don't want to deal with too challenging and complex contents. I've been gaming since age 5-6 and now I play MMORPGs and I want to keep playing this game.

[SpiritTamer]

I'd rather prefer they keep things simple. They should think of the sick and disabled players who play the game, and pay their subs, and don't want to deal with too challenging and complex contents. I've been gaming since age 5-6 and now I play MMORPGs and I want to keep playing this game.

Agreed. I tried doing some of the more difficult things in this game with my previous FC that I was kicked from. It was much too stressful for me.

[RiceisNice]

How about simply... more foresight? Some inkling of a plan where small, individually interesting steps move us towards a final goal, rather than merely hanging on via hand-holds identical to the last whole cliff's worth?

This is definitely something they could use and would've addressed a lot of the downfalls in 3.0 and 3.1. Their implementation of things like crafting, gathering and FC crafting has so little framework, you can't do much to add onto it aside from "add new recipes". Diadem could have definitely used more foresight in regards to having some sort of focus; Even with how open ended they wanted it to be, it doesn't encourage anything beyond killing mobs.

Same with class balance in general. To this date, I still don't understand how they expected BRD/MCHs to keep up with dps when WM/GB increases their damage by 20%, when auto attacks previously made up for roughly 20% of their dps. A lot of the PvP changes seem to reflect it too; some changes are incredibly short sighted and ultimately feel like a band-aid fix (which at the same time ignores the core setting of PvP...like having PvP specific attacks/materia not work in PvP)

I definitely agree that we need more mid-core content. For people who aren't interested in raiding but clear all the 'easier' content early on, there really isn't much to do. I realize that the new savage isn't quite as hard as the previous savage, but I do think it's still a step up from original Coil difficulty... and by the point it was released, many people already quit the game. Most people in my FC were mid-core players who lost interest soon after trying their hands at the first savage and realizing that they just didn't have the skill/damage to do it.

It's roughly the same in a different matter. The biggest point is that you need quite a bitof time commitment to make meaningful progress, espesically on a fight like A6s. Most players who don't/can't invest 3 hours of raiding per night would have trouble keeping up.