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.

[Genaxx]

Better quality content definately.

Sadly they wont listen to forum posts but money talks.

[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.

[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.

[Rufalus]

I do agree that a lot of development time/cost is spent on content that gets old fast, with the main offender being dungeons. To optimise cost efficiency they are made extremely linear, simple and repetitive. Participation in this kind of content is very high, but not necessarily for fun reasons. Many people do them reluctantly each day because we are encouraged by high rewards; they are easy to complete and are the fastest source of tomestones when entering via roulette.

My preference would be a reduction in the amount of instanced content, replaced by more frequent additions of fields zones like say Coerthas Eastern Highlands for example. Currently we don't get any field zones for 2 years, then get several at once in an expansion. So my idea would be to spread those across the patch series, giving more regular opportunities to go questing in new lands. In exchange the expansions would be more heavily focused on the introduction of new jobs, raids, pvp and new types of content.

[RiceisNice]

This game seems to have emphasized glamour as the true end game in 3.0 compared to 2.0.

As a MCH/BRD, I really disagree with this being the case, considering that our i160/180 crafted is the same model as a previous piece that was already available to BRD (which was also a shared model of the caster/healer)...while caster/healer, tank/drg got entirely new models and mnk/nin got the kirmu coat. ...then kirimu coat was made into a level 1 crafted glamour thats incredibly cheap to make.

[Belhi]

This is an interesting issue. On one hand they need to and I suspect want to make content that players are happy redoing. On the other hand they want to release content regularly enough to keep players interested. This is a sub based game so keeping people subbed is important. If they go 6 months between patches, they need to be releasing content that will keep people playing for 6 months.

But what content is actually going to do that and can it be made within FF14's system? I think that is the big question. They have tried some new things such as the Diadem, which haven't really worked so clearly they are looking. What do they release that will keep people consistently playing? Even if people only sub for a month ever 3 months SE will still be better off than if people only sub for a month every 6 months.

In sure people will have arguments on what would keep them personally playing but the issue here is wether that will appeal enough to large groups. The reason companies make linear dungeons is because a lot of people just want something they can run through quickly. They don't want to take time to wonder down side paths and such. Hell, I have people in my FC who are very happy with the current model.

If someone had an answer to this question I think every game designer in the industry would want to know.