I guess it's time

[MagiusNecros]

Subscriptions =/= Active players

A portion of these being bots/RMT spammers.

Another portion being active subscriptions but nonactive players.

And the portion of players who are active.

I don't think we'll be getting accurate data anytime soon. Much less will the dev team share a pie chart separating the 3 factors.

[Glenfiddich]

What we want SE/Needs fixing,

- Add no flying in future expansions. But also have the zone designed so ease of traveling around like with the ARR zones. (This will make zones larger because lack of movement speed/allowing creators to make more detailed areas without creating huge zones where graphics has to display a bunch of stuff away from the player.) (Basically more smaller zones, But still make the region quite large.)

Are you serious? SE gives former "not flying mounts" the ability to fly. Thousands of players running different contents for mounts (flying mounts). We got flying not long ago, and now you want us on foot in new expansions?
Are you coming from WoW? Do you know what happened there? First they banned flying. Then, as they have lost thousands of players they allowed it again. Who knows how many of the lost players who have quit playing WoW have returned. I for one didn't.
The same can happen here too.
I guess you know the saying " be careful what you wish for".
Oh, and btw. "What we want SE/Needs fixing" . I don't want that

[HeavenlyArmed]

Are you serious? SE gives former "not flying mounts" the ability to fly. Thousands of players running different contents for mounts (flying mounts). We got flying not long ago, and now you want us on foot in new expansions?
Are you coming from WoW? Do you know what happened there? First they banned flying. Then, as they have lost thousands of players they allowed it again. Who knows how many of the lost players who have quit playing WoW have returned. I for one didn't.
The same can happen here too.
I guess you know the saying " be careful what you wish for".
Oh, and btw. "What we want SE/Needs fixing" . I don't want that

Right, because all those people quit WoW just because they took away flying in new zones. /s

Not that I agree with the desire to have flying removed in future zones, in fact, I think the way it was done in Heavensward is actually perfect, but let's not act like there were other far more pressing issues with WoW that played a much larger part of the massive subscription hemorrhage they saw in WoD. However, I do think we need areas of zones where flying isn't allowed if we want to have any sort of worthwhile open world content in this game, or at least something to allow for an open world challenge to exist even for level 60 players. Not the removal of flying entirely from new zones, as I think that would be dumb, but there should be a balance.

What we want SE/Needs fixing,

Remove raids and instead add in 8man dungeons that are on pare with raids. (Hard dungeons, not always about hard bosses.)

>Remove raids

No.

[RobbieH]

>Remove raids

No.

I also don't like the idea of removing raids, however i'd like to see:

- 8 man dungeons
- 4 man raids

[HeavenlyArmed]

I also don't like the idea of removing raids, however i'd like to see:

- 8 man dungeons
- 4 man raids

I don't know if I'd say 4-man raids, specifically, but I would like to see 4-man content that is far more difficult than what we currently get, perhaps with heightened rewards of some kind. It'd be nice to see 8-man dungeons make a return as well, and even moreso for the 8-man raids to actually be expanded into more large-scale content, the way raids are in most other games and even the way 24-man raids are in this game, while of course retaining the level of difficulty we currently expect from 8-man raids.

[Beetle]

Well the new 8 man dungeons would end up being the new raids. Just wouldn't be like it is now just with a single boss fight. Something like AV, cutters cry & Darkhold was in the 1.23b. First Coil was so so but then they just started with just direct boss fights. Raids are actually dungeons, not how xiv calls them. There would still be endgame content. Players would just have to plan out how they did a dungeon and how they defeat the boss on a raid scale, something more complex dungeon wise like the first coil turn.

In terms of the flying, yes it ruins the exploring aspect of a game once you have the ability to fly. In next expansion I hope they had boats as the next new form of transportation & having the zones be the same kinda size as ARR zones are. You would still have the option to ride chocobos, go on foot, or ride your boat on lakes or rivers or part of the ocean till you hit a invisable wall. They aren't going to ever add flying to ARR zones so its not that big of a deal not having the option to fly everywhere. You wouldn't expect all flying mount to dive underwater would you. On foot, on air, on water, underwater, in space. If the next expansion is a underwater expansion then it will probably not need the option to fly.

[HeavenlyArmed]

Well the new 8 man dungeons would end up being the new raids. Just wouldn't be like it is now just with a single boss fight. Something like AV, cutters cry & Darkhold was in the 1.23b. First Coil was so so but then they just started with just direct boss fights. Raids are actually dungeons, not how xiv calls them. There would still be endgame content. Players would just have to plan out how they did a dungeon and how they defeat the boss on a raid scale, something more complex dungeon wise like the first coil turn.

In terms of the flying, yes it ruins the exploring aspect of a game once you have the ability to fly. In next expansion I hope they had boats as the next new form of transportation & having the zones be the same kinda size as ARR zones are. You would still have the option to ride chocobos, go on foot, or ride your boat on lakes or rivers or part of the ocean till you hit a invisable wall. They aren't going to ever add flying to ARR zones so its not that big of a deal not having the option to fly everywhere. You wouldn't expect all flying mount to dive underwater would you. On foot, on air, on water, underwater, in space. If the next expansion is a underwater expansion then it will probably not need the option to fly.

So on the first part, we basically stand for the same thing, just wording it differently. Raids should actually be raids, as opposed to what they've become which is effectively just Trials that aren't added to Trial Roulette. Raids should be big areas that need to be explored, similar to how it worked in Binding Coil, especially turns 1 and 3 (though there shouldn't be entire sections without bosses like 3, that was dumb and we all know it). Maybe even take it a step further and have the raids no longer be disjointed like they have been since the start and have a raid tier all be in one continuous area.

As for flying, it really depends on how you look at it for if it really ruins exploring. If the zones are made explicitly with flying in mind, as they were in Heavensward, I don't think that flying takes anything away and actually adds to the experience of traveling these zones. But for that same reason, flying would never work in ARR zones. If we get some other form of travel that we use similarly to how we used flying in 3.0, then I wouldn't miss not having flying, but I don't think flying is something that should be avoided as a concept in zone development, as imo this expansion has shown how it can really play to a zone's strengths to have it.

[Beetle]

As for flying, it really depends on how you look at it for if it really ruins exploring. If the zones are made explicitly with flying in mind, as they were in Heavensward, I don't think that flying takes anything away and actually adds to the experience of traveling these zones. But for that same reason, flying would never work in ARR zones. If we get some other form of travel that we use similarly to how we used flying in 3.0, then I wouldn't miss not having flying, but I don't think flying is something that should be avoided as a concept in zone development, as imo this expansion has shown how it can really play to a zone's strengths to have it.

Yeah exactly. But the issue with heavenward zones I find is they have it so big that they can't fill the zone with alot of detail since it has a very wide view of everything in game.
So if they had smaller zones they would be able to fill them more with detail. If you look around in most of the graphics in the heavenwards area its missing stuff like grass. It just has a lot of plane textures with not much overlap.

Personal exp, I jump outta bounds sometimes to explore the view. But they would have to basically remake all of ARR to fix all the background issues and actually give purpose to flying in these zones. Plus it would just ruin sight seeing for the ARR areas if players could just land on everything. Also if they did this they might have to drop PS3 support also.

I really hope they add boats mounts. If they do they could rework a few zones in ARR & even less in heavensward where we can go into rivers & beaches without alot of work having to be done with them. Like the water around Alexander, Rivers in the black shroud, Beaches & Rivers of Costa De Sol. West Thanalan is like the only zone with a body of water.

[RiceisNice]

Flying adds a bit of exploration to the areas, and allows them to be as big as they are in heavensward. The problem is...the zones really feels pointless beyond the FATEs. It's underutilized if anything.

[RobbieH]

Was watching Mr Happy stream and he barely reaches 200 viewers these days, he used to get 400 to 300 something daily at lowest some months ago, this could be because people split to other streamers, but it's not the case since the second most viewed channel after Mr Happy right now has 50 viewers.

I guess people lost interest in the game that they don't even watch streams anymore.

3.4 is rumored to be launched 20 September so it competes with WoW Legion.

It seems to me SE just cares and follows WoW everywhere, can we please stop it before it kills the game like Blizzard killed WoW?

I love this game, but it didn't change since 2.0, this is the game i like and want to play, but i found myself doing only hunts for the relic for the past month, i haven't even log at all the past few days, why should i even bother with relic at all if it's worthless even at this point and will be even more useless when 3.4 lunches? Not to mention for 4.0

Absolutely no reason for me to play the game in it's current state, everything we do is worthless every 6 months, i feel like everything is a waste of time, i'd rather have something that lasts based on the work put on it.

I seriously hope they change the formula for 4.0, if not there'll be like 200 people playing the game instead of 200k. :/

My biggest concern is that SE probably doesn't even bother reading English forums, if the JP community doesn't complain about doing the same since 2.0 i guess the game will die with 4.0