I guess it's time

[Fricca]

Here's a question: if you were given the choice to change only ONE thing about FFXIV, no matter how radical the change would be, what would you decide to alter?

It's kind of hard to say all the the things that I want to change, but this question made me realize that I can put it simply into 1 idea: I want the devs to bring justice to every content they made and actually make them matter (rewarding).

Primals:
✅The first 3 primals had weapons and were necessary to complete the relic quest.
❌The succeeding primals acted like they're a content of their own and focused only on the slightly higher ilvl weapons as reward. (easily discarded, can easily be skipped by anyone new to just do newer content)

Raid Content:
✅You had to finish BCoB to proceed to SCoB and then finish SCoB to enter FCoB. No normal mode.
❌Normal mode. Something about goblins... probably has something to do with cheez... cat... BOOM, BANG... BEAMZ.... (Yea I didn't pay attention to Alex... sry)

Towers:
✅Use to only have items exclusively found in it.
❌Became the tool that helps people catch up by providing upgrade items similar to what the current raid content offers.
Fix: Make it relevant in its own light without ruining other content in the game. Also I would like to have 8-man tower mode, please and thank you.

❌Unsyncing.
✅Reverse sync. Let the content sync to us, not us syncing to the content. (Lvl 60 coil anyone?)

Creatures all over eorzea:
❌Only there for the sake of Hunting Log. Some drop important mats. Harmless.
✅Please add purpose to them. Like make the mobs spawn a boss mob that drops some special material maybe. Make them as challenging as what their supposed level is in the game and give out reasonable experience. Make them more interactive with different aggro triggers. Make them more than just moving pixels around the map.

Gil:
❌Why do I even have Gil?

Zones:
❌Straightforward. Easily explored. Feels like its dead.
✅Utilize ships (yea they exist), have hidden tunnels, make us feel there's danger in the outside world, or something, please.

What else do you guys think the devs aren't utilizing to its fullest? I feel like this way when I log in I'd have something to do, game would be more alive with new people looking into beating old content that they actually need... What's more is that we can revisit them and do them at level 60 with reverse syncing, possibly have fun, and get the new crafting materials.

[TAS]

It's kind of hard to say all the the things that I want to change, but this question made me realize that I can put it simply into 1 idea: I want the devs to bring justice to every content they made and actually make them matter (rewarding).

Primals:
✅The first 3 primals had weapons and were necessary to complete the relic quest.
❌The succeeding primals acted like they're a content of their own and focused only on the slightly higher ilvl weapons as reward. (easily discarded, can easily be skipped by anyone new to just do newer content)


Raid Content:
✅You had to finish BCoB to proceed to SCoB and then finish SCoB to enter FCoB. No normal mode.
❌Normal mode. Something about goblins... probably has something to do with cheez... cat... BOOM, BANG... BEAMZ.... (Yea I didn't pay attention to Alex... sry)

Towers:
✅Use to only have items exclusively found in it.
❌Became the tool that helps people catch up by providing upgrade items similar to what the current raid content offers.
Fix: Make it relevant in its own light without ruining other content in the game. Also I would like to have 8-man tower mode, please and thank you.

❌Unsyncing.
✅Reverse sync. Let the content sync to us, not us syncing to the content. (Lvl 60 coil anyone?)

Creatures all over eorzea:
❌Only there for the sake of Hunting Log. Some drop important mats. Harmless.
✅Please add purpose to them. Like make the mobs spawn a boss mob that drops some special material maybe. Make them as challenging as what their supposed level is in the game and give out reasonable experience. Make them more interactive with different aggro triggers. Make them more than just moving pixels around the map.

Gil:
❌Why do I even have Gil?

Zones:
❌Straightforward. Easily explored. Feels like its dead.
✅Utilize ships (yea they exist), have hidden tunnels, make us feel there's danger in the outside world, or something, please.

What else do you guys think the devs aren't utilizing to its fullest? I feel like this way when I log in I'd have something to do, game would be more alive with new people looking into beating old content that they actually need... What's more is that we can revisit them and do them at level 60 with reverse syncing, possibly have fun, and get the new crafting materials.

My thoughts exactly! You just blast through everything so quickly and then your stuck on repeat for months. There's such a disconnect between the world and the content. With the exception of certain dailies, once you've unlocked everything you could literally just stand in one place/Zone for the duration of the patch until the next one launches. And once you finish off the story, unlock the content, rinse and repeat...

[Alaltus]

Here's a question: if you were given the choice to change only ONE thing about FFXIV, no matter how radical the change would be, what would you decide to alter?

For me, it's definitely the dumpstering of old content. If I had my way, the devs would be constantly expanding areas like the old 24-mans (instead of just forcing geared, level-synced players into queuing for it via the relic quest, players would instead run the "original" version simply to access the "new" floors), adding new hunts to each zone every so often (with less predictable respawn timers, please!), adding rare spawns or treasure chests with unique items into the old dungeons, inventing a reason for players to do Verdrfolnir/Metal Gear Revengeance 2/Proto Ultima/Odin/Behe/Coeurlregina again (possibly via zone consequences to teleporting/flying/gathering should they spawn and fail?), etc.

I'm curious to see what other people might change, if they were only given one option.

Well besides what i've mentioned already there is one thing.

Itemization. In this game gear is just an extension of your base stats, the higher the item level the higher the str/vit rating. Gear is uniform which is boring and leads to everyone only being interested in the highest i-level items.

How to reform- I'd like to say strip gear of their uniformity and i-level whilst keeping the average level as a calculation of all of your stats. What would help is situational bonuses and alot of them. +weaponskill hits, +dot potency, + combo dmg, + crit dmg, +emnity, enchant effects (drain, aspir), -dmg% and so on. Point being is so that players have motivation to partake in horizontal content to build multiple sets for different types of encounters. Much more battle content variety for said situational gear to be put to work. Slow down vertical progression some. Spread around the 'best' gear across a variety of content, no more full sets of the best gear for any given job being rewarded from a single piece/type of content. Players with different main jobs will have different priorities encouraging players to branch out. Introduce some 'best' gear via RNG drops into content like Diadem, Aquapolis and Deep dungeons.

[ZeiZee]

I'd like to see more options when it came to gear, enchants, gem sockets. There was this trinket in wow called Death Bringers Will Equip: Your attacks have a chance to awaken the powers of the races of North rend, temporarily transforming you and increasing your combat capabilities for 30 sec. People who played wow might know what this trinket did for a example, I loved that trinket Something to this effect but then we have to cater to the masses don't we? People would probably complain about something like this. Everything is to streamlined, there is no wow I got this or that. Gear is boring and classes don't get me started from one class to the next, all the same really, no unique. Oh and while I'm at it, it would be nice to have skill trees perhaps to but that's something else and you only said one option so

Caelum-I know thousands of you if not more won't care to read this wall of text. I know most of you will just say, good riddance or who cares, "goodbye", (I bet you wasn't expecting such a big response when you posted this, right? XD)

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

Something to this effect but then we have to cater to the masses don't we? People would probably complain about something like this. Everything is to streamlined, there is no wow I got this or that.

I definately think this is one of the biggest problems with MMOs today... There are no byakko's haidate or ridill equivelants in MMOs anymore... Once MMOs started handing out "epics" with no effort, a lot of the motivation to keep plugging away at MMOs was lost... It's not neccessarily a FF14 problem but problem for the whole genre... Now MMOs are just becoming things you jump in for a month or two and move on. I definately see this happening a lot in FF14, especially in Heavensward.. people love the game.... for 3 months... then move on to something else. Level boosters will only make this problem worse, not somehow flood the game with awesome new players like people seem to think.

I doubt Legion or 4.0. will be any different.

[KitingGenbu]

I doubt Legion or 4.0. will be any different.

Funny thing is that the WoW devs already admitted that the artifact system they are releasing in Legion will just be thrown away in the following expansion.

The main issue is that many devs in general dont believe in persistent content other than your levels, probably because building upon something continuously requires quite a lot of fore thought like it did in XI. People can QQ about the content in XI and how it wasn't as replace-ish as it is with say XIV but if you think about most of the expansions, they worked in harmony. Even the newer stuff added to a degree works the same way even though they seem to have gone a bit overboard with it more and more.

The alternative is randomizing encounters - in which case, you need to ensure every possible combination is still clearable which in turn means the mechanics themselves need to be much more lenient. Basically, a tank buster can't require cooldowns to be used to make it through it if the cooldowns might not be available for the next. A telegraphed AoE needs to give you enough time to dodge it even if another ability just forced you to the far end of it and you need to run the full distance. And on the flipside, what is meant to be a challenging fight might become very easy because you got a lucky combination. You can't really make bosses do something they're not programmed to do either. And the trinity further works against more chaotic fights with its natural tank&spank design.

So...I could see some practical issues with that.

As for a response to this, that alternative does fall within the confines of how the devs have currently set up the systems in the game. TP in XIV is nothing more than a resource that players spend, whereas in XI it was a resource both you and the monster built which could greatly affect fights that lasted a long period of time. Then you have the enfeeblement system in place with XI which is not present in this game which is a big shame imo. It made it easier for XI devs to just release crazy mobs that had to be controlled by the player through paralyze/slow/etc if they wanted to stand a chance. Then you had to monitor how many dps were on the monster otherwise it would go ape depending on the mob. Of course there were patterns but the TP system could add things if people weren't paying attention to their roles. Which of course is another thing that this game honestly lacks, roles. Everyone is a one man army and barely synergizes with each other unless you count on a drg giving piercing resistance down to a mob for brds/mchs. There's no true skill synergy that can greatly influence the outcome of the battle. The only thing that determines that in this game is your rotation and how well you can handle disconnects.

[RiceisNice]

The main issue is that many devs in general dont believe in persistent content other than your levels, probably because building upon something continuously requires quite a lot of fore thought like it did in XI. People can QQ about the content in XI and how it wasn't as replace-ish as it is with say XIV but if you think about most of the expansions, they worked in harmony. Even the newer stuff added to a degree works the same way even though they seem to have gone a bit overboard with it more and more..

To an extent. When you do content like this for an entire expansion, it probably won't be thrown away for a few years because it's a persistent design throughout (for better or worst). Legion artifacts and WoD garrisons for example.

In our case...our throw away content is within the patch cycle and honestly feels like they have no direction and a waste of development time; look at our frontline maps, LoV, Diadem (until further notice, we're looking at 3.4 before we finally get new additions to it), and aquapolis.

[Cakekizyy]

I prefer tank and spank to mechanic heavy fights.

[Iromi]

Fricca you nailed it.

If they fixed the stuff you listed and put that in..I'd be a very happy clam.

[Hardware_Hank]

yeah pretty much spot on, SE has neglected this game so badly the only thing keeping me here is the community.

You had a great game and you f**ked it up bad, everything the OP quoted is pretty much spot on with what needs to be fixed and to keep this game entertaining