Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[odintius]

Oh, no doubt about that! People also reproduce less and take worse care of their offspring due to stress and a lack of time (and often money). There's burnout galore, these days even as early as high school. Life increasingly becomes about efficiency and performance and that takes its toll in numerous ways.

There are there usually single player games with a multiplayer option attach to it for quick rewards, solo play and a hub to gather with party members to run instance dungeons that's why I don't really consider this an actual mmo. I actually can play other game though now I guess thats a bonus Nope if greed is what inspired them to change a genre to profit off it, I don't see that as a positive more of they ruin it, but hey can agree to disagree I guess.

[Thayos]

People need to quit with the whole "maybe you should quit" verbal on both sides. It adds nothing to the conversation and in the long run hurts the community.

At the same time, SE won't be able to flip the script of XIV without alienating thousands of players who enjoy the game as it is. So while there is room to improve FFXIV, those who are honestly waiting for a horizontal, grind-heavy game really should look elsewhere for their own sake.

[odintius]

At the same time, SE won't be able to flip the script of XIV without alienating thousands of players who enjoy the game as it is. So while there is room to improve FFXIV, those who are honestly waiting for a horizontal, grind-heavy game really should look elsewhere for their own sake.

Nah I think people add some horizontal to the game but not too overboard gear set bonus and better materia option for like trait/skill bonus and add those to the new content like diedem or future content and leave the current system we have keep in place. People tend to go to their own extremes when this subject is talked about.

[Ibi]

Change it so that gear isn't replaced with every even numbered patch, instead the same piece of gear is upgraded over the entire expansion or whenever you get to the end of the expansion. Instead of walking up different flights of steps to go from the basement to the penthouse, we take a single escalator instead. I'm sure there are better ways to implement something like this than what I explained, but hopefully there is enough to get the idea across.

A bit late on the response here, but how do you accommodate someone who wants/needs to change jobs part way through an expansion under this system? Or a new player who's only just reaching the level cap part way through an expansion?

This is essentially how the relic/anima weapons work, and although the earlier steps receive progressive nerfs over the course of the expansion, it eventually reaches a point where players just look at the mountain they have to climb and give up before they even start.

Do you not read things? Channels have alternate versions of the same open world. You get big competition on a big enemy? Switch channels until zero competition. You don't want to give it a chance? That's fine but don't alter truths to make your post seem you are right. Or that open world cannot be done right like my idea lays forth. Phasing works very well.

Hunts are the worst example of open world done right, even XI got NMs better than this game and that game is over 10 years old. Phasing do you need it? Fixes every single argument you made in this post.

How many channels is the appropriate number? Should there be sufficient channels that every group/individual should be able to have their own if they choose? If so, how is that any different than instanced content? If not, you've got the various problems Velhart mentioned with regards to Kings in XI.

How would the pops on big enemies work? Should they spawn in all channels simultaneously? If so, how do you stop an organized group hopping from one channel to the next, killing it repeatedly? If not, should they spawn randomly, by channel? But then how do you stop everyone trying to rush to a particular channel to kill the one that's up, as happens with hunts?

Should groups/individuals be able to change channels at will? On a limited basis? Not at all, once they've zoned into a particular one? At will until they kill that zone's big enemy, at which point they're restricted for some period of time?

Should phasing be zone-wide, or just parts of the zones where certain events occur?

Phasing might address some of Velhart's concerns, but it comes with a ton of its own issues and questions that can be at least as complicated, in some cases, as those raised by instanced content. I don't think you can just go "phasing will fix it!" and gloss over them.

[Welsper59]

Primarily, they evolved around an increasingly busy population of players.

Can't access something right away? No issue if you have infinite time, you just wait. Big issue if you have only limited time to play, by the time you get access you have to stop playing already.
Slower travel? No issue if you have infinite time, you just take the walk. Big issue if you only have limited time to play, you actually wanted to do something more than looking at scenery today.
I'll add another: Long queues/party making? No issue if you have infinite time, you can just keep going. Big issue if you only have limited time, by the time the party is made you might not have time for the actual content you made the party for anymore.

Another fun fact: Increasingly less people cook themselves, while fast food and deep frozen food are common as never. It's a general societal trend to cut down on unwanted/unnecessary processes in one's free time, which is correlated with the fact that people have less free time on average. One is downright inclined to wager a causal connection to increasing demands on the job in competitive markets.

It really comes down to a matter of priorities. This has never once changed since MMORPGs were created. Hell, for any form of entertainment, priorities have always been a factor as to whether or not someone can enjoy something that demands time. We definitely are a culture of wanting to do all the things in as short of a time as possible. This is the exact opposite mentality to have for people that want to experience the MMORPG genre as it once was.

The rush mentality is heavily related to why it's easy to relate modern MMORPGs (like XIV) to mobile app gaming. Those games are designed to be able to be played by anyone. They're designed to require you to spend time on them, but not a lot of it to make some form of progress (by relation of what average content completion time is). It's all part of making the brain "addicted" to the pattern of quick rewards the game gives you. Honestly, it's not too far off from normal games, but MMORPGs have that social stigma and competitive basis behind them due to being with other players (even if you don't interact with any). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but certainly open to criticism. In a way, it explains the cash shop too, love it or hate it.

Personally I find long term content and goals as positive things in the game. Not 3ver thing needs to revolve around it of course. He'll even FFXI had billions of ways to do things and rewarded players for specializing in the stuff they found fun.

That's the big crux of the issue I find. XI had tons of really well fleshed out content. It knew it's focus and hammered it. Content wasn't watered down so everyone could do everything.

Even as a more casual player I enjoyed being able to master one thing slowly then branch out as I grew over time. I didn't no life the game hell took me a solid year to hit my first capped job.

Unfortunately, with todays market, it's not what the general public want. I would seriously consider the idea that it might be a situation where people say they "want" or "need" it, but when they get it, it becomes the straw that broke the camels back. That they get what they want, then realize that while it might be nice or fun, it's still missing something we're more accustomed to (now). I experience this whenever I hop on XI now. It's a matter of not experiencing something derived from nostalgia in the exact way you want it to be, even if the option is there or it's close to it. In fact, throughout the year, I have to hop onto multiple MMORPGs to satisfy whatever need for gaming entertainment I might have (primarily XIV, XI, and WoW). The days of the old are long gone for most of us.

People need to quit with the whole "maybe you should quit" verbal on both sides. It adds nothing to the conversation and in the long run hurts the community.

Just because we don't agree means we should stop discussion.

Sometimes the "quit" response is merited though, albeit uncommonly right lol. It's very easy for the "wrong" type of people to try out a game, really not like anything about it, but feel the need to keep playing and complaining because they spent money on it. By "wrong", I'm referring to people that don't understand the genre. The sort that don't realize it's not aimed at solo play, though there are things available to be done solo (just not endgame usually). The sort that complain about something being rare or taking time to do because they don't understand "prestige" in an online game... and good lord there's A LOT of those folks that don't get it, even if they act on in it unknowingly. That one is very subjective though, admittedly. Sometimes, it's just folks that feel like they should stay, but they just don't enjoy their time spent for one reason or another. I've met at least 5 people IRL like that, be it for this game or another. Much happier now that they've quit the game, and that's honestly all that should matter.

[Duelle]

I'm not sure how set bonuses are any less subject to balance issues and BiS discrimination than individual pieces. They ARE more annoying - much like the much-reviled Darklight pieces, you can't upgrade from a set until you have all the gear to upgrade ALL the pieces of the set.

Not necessarily. Sheer stats can and often will outweigh a set bonus when progressing from one tier to the next.

Set bonuses can come in the forms of ability boosts (ex: 2 piece PLD set bonus could increase the potency of Circle of Scorn's DoT to 45) or gameplay elements (ex: 4 piece PLD set bonus could grant shield blocks a 10% chance to reset Spirit Within's cooldown). What make them work is that unlike individual pieces of gear, you can design the entire raid tier with it in mind because it is something all players have access to (specially here where you can get gear through story-mode raids and tomestones).

Indeed, the main challenge is in deciding which set gets the bonuses. With the current raid structure, all signs point to Alexander gear. Possibly make tomestone and alex gear similar stat-wise but alex gear being higher ilevel to justify the set bonuses. If you go with the 2/4 piece structure, you basically open one armor slot for people to choose whatever they want (or whatever is mathematically least-detrimental to them, though this would necessitate bigger loot pools and selection of gear). If you instead go for the 3/5 piece structure, you'll sort of force everyone to wear the full raid sets but there is glamour to keep people from looking the same.

I thought of this - but unless the "unusual stats" were overpowered, or ilvl requirements forced players to leave them behind, players would ALWAYS choose the way-underleveled gear with primary stat over the primary statless new stuff. Players in ilvl 500 left-side gear, sporting ilvl 260 accessories, for as long as the game's ilvl requirements allowed it.

Even if you remove primary stats from accessories, you still have secondary stats with properties that don't always come from main stats. You'd be seriously gimping yourself by using lower ilvl accessories over whatever comes with the expansion.

A more heavy-handed approach would be to reduce the effectiveness of gear past a certain level (the way WoW items with procs have reduced proc rates once you've outleveled the item by a certain amount). So if you're lv70 you'll get less from the lv60 overmelded accessories, thus forcing you to use current gear instead.

[Awful]

Snip.

This is probably as true as it gets a lot of the classes got gutted which is why i'm worried about 4.0 FF 14 because i'm running out of keybinds whereas WoW my whole toolkit is maybe 12 buttons as a DK tank? Which is great all this extra space but for FF 14? I'm starting to dread having Alt * whatever buttons since it'll be awkward but we'll see.

As for cloneage I agree with you it's not a clone per se but it is missing the charm of the open world that XI and WoW has compared to FF 14 there is no charm unless you do Hildebrand and Maps but after that there's not much to revisit unless you're gathering. Neither games are bad just have different design choices that I like in both i've gotten so used to FF 14's combat system that I prefer it over WoWs but I like WoWs PvP because it's fun with friends and there's "some" world PvP (I use that loosely because that's something WoW has forgotten...). And for what it's worth i'm subbed to both as well so I know exactly how you feel.

[Shurrikhan]

Hunts themselves are pretty much a prime example how conflicting content like open world dungeons can be. If you put something of value in there, you will be fighting countless others to get it done. FATE's to a lesser extent, but they scale based on how many players are there, the more higher level ones at least.

I am 100% open to finding ways to put more into the open world. I am not for ideas that involve crowding a ton of people and making people conflict with one another. Things like treasure maps is definitely a step in the right direction.

Sorry to drag up stuff from a few pages back, but if anyone's willing there are a couple things I'd like to discuss on these bits above and below.

Also, sidenote: there should be a post attached below Sandpark's auto-generative exploration mission thread that can offer some vague design towards automatic instancing. There should quite a bit that can be done with open world-ish systems like Sandpark's Endless Desert to prevent or balance member stacking, be that scaling or outright forcing parties into a split.

I agree completely with what you've said about Hunts, or even open resources in general in this game. I was just looking before to move the discussion into XIV terms, where you have automatic claim-sharing on virtually any open world mob of importance, which can further incentivize zerging, rather than XI's party-only claims, which will incentivize... silent warring. In many ways I'm damn glad that things aren't as shared here as in other MMOs — until Legion, in WoW if I wanted to mine somewhere, and there were already people mining the zone, gfl snatching up more than a couple out of 20+ nodes, especially if they have flying mounts and don't yet. (By comparison, I wish XIV's mining wasn't just a couple loops per zone, if any, giving it about the same shallow appeal for me as a single-mechanic game in an arcade — or GS — but at least I can trudge through leveling the joke of a class without interruption.) Others I think strike a good balance, and others still could probably have used some of their systems barely differently to be less invasive while still feeling dynamic. Let's take the Highbridge example, for instance, but in this case allowing the player to find the abducted vendor in the enemy camp. Now imagine a open world gameplay that's actually appealing, whether by way of mob AI, camp scaling, and similar mechanics, perhaps even automatic level syncing and scaling together or composition-based spawns or adjustments so that you still feel challenged but also feel as heroic or powerful compared to others as your gear would imply. A solo-er could just barely, with difficulty, slip in and get access, and maybe get a discount, even, if able to rescue the vendor completely — a wholly new option. At that point use of the vendor isn't completely locked away, but there are changes in the world. Defeat just doesn't mean the end of it; you'll never be punished for no one interested having been in the zone to defend X location or associated opportunities. In truth, my interest is more simply on the level of quality for open world gameplay — range of difficulty, balance, and a decent sense of at least something like emergent gameplay — than in those models of shared consequence or the lack of. But dynamic doesn't have to mean punitive. (Not saying you said as much, just an idea I wanted to slide down the table, quite a ways apparently.)

One idea I really want to explore is along the lines of automatic "smoothed" phasing. You'll see this sometimes in WoW where a player gradually fades out from your perspective with distance, or the next time you turn away from him, rather than vanishing outright, iirc. Now imagine if there was a Hunted or Diadem monster who always spawns in mist. First you'd have to meet the spawn conditions in an associated area, and then you'd have to actually find the guy, checking for tracks in the mist. In that process, or, under that excuse that holds some appeal even on its own, you phase out the party as they go deeper. Unless the party so desires, they cannot be found and their fight cannot be joined. They spawned it, they killed it, possibly while another party nearby is killing another version simultaneously in their own version of the mist. Each party gains a cooldown of some range of hours before the Hunt can spawn again. That covers the model to some extent, at least; now the fights themselves would just have to be interesting, and the rewards worthwhile...

Difference of opinion here. I believe instanced content opens up to letting developers be more creative with an area and do things you would not be able to do in a open world setting. That in itself is open to criticism and interpretation, but it definitely makes things more interesting.

Diadem has the capability to offer that open world exploration feeling while being instanced. Best of both worlds. SE just needs to get it right. Hopefully the revamp of it will do that.

I can't deny that instancing (or "phasing") has objectively more opportunities to pull off additional features, details, nuances, or just about anything else than a flat open world. It has more layers after all. It can be scaled, synced, composition-matched, whatever. Granted, so can the open world, but phasing can bring out the details by supporting a smaller, closer-knit group of players who chose to interact closely. However, I do think there is a future possibility that'd allow for details, nuance, etc., to also come from the player count involved in a particular activity (rather than most of those things being seemingly flattened as the server brings on the zerg), or at least gives that a unique sense of entertainment. That might be by spawning enough things, based on overall player count, gear, comp, or whatever combination thereof, that you not only feel like you have a role within a party, but a role within a large raid; it might be due to entirely new under-mechanics; I can't say how, yet, but I do think it's a possibility. And if an equilibrium could be established thereafter, the open world — phased where it may be, single-layer where it may be — should be pretty awesome. But again, distant future, likely after many failed designs and tremendous effort, and all that.

When Diadem first came out, and I was really loving the look of the place, but disliking the zerg, I had all these ideas in the back of my head as to how to improve it. I've been wanting it to be great, because it looks great. But right now it's neither fun nor rewarding for most players. Heck, I haven't touched it since a month after release. I got what I needed and spared myself the tedium thereafter. (In 3 more armor ranks I can probably say the same for PotD, 3rd casual BiS weapon.) As such my ideas by now are limited, but I'll give it a shot... on edit.

[Jynx]

Unfortunately, with todays market, it's not what the general public want.

You know the funny thing is that was what Capcom said about the Resident Evil franchise being a horror game. Yet year after year the series sales plummeted and failed to meet the expectations they set with Resident Evil 4 (The first game to pump the action to 11). They tried to give the people "What they wanted" but they didn't buy it.

Fast forward a decade and you have Resident Evil 7 looking like a return to form for the franchise.

People don't always know what they want until they have it, but your right as a company it's just a safer bet to make a lobby game. Doesn't mean I'm going to commend them for it, I'll keep pushing for the game to move in a direction I feel is best for it as much as SE will push it however they feel. I'm here to discuss and make suggestions, I don't really care what the market feels like it just feels like a cop out say in another light "It is what it is...now stop talking".

WoW if anything has shown us the theme park model is not a sustainable one. The longer the game runs the more dated it gets and without content that has bredth the game in all senses has the "Same ammount of content" it did a few months ago because all the dated content is irrelevant.

Big issue if you have only limited time to play.

One thing I forgot to address with this is that your points while valid had countenance within FFXI. You could still log in for an hour or two and get alot accomplished there was just a variety of activities that required a time investment to complete. The game had a sprawling bredth of content spanning quick and long engagement periods.

My issues with XIV is that it's almost exclusively skewed in one direction.

[Istaru]

A bit late on the response here, but how do you accommodate someone who wants/needs to change jobs part way through an expansion under this system? Or a new player who's only just reaching the level cap part way through an expansion?

This is essentially how the relic/anima weapons work, and although the earlier steps receive progressive nerfs over the course of the expansion, it eventually reaches a point where players just look at the mountain they have to climb and give up before they even start.

I agree about the relic.

I am going to discuss the idea for weapons from Primals, the numbers are kinda made up.

You get tokens, just like now, but the items themselves don't drop anymore.

Patch 3.0

Path A
Buy i180 crafted weapon, but it can't be upgraded, sorry. But you can pentameld it while your Gil cries.

Path B
Buy Tomestone i190 weapon for 1,000 tomestones. Fully spirit bonding once gives you +5 ilvl to the cap of i195.

Path C
Get 10 EX tokens or 1,000 uncapped tomestones and get the i190 weapon. Each additional 100% spiritbond you turn in gives you +5 ilvl until the cap of i205.

Here comes patch 3.1 (Please look forward to it)

Path A
Buy i180 crafted weapon, new crafted items are only for even patches silly rabbit. It can still be pentamelded though.

Path B
Buy Tomestone i190 weapon for 1,000 tomestones. Fully spiritbonding gives you +5 ilvl to the cap of i195. You thought I was going to boost this too? Nope, tomestones should be a gateway mechanic to catch up and enter content, not be the best you can get.

Path C
Get 10 new EX tokens or 1,000 uncapped tomestones and get the new i205 weapon (equal to end of 3.0). Each additional 100% spiritbond you turn in gives you +5 ilvl until the cap of i220.

Path D
Get 10 new EX tokens and upgrade your current i205 weapon to i210. Each additional 100% spiritbond gives you +5 ilvl to the cap of i220.

Path E (incomplete previous weapon)
Get 3.0 tokens to finish or get 10 new EX tokens to finish old weapon to i205)

Oh noes! Even numbered patch known as 3.2 is here, all my gear is garbage now, or is it?

Path A
Buy i210 crafted weapon, but it still can't be upgraded, sorry.

Path B
Buy new Tomestone i220 weapon for 1,000 tomestones. An 100% spiritbond gives you +5 ilvl until the cap of i225.

Path C
Get 10 newer EX tokens and get the new i220 weapon (equal to end of 3.1 this time). Each 100% spiritbond you turn in gives you +5 ilvl until the cap of i235.

Path D
Get 10 newer EX tokens and upgrade your current i220 weapon to i225. Each 100% spiritbond you turn in gives you +5 ilvl until the cap of i235.

Path C (incomplete previous weapon)
Get 3.0 or 3.1 tokens to finish or get 10 new EX tokens to finish old weapon to i220) then follow path D.

Current itemization changed to match up

3.0, clear primal 10x, get i190 weapon

3.1, clear new primal, get i205 weapon, toss i200 weapon in trash.

3.2, clear newer primal, get i220 weapon, toss i205 weapon into the trash with the old i200 weapon. Toss your old i200 gear on top of it, get marshmallows and roast them when you light the old gear on fire.

I think the idea should be apparent now.

It turns the process of improving your gear into a ramp instead of stairs.

In the current scheme, as you get closer to the even patch, the benefit of work on gear through hard content approaches 0 from an itemization standpoint. Instead of jumping 30 ilvl over 2 patches. In this scheme, it is 15 ilvl or even as low as 0 ilvl per patch at the start. In that case chasing gear and upgrades until the release date is more fluid. Continuing to clear content continues to reward you.

The upgrade mechanic isn't important. The idea is to increase our gear strength in a linear fashion instead of large jumps.