Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW!

[Keramory]

FFXI had flaws but the time sink debate is really a meh point for me. Yeah it took longer to travel or level up...but with FFXIV I'm spending the same amount of time in this game doing more things, but those things feel far more empty doing. Yeah I leveled up quickly, but I'm farming tomes for the same soon to be no longer relevant gear in a soon to be no longer relevant instance/raid. Say what you will about FFXI, but it's content (gear/locations/quests/ect) held for long periods of time. Several, several years into the game you could still easily grab 18 people and do a level 20 quest to kill a giant slug.

I would rather spend more time leveling my character and exploring a dangerous world then spamming instances for a pony or glamor. Don't get me wrong, these things are nice additions...but I feel like theres not much left. If anything the grinding in FFXIV seems much worse in its own way then FFXI ever felt.

[Shurrikhan]

I rather play with 1-2m loyal FF customers that love SE Yoshi P and their brand then be mixed with 2m more who have the wow gaming mentality.

Would you also rather play with a third to half the budget? Because that's what a third to half the playerbase, and therefore subscriptions, will eventually average out to (+/- mogstore purchases)...

1. Heavensward is objectively less imbalanced now than ARR was at release. Don't even bother with that. At best, ARR's imbalances were simply more veiled as parsers were still figuring out how to account for DoT damage.

2. And what, exactly would horizontal progression solve? You keep using that word, but do you know what it would actually means in the context of this game? How would it reduce "slacker" tendencies if, say, rather than having catch-up gear after the point that gear would be relevant for new content, you simply have no real upgrades for the next year?

3. There is no "WoW gaming mentality", nor is there any reason to stick a corporate face of evil onto anything you don't care for. There are simply various player "types", if you will, that WoW has been better able to gather, and sometimes retain. Fun fact: its member types best retained even as others drop off after every expansion or upon completion of patch content is allegedly the 'social RPers' and 'lore-ists'. But I guessing those aren't part of your imagined WoW gaming mentality.

5. Dependence on others does not necessarily equate to challenging content. Just what two anecdotal parts of the XI and WoW communities are you comparing when you call one mature? Because I doubt an hyperactive, smug, or condescending teen looks much different in one's Guild compared to the other's LS. At best, he simply feels more constrained not to make enemies when he's less able to solo, not more mature in itself.

6. You might want to proofread and edit this part — I apologize if you already have:

Lets just be honest EVERYTHING and I leget mean EVERYTHING aside from Savage and current Extreme primal is considered very hard/Expert.

The rest of the content* is on a very easy difficulty level these are facts its not even a casual thing cause I've seen the socalled casual community on 5 different servers where I have level 60 characters on feel that there is nothing to do and the game gets boring.

* The rest of the content would at that point just be... Savage and Ex primals. I think I get what you mean, but you've already got an edit marker there, so what's to lose?

Also, if you have 5 different 60 characters... why not post on one of them? It's not like you'd necessarily be giving away the identity of your "main" at that point?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

FFXI had flaws but the time sink debate is really a meh point for me. Yeah it took longer to travel or level up...but with FFXIV I'm spending the same amount of time in this game doing more things, but those things feel far more empty doing. Yeah I leveled up quickly, but I'm farming tomes for the same soon to be no longer relevant gear in a soon to be no longer relevant instance/raid. Say what you will about FFXI, but it's content (gear/locations/quests/ect) held for long periods of time. Several, several years into the game you could still easily grab 18 people and do a level 20 quest to kill a giant slug.

I would rather spend more time leveling my character and exploring a dangerous world then spamming instances for a pony or glamor. Don't get me wrong, these things are nice additions...but I feel like theres not much left. If anything the grinding in FFXIV seems much worse in its own way then FFXI ever felt.

You can do that very same thing in FFXIV. And honestly, what difference does it actually make whether gear lasts or not? The only purpose gear serves is to boost our stats. Say in 3.4, instead of releasing new gear, we simply upgrade our existing gear through some means. Does that arbitrarily make the system better? I dunno. I've just never understood why having one thing for years is seen as a good thing by some. Frankly, the whole process is mindless to me regardless of which system is employed.

[Velhart]

snip

There you go again. Not explaining why what you say it is in fact better. You keep saying it will work because you say it will and your few friends you know can vouch for it. Again, you nor your few friends speak for the community as a whole. It is funny that you can type so much but hold little meaning to it all besides your own needs in a game.

Please explain how your ideas work on a casual level, midcore level, and hardcore level. Also provide reasons why you believe your ideas may give a better chance on higher sub count without going "because myself and my friends say so"

FFXIV is far from perfect and has it's own issues that need to be improved on, but what honestly makes you believe basically tearing it down and put these proven even more imbalanced, borderline broken/just straight out broken concepts work? The worst imbalance ARR has had is still way better than FFXI was at it's most balanced, which is not saying much at all, because FFXI has never been considered close to being even somewhat balanced. Ask all the melee right now who don't get picked over a BLM or GEO. Or ask the BRD's who don't get invited anymore.

[FizzleofHyperion]

Velhart: thats just your opinion and views of it. I'm not going to bother explaining anything to you anymore. I've done countless of times you are the master of finding negativity in anything good so i refuse to feed into your trolling. Neither SE or Yoshi P will come to your house with a medal or cake for any of this.

We have had debates before where your arguements make me bash my head to a wall where you intentionally find arguements when there really is none so with this beeing said i will always continue to ignore you after this post.

No one here has anything to prove to you sorry. People are voicing their opinions and "few" is an understatement you are just beeing naive. You are on hyperion for example you see exactly whats going on here. Especially during the conversations that goes on in your FC and linkshells where i have friends that pretty much know you contradict yourself either here or in the game and we don't know where it is.

This is my final time replying to anything you say.

I've made myself clear on what needs to be changed I'm not a game developer and neither are you. As much as you assume your answers are the only thing correct people agree with what i have to say so start with getting that part in your head.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

As much as you guys assume that the socalled people who want more FFXI related content here and think we are negative you guys are just as negative for not accepting that people are seeing flaws in this.

As much as you claim that FFXI is so unbalanced back then and now FFXIV is just as unbalanced now as it was after a while beeing in ARR.

This is objectively wrong. Throughout FFXI's entire life cycle, there were jobs and subclass combinations you would be laughed at for even considering. FFXIV may have had its imbalanced issues in the early goings. They have all be fixed to the extent no one job is shunned from content.

The enjoy is only meant for a new person get them hooked fast into playing but as soon as they reach level 60 they will eventually run out of things to do and be limited to the socalled weekly item they can buy with lore. Levling fast is proven to keep going because it triggers signals in your brain that you keep acheiving something alot and gives satisfaction (google the research from the two professors who did that MMORPG research if you don't beleive me).

You do realize this argument supports tomestones, yes? In fact, it goes a step further and completely contradicts horizontal progression being a desired attribute by the majority of players. So... yeah.

These are the same people you guys are telling to level other jobs in order for having something to do and even use the arguement that they should take a break?

Both thoese arguements are really really stupid.

The game should provide enough content for you to do without it feeling like you are jumping on a new hamsterwheel every 3-6 months because thats considered something to do because of the new amazing currency XXX making all your past progress useless.
Mind you it takes about 8-10 weeks to get a full set of the current currency if you want to reach the max ilvl for present time.
After that you want that some person to start levling a second job to 60 and start working on a gears for that job?
ok we can be fair lets say you have 3 mainjobs at 60 that you play very often.
Thats still almost 30 weeks of limitations.
By the time you reach your goal for thoese 3 jobs the gears are pretty much useless cause something else is introduced.

No game can sate player consumption nowadays. Even the film industry has struggled with how fast content is consumed. People simply prioritize technology far more than any other hobby. In fact, video games have rapidly taken over as being among the fastest grow industry in the world for that very reason. Does that mean FFXIV cannot offer more? Of course not. All games should strive for improvements, however there will always remain a limit.

Say SE ups the dungeon count to four next patch, adds two more fights to Alexander, two Primals and completely overhauls Diadem. I guarantee you outside of Savage, people will have all of that done in two days tops. That is the problem; and why others suggest a break, if you're bored. Every game will inevitably run out of stuff to do by virtue of finite resources.

The gears itself don't mean anything either cause at current state someone thats i220 has access to the same stuff as someone thats i240 and they can do the same things and complete them making whatever i240 gears you are grinding so hard for not really worth the effort in anyway unless
SE starts presenting something that requires i240 to do or you cant enter an instance or pop a boss or whatever.

Step into A7S with only ilvl 220 gear and you will struggle. While I do agree SE needs to boost the difficulty of content overall, the game is purposefully designed to limit restrictions on endgame content. I know, somewhat ironic considering the sheer amount of content gated when you first start. Let's be honest, Final Fantasy games in general have never been hard. You have the occasional story boss that gives people a challenge if they're under levedl (Looking at you Seymour Flux), however everything else mostly rolls over. Only the super bosses pose any real threat.

All this is sort of standard affair for a Final Fantasy game.

Even if they released 3 dungeons that are meant for ex roulette and they broke the pattern it still wouldnt make any difference from 2-3 you will still get burned out quick because of how the current structure is of this game.

Lets just be honest EVERYTHING and I leget mean EVERYTHING aside from Savage and current Extreme primal is considered very hard/Expert.

The rest of the content is on a very easy difficulty level these are facts its not even a casual thing cause I've seen the socalled casual community on 5 different servers where I have level 60 characters on feel that there is nothing to do and the game gets boring.

If I'm on 5 servers that are already feeling these i can only imagine how it is everywhere else.

I will, again, reiterate content ought to be more challenging. That being said, you can talk to twelve people and can't twenty four opinions. Anecdotal claims don't mean much in the grand scheme of things because you'll find plenty of people happy with the game. It's somewhat telling the largest server in the game happens to be one dedicated to an activity that technically doesn't even require them to log in (Roleplaying).

Spare me the don't rush content arguement aswell if people like to game alot let them game if stuff wasnt as easy as it is now atleast content would have been rewarding and enjoyable.
Horizontal progression wont break this game at all because it hasnt even been tried out here yet correctly.

Neither will it impose some revolutionary change. Horizontal progression is primarily an illusion of choice. You can gear that will grant unique effects or have skill trees to learn a myriad of abilities, however someone will inevitably map out the best combination and that will be the expected norm. It happened in FFXI, and it will happen in FFXIV should they ever implement it. Now I wouldn't necessarily mind if they went in this direction, but it isn't going to radically change the current paradigm.

The game itself intentionally causes you to be a slacker too btw allow me to explain this because of how the game is also built.
Player B can always catch up with Player A and acheive whatever Player A has with half the effort.
Meaning why should anyone do anything if its just going to get nerfed later so Player B who thinks they are entitled to everything because they pay for a subscription should catch up without having to work for something just as hard as Player A?
If you say this is OK then you pretty much devalued the community of FFXIV saying the newer generation of gamers can't handle challenges/grind are lazy and are just not good enough as gamers.

Because it's fun to do? I couldn't care less if Savage gets nerfed later on. I want to do it now for the thrill of completely it. If I decide not to, I'll put something off. Walling off content isn't going to make someone who is lazy anymore motivated to do said content. It's the equivalent argument to those who want to impose all sorts of restrictions to force people to learn their job or mechanics. If people want to do something, they will. And if they don't, they won't.

FFXI (before everything that is going on now) might be viewed as a timesink to some but it still required way more teamwork and be dependent on other players than on FFXIV.

And I, personally, found that more irksome than rewarding. I do not want to be wholly dependent on the whims of other players every single time I log in to do something. When I choose to be social, I will. Having it thrust upon me means there may be times where I simply cannot progress because no one's around or willing to do the content I want.

If FFXI was your MMORPG flagship why would you go against your own foundation? Even if its a business find something that makes your game unique don't try and take gamers from a different market like WoW who will just jump ships again when Blizzard releases a new MMORPG because they are only here because this game reminds them of WoW. I say this because this is facts you have seen the novice network on your servers there are countless of players who use this arguement it shouldnt be like that. These are the same players most of us want to avoid because of how WoW teaches a selfish gaming mentality why would anyone want to play with the same people that are coming from that to here dictacting their way of gaming and enforcing it on us?

Because FFXI first originated fourteen years ago and times have changed. Even at its peak, FFXI only garnered 500,000 registered users. FFXIV utterly dwarfs this with their recent announcement of exceeding six million. Now before anyone points out those aren't active players, both were taken directly from SE, hence my specific mention of "registered." Neither reflect the active playerbase. They do, however, indicate which game is more popular.

I rather play with 1-2m loyal FF customers that love SE Yoshi P and their brand then be mixed with 2m more who have the wow gaming mentality.

As Shurrikhan mentioned, would you prefer a version of FFXI with a fraction of the budget? Loyalty only stretches so far. A company is not going to radically alter their game to its own detriment. Nevermind the fact FFXIV has proven more popular despite the continued instance by some it's an inferior game.

[Alaltus]

Because FFXI first originated fourteen years ago and times have changed. Even at its peak, FFXI only garnered 500,000 registered users. FFXIV utterly dwarfs this with their recent announcement of exceeding six million. Now before anyone points out those aren't active players, both were taken directly from SE, hence my specific mention of "registered." Neither reflect the active playerbase. They do, however, indicate which game is more popular.

Your using numbers wrong. 500,000 is the number of players they had paying a subscription at one time at it's peak, which was a higher subscription than this game has and every month not once every 6 months when a big patch gets released. Last time i checked people were only estimating about the same size population for FFXIV.

[Sandpark]

Your using numbers wrong. 500,000 is the number of players they had paying a subscription at one time at it's peak, which was a higher subscription than this game has and every month not once every 6 months when a big patch gets released. Last time i checked people were only estimating about the same size population for FFXIV.

Yep every sub based games nowadays sports the registered users example. All that means is people who have bought the game. That has nothing to do with how many sub and for how long. Xbox stopped posting their numbers as soon as Sony started outselling 2-1.
http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/12/th...-restrictions/



http://www.alistdaily.com/digital/su...ch-20-billion/

I am not saying SE didn't make a good game or that F2P is better or that SE should go F2P. Just saying subscription based games do not bring in as much dough as F2P. The argument against this would be people saying sub is guaranteed money. Which I think is true in this case. XIV has more content updates than most games. But the amount of content isn't what is being debated here. It's the quality and depth of it.

If a company was confident and proud of sub based numbers they would openly post that. WoW still post their numbers even if the sub base has dropped by half.

[Astral145]

My Sub ran out yesterday and I have decided to not resub till 3.4. I am tired of logging on just to get on the "Mary-Go-Round" of capping tomes, scrips or running the same dull content for an over price Glamour Relic weapons or grinding for a “Purtie-Birdie” mount or run POTD.. I ran POTD enough times to get 3 weapons and to purchase the ugly “Odd-Ball” mount. POTD was kinda cool at first but now it’s mind numbing and boring. I have been waiting for content like POTD since release of 2.0 but the way it was implemented into the game was simply not fun at all. I was hoping for more of a Diablo 3 “Rift” kinda feel to it, but instead we got....I dont know what to call the content we call POTD.. The Devs did a lazy job with POTD and that is all there is to it. I swear there is no real creativity in 3.0+. All you see is RNG RNG RNG RNG.... WHY?
Majority of 3.0 is horrible. The only few good things that came out of 3.0+ were the new zones which are simply gorgeous and of course flying mounts. Maybe a few QoL bits here and there but other than that it was weak and completely FORGETABLE.

The new jobs were..... meh at best.
•MCH... Heavy RNG based...why?
•AST... RNG cards to give an illusion of support....why?
•DRK... Well it’s what PLD should have been in some aspects but that is for another conversation.

New job skills for existing classes. (I have all battle classes at 60 and really gave each class a fair chance, so I have an idea as to what I am talking about. I did not use Fates to lvl up either. All dungeons)
• BLM... Heavy based on timers....WHY? Astral Timer, Umbral Timer, Enochian Timer.....why so many freaken timers? Enochian should have been a trait that should have been built on top of Umbral and Astral.... WHY SO MANY TIMERS? You could have given BLM stacks or whatever. Why freaking timers?

• BRD... Bow Mage....WHY? You could have instead given BRD the "True Aim" song to where if you stand still you get a 35% increase in damage, but if move you lose the 35% buff + lose 15% damage to all damage dealt until you are a standing still again. This way BRD keeps its 2.0 feel but stand to lose a good chunk of damage if poorly used.

• MNK.... Mostly QoL changes but some of the skills are freaken annoying. But it kept it's 2.0 rotation for the most part which is awesome
• NIN..... Mostly QoL changes and keeping the rotation about the same as it was in 2.0 but with some extra twists along the way.
• DRG.... Some descent skills were added along with MORE FREAKEN TIMERS.....WHY? WHY TIMERS? WHY NOT STACKS OR SOME OTHER CREATIVE WAY TO MAKE USE OF THE NEW SKILLS... TIMERS DO NOT MAKE IT MORE COMPLICATED OR MORE CHALLENGING.... IT SIMPLY MAKES IT MORE FRUSTRATING AND LESS FUN TO PLAY. SERIOUSLY WHO LIKES WATCHING TIMERS ON THE SCREEN WHEN AN EPIC BATTLE IS GOING ON?

• WAR... BROKEN.....OVER POWERED for a tank where dps is concerned. WAR is FUN as heck to play but makes PLD a LEAST likely choice, especially in this new GOTTA BRING THE DEEPS mentality going on atm.

• SMN... It’s okay, kinda meh... Awesome BURSTINESS at start but once on cool down SMN becomes dull to play. The pet is more of an afterthought in 3.0. Pets bring nothing new to the table. Set the pet and forget it for the majority of all the content.

• WHM.... Mostly QoL changes with some extra needed skills...
• SCH..... You can basically set the pet on auto heal and go straight in to dps stance. Why bother healing when you have the pet do most of the work in 95% of the content in the game. But it’s still fun to play which is the most important part
.
• PLD... Some QoL changes with a few new skills to boot. Unfortunately, PLD didn't get a dps boost which it really needs. WAR is just as good in the TANK department yet it can bring some crazy dps in both tank and dps stance. There is no excuse for not bringing PLD's dps closer to WAR's.... sorry but it’s true, war can handle it all just as easily as PLD...

So yea I would love to see FFXIV go back to it’s roots and bring back some of the exotic flavors from FFXIV 1.0 and FFXI. As it stands now FFXIV is getting really boring. Tired of the same ol’Song and Dance routine….. cap tomes, run 24 person raid….ect. Forget all that and bring out horizontal gearing options with more exotic stats that could really change some aspects of a job. Make it so we can gear up the classes without gates and RNG. Make it worthwhile to get those epic gears. Stop hiding behind walls and gates and start stepping outside the box.
Devs the ball is in your court you can still turn this theme park MMO into something unique and UNFORGETTABLE.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Your using numbers wrong. 500,000 is the number of players they had paying a subscription at one time at it's peak, which was a higher subscription than this game has and every month not once every 6 months when a big patch gets released. Last time i checked people were only estimating about the same size population for FFXIV.

Even if we did use those numbers, Reddit's analysis put FFXIV at nearly 800,000 active players during 3.1. So... it's still ahead of what was its predecessor's peak performance while 3.1 is considered the worst patch of FFXIV's life cycle thus far.

And WoW announced last year they won't be releasing sub numbers.