Thread: So I'm not seeing how this is them changing things up from 2.0/3.0

Would be interesting to see suggestions on what systems they could add, I've already seen a few people do so.

Some relatively standalone personal thoughts (doesn't come crashing in and ruining pvp/pve balance or progression for example lol):

I think a chocobo hot and cold could be fun and relatively straight forward to add (compared to say "revamp housing" lol), and to easily reference it to a current active system in another MMO basically look at WoW's Archaeology - except FFXIV's would be 100x cuter.. cause Chocobos. Like in FFIX I would love to see it culminate into a Chocobo Paradise/Heaven visit lol. Combine this with the below chocobo raising and you might get your fourth gathering job although that isn't necessary for the idea (would be an interesting mix of different types of items - some could be based on that sort of Archaeology idea and others more natural gathering style like the other gatherers, and adding levels could allow for development to the hot cold game and a mini game in that maybe).

Glamour/item log another straight forward but highly useful one (although SE seems to have a lot of data issues). With the log you could encourage a big time recycle on your content, with a reward for doing it - and maybe lore bits on some items.

Bestiary log (classic RPG/FF thing), again SE might have memory issues, besides lore and EXP (cannibalize the other log that requires killing monsters into this one), could also be leading towards a coliseum / monster making / fighting system like FFX's arena (doesn't have to end at itself). May work with the monster master idea they had to turn Blue Mage into a solo non-dungeon job (please don't do that to Blue Mage, but go ahead and make the content lol).

Aesthetic growth- its come up in many forms like a tree, sphere grid, glyphs, unlock page, FFIX item learning, merit points, but a way to increase player customization through progress. I feel this would be good in general for FFXIV because this game's end game for a majority of players seems not to be raiding but just glamour/fashion. So being encouraged to learn how to change grit from red fractals to smokey shadows or so when you cast a spell as BLM you float instead might be fun (optional modifications to your character, like perhaps glowing eyes in combat, and probably be best to add some sort of limit so even if you have 100 things unlocked you can't use all 100 at once lol). Might be able to add other race's animations for somethings as an unlock, like unlocking the female dark knight idle pose as a male (or male for female), instead of a sword to the chest the casting animation for paladin is to just praise dat sun, etc, etc.


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Personal desires that are really big and greedy:

Getting everyone a house and making it more baseline might be able to open up some interesting things, looking at Wild Star (not only game that does this though, it's just a good example of it doing well) where you can basically design your own pocket world and many things you collect can make your play experience more powerful (exp/rested buffs, building mines, training areas, mini games, gardens, raid portals, and more). As a leader of an entire country pretty much the WoL shouldn't have issue owning their own plot of land. Current housing system is like owning a house in down town, the land is so small, overpriced (if you're buying from players), and limited. An important thing to add is if everyone gets a place to call their own that then they can start adding really cool / seen as more mandatory to complete features to housing because there is no issue about "not enough houses, not fair to do". Can leave the neighborhood experience as an optional externally for people and when they use the door they enter their pocket world, although personally couldn't care less about the neighborhood experience since even on the largest server it seems mostly dead except for like one house lol.

Like for example FC needing to build a foundry or forge building, leading to them adding an airport hub in their floating airbase so they can then work on a very large physical ship that can be taken on raiding missions into Garlean territory. Where you act as a sort of pirate (basically take the FFXI pirate attacks, the besieged, except you're the pirates). Would push more gil around if more people buy and sell as more people can actually take part, also more money to SE because of the cash shop (those housing items in the CS). Although of course making it work in the first place would probably cost SE a bit...

I'm not so sure about a whole Garrison system for each player (WoW) but I do think adding that sort of thing for an entire Free Company that they can work together to build would be a really good idea, only having the workshop as a place to project together is pretty bad imo. Also consider looking at Guild Wars 2's Guild Halls which are /massive/ areas with upgrade-able buildings too. Being able to upgrade a larger space with more impactful visuals, as well as doing reputation building for your FC in a meaningful way over a long period of time would be very nice (imo).

True chocobo raising, like baby chick to adult, less npc doing it/cut scene only, with customization including variations of feathers as seen in all other FFs (fluffy chocobos of FFXIII). Definitely allowing them to be used in squadron allowed dungeon content. Good idea to include other features though like retainer missions on them, just so they become overall useful - perhaps raising for certain NPCs/GC for gil/token/reputations to encourage the system not to be a one off and done thing (You stock the immortal flames with strong war steeds sort of thing). With the everyone gets a house with actual land thing I could even have my own chocobo ranch *squeeeeeeee* (FF7~)

My moogle buddy, or at least a fuller companion system and a moogle as an option for one, and make one of them more useful housecarl type thing. Be able to flute him like FFIX for a shop I can slowly upgrade through quests/reputation with other npcs, ask him to take items from me to put into my vault, and other useful stuff like teaching them how to make sure my plants dont die (perhaps puts them in stasis, upgrades increasing how long). If I'm near my vault we can work together so they pull the items out of the vault for me automatically and "hands" them to me, so I can craft from my inventory and the vault ("two" person crafting in select areas, perhaps sometimes giving small buffs as a cute here take this moment, reduces lost items, nothing so powerful that it changes crafting balance so you must use them or fail - just helpful randomness). I miss my FFXI moogle. . . >.<;.

Back to reality.. I'll be really interested to hear more about the changes on may 20th, hope Paladin really.. shines :3.

Originally Posted by KokonoeAiyoko

All people really want is something different. Give us something new, something different that's actually relevant to do and that it would be rewarding for people to do it. Give us a new way to farm, a new way to obtain something, something actually fun to do that's entertaining.

We don't want to play the same exact thing, because if that's really the case, we can just stay on 3.0 and not even bother with Stormblood. How about don't tell us that "this isn't FFXI" when it's not like FFXI invented open world content, and don't sit there and act as if casuals don't enjoy open world content when Zelda Breath of the Wild is selling like hot cakes right now and is open world.

People actually like open world content, and if a singleplayer game can do that well with open world, it'd be even better with an MMORPG because you can meet people out in the world, meet someone in a dungeon, share experiences with one another. Please do not base your design decisions solely on FFXIV 1.0 because that game failed for many, many reasons, and open world content wasn't one of them.

Just give us something new, please. Please.

Your assumptions here are very flawed. Open world content works in single player pretty much specifically because there's no one else out there. Open world content in an MMO means competition with other players. Like, that's basically the only difference between open world and instanced. And that's good... why? What does a casual player have to gain from NMs they'll never claim and drops they'll never get from them? Do a lot of casual players do hunts in FFXIV?

For what it's worth, my favorite MMO memory of all time happened because FFXI had an open world. (The short version is, we were in over our heads in Fei'yin, and a higher-level party saved us and it was awesome.) I get it. The potential for awesome stuff to happen is much, much higher in an open world. But the cost to have that chance is absolutely soul-crushing to a casual player. I am basically the prototype of a player who hates open-world content. I play quite a lot, and I'm pretty decent, but I have no desire to compete with people, brag about my achievements, or prove anything to anyone. I basically want to be able to play the game like a single-player game, and I'm not the only one. That's why open-world content has become unpopular; it requires you to deal with other people, and a lot of MMO players (despite that moniker) do not actually want that. And it's much more profitable than a game that requires social interaction to actually accomplish things. That's why WoW was 25x more popular than EQ or FFXI.

Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

They've tried new content. People didn't like it and loudly complained about it. Stormblood having a dearth of "new types of content" is the result. A befuddled development team tired of getting burned by the capriciousness of consumers who don't know what the fuck they want.

I can't reiterate this enough. People asked for Diadem, and then hated it. People insisted they wanted quests that didn't lead you by the nose, and they implemented one. Given that they never did another, I presume it wasn't at all popular. They made hunts and people complained. Every time they try to implement something "old school," it gets rejected. People will say they just didn't do it right, but consider. Either they've consistently gotten these ideas wrong, in which case why would you trust them to get the next one right? Or those ideas just don't work anymore. Either way, it would be stupid for the devs to change things for the sake of doing so without direction. There is no indication that would be successful.

Seriously, what part of this game's history makes you think that if the devs made a change, the people who keep asking for one would like it?

Originally Posted by Talraen

Your assumptions here are very flawed. Open world content works in single player pretty much specifically because there's no one else out there. Open world content in an MMO means competition with other players. Like, that's basically the only difference between open world and instanced. And that's good... why? What does a casual player have to gain from NMs they'll never claim and drops they'll never get from them? Do a lot of casual players do hunts in FFXIV?

For what it's worth, my favorite MMO memory of all time happened because FFXI had an open world. (The short version is, we were in over our heads in Fei'yin, and a higher-level party saved us and it was awesome.) I get it. The potential for awesome stuff to happen is much, much higher in an open world. But the cost to have that chance is absolutely soul-crushing to a casual player. I am basically the prototype of a player who hates open-world content. I play quite a lot, and I'm pretty decent, but I have no desire to compete with people, brag about my achievements, or prove anything to anyone. I basically want to be able to play the game like a single-player game, and I'm not the only one. That's why open-world content has become unpopular; it requires you to deal with other people, and a lot of MMO players (despite that moniker) do not actually want that. And it's much more profitable than a game that requires social interaction to actually accomplish things. That's why WoW was 25x more popular than EQ or FFXI.

You mention flaws, I've found some in your post. WoW has many reasons for it to be far more successful than FFXI, it had more competent devs and ones that actually listened to the player base. It was based in USA and thus had better communication with it's player base and appealed to the western audience more because of it's art style and themeing. World of Warcraft also came out years after FFXI when gaming was even larger, and FFXI as an MMO came out when such games were not that widely popular as of yet. The list can really go on for why World of Warcraft is more successful, but you can honestly just look at the flaws of FFXI to see why it didn't win over mainstream and how the game was run. Open world content had nothing to do with this.

And here's the thing about open world content, the fact that you actually have to interact with people becomes more rewarding in the long run and helps the community stabilize better, it gets more people talking. It gives them time to pause and take in the surroundings and not rush straight to the end of a raid like instanced content is. How many times have people not been able to read a random note on the floor in a dungeon just because people want to rush down the dungeon? If open world content is damaging, so is instanced content if that's all there is, just people don't pay attention to the little things that add up over time.

I disagree, and I feel that it can be implemented alongside instanced content for an excellent balance. It really depends on how it's executed in the end, we don't need FFXI 2.0. Besides, with party finder, it's already vastly above FFXI's recruitment process.

They've tried new content. People didn't like it and loudly complained about it. Stormblood having a dearth of "new types of content" is the result. A befuddled development team tired of getting burned by the capriciousness of consumers who don't know what the fuck they want.

I don't think the OP is exactly asking for a complete rehaul in the game or anything like that. I think they really just want new and unique content that keeps them interested in playing throughout the expansion. It doesn't necessarily mean having to change the core of the game or redesigning huge aspects of what is established.

I do get that Stormblood being basically a Heavensward 2.0 would be nice for folks who are satisfied with the current formula as it is, but others would want something more. I think Square Enix can strike a good balance, there is a lot of potential there after all!

Personally I'd love it if Stormblood does a lot of cool things that makes me wanna play a lot more from a casual point of view. I feel FFXIV has a lot of room for improvement and changes, as great as the game is.

Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

So you more or less don't know what you want, then. Just that it be different.

I rest my case.

...That is not how I interpreted it, especially when he expressed some ideas earlier but okay.