Thread: 4.25 and beyond

Originally Posted by Vexander

I wouldn't mind seeing a discussion on how to improve the gameplay. If gear is worthless because its only iLvl, how can gear be changed to make it more, 'Worthwhile?' The main complaint I see against it is that it has a shelf-life of 3-6 months, and the increasing numbers for stats don't yield a difference in gameplay from prior gear (at level 50, 350 Crit = 17-18%, at level 70 2,000 crit = 17-18%).

SE could always attempt to add more mini-games like Verminion to attract more of the mobile phone crowd. Honestly if Verminion was a lot more like WoW's Pet Battles I'd be doing that a LOT.
Triple Triad is nice and you can collect cards through many different kinds of gameplay.

What do you guys want to see added?

I want to see battle content, and I want to see gear that alters the performance of my job in a meaningful way (i.e., gear that has the potential to change how I play the job itself).

Honestly, for "non-core" content, I think SE has done a decent job. The Scrips, Master Recipes and Legendary Nodes, Specialist abilities and Collectables, all of those have kept Gatherers and Crafters in a decent place. Spearfishing was nice. PvP has been reasonably well-supported with The Feast, Rival Wings, and custom matches / dueling. Side content like the Gold Saucer mini-games, Lord of Verminion, Chocobo Racing, Triple Triad - all are solid time sinks that are good for a bit of fun here and there.

What FFXIV needs, what I want, is this sort of variety in combat and gear. I want to see combat-oriented PvE content that changes how a job plays, changes up the objectives. Right now, be it a 4-person dungeon or a 24-person Raid, there's really no change whatsoever to how I play. Throw up DoTs, heal as needed, deal damage in the meantime. The same abilities, working the same way, with the same tactics. Every. Single. Fight. The only thing that changes is the mechanics I have to adapt to, which are heavily recycled at this point (understandably so). What I want to see is SE vary up not just the mechanics, but the way we play. For a great example, we can look to Palace of the Dead: monster strength relative to the player was reduced; party composition was shaken up; levels were made non-linear. Just those small changes, and all of a sudden I find myself duo'ing with a partner or rampaging through with a party of healers. That feels different, and I don't think it's any accident that PotD remains quite popular even today.

A great start would be looking to FFXI. Besieged and Campaign could be tremendously fun; truly large-scale fights that inspire the sense of awe that I had when I saw an original ARR advertising video (might have been a benchmark) that showed players battling Ifrit out in Thanalan. That was an astonishingly cool sequence. Instead, we got much smaller models for Odin, Behemonth, etc., and server-side issues that were never up to the task. Whoops, OK, scratch that idea. Maybe we could have Assault, then? Where some levels involve escorts; some levels involve massive waves of enemies; some levels involve breaking down rock walls and emphasize DoT; some levels involve stealth. This kind of variety is already present, to an extent, in solo instances - why not expand it to group content? Or we could see Abyssea-like content, where the proc system for NMs, Atmas, and the light-farming component really created a unique experience relative to content outside Abyssea. Sure, a lot of people still associate it with wrecking FFXI's carefully-managed balance, but setting that aside, it was great stuff. Why can't we see it here? I'm hoping this is what Eureka turns out to be, and if so, good for SE taking a step in the right direction - but if not, why not introduce it? And while they're at it, why not emulate things like the AF3 set for White Mage from FFXI, where Cures added a small Stoneskin effect to the player?

And why not create more variety in other combat areas of the game, too? We have 24-person Raids; why not 24-person instanced maps, in the vein of Dynamis? Why not 24-person battle series, a la Einherjar? Why not introduce Raids with even more non-linearity, where instead of the alliance being split up for just a single boss fight (at most), we have it split up for longer sequences of content? Or hell, split it across Role lines, and design a unique objective for each path based around which Role it is. There's a lot of potential here.

TL; DR - SE has a wealth of ideas to choose from. There are plenty from FFXIV's predecessor, if they don't want to get overly creative. I haven't a clue as to why the development team isn't embracing it - balance issue fears, technical limitations, a lack of manpower, an edict from on high to stay conservative - but as a gamer, I don't really care. My dollars will only flow to FFXIV as long as it's a compelling game for me to play. SE is getting that for free at the moment, because my girlfriend enjoys it - but that won't last forever. I'd love to see SE earning my loyalty, rather than benefiting from circumstances outside their control.

if you have already done everything in the game, then maybe you should take a break and maybe go outside

PvP should be an everlasting kind of content but they need manpower to remove bots and wintraders which plague some datacenters and spoil the game. For PvE, yes there's Eureka and later we will have the next Deep Dungeon. The reason unique kinds of content are so far apart... is risk management I guess. They don't want to further reduce their output on traditional linear kinds of content like dungeons / raids to accommodate more experimental stuff. I'm not bored personally but it would help a lot if players did treasure map parties and PvP more so I could jump into those things at any time. Takes too long to find groups for those at the moment. I don't know what else to suggest to add to the game because I would love more open world stuff for endgame players but it would have to be designed around botting and congestion issues so that it doesn't cluster too many people into one place and the reward can't be earned by afk bots.

What is boring is that there is no content that last on long term,every update,you do the content once and thats it

And it makes me mad,when you see the price of that game,40-60E to buy an expansion,12E per month + if you think 2retainer is not enough( and close to everyone think it is the case)
People who played the game since the begining,if they played FF14 regulary,have probably paid around 300/400E in it,and for what ? some Solo RPg for 60 have more content that all FF14 stuff.

SE only investing some cent in FF14,any F2P games have way more content and fun thing to play.

Honnestlty,i think the only thing that keep people playing (me included) is because its a Final Fantasy,because of the brand,the game itself is cheaply made.

Eureka I am holding my breath on it.

I am expecting it to be a diadem 3.0

Dont get me wrong I am hopefull for it. However with diadem initial fail, and then with diadem 2.0 fail my expectations of Eureka are pretty low.

Originally Posted by Sciwolf

if you have already done everything in the game, then maybe you should take a break and maybe go outside

December 2013-March 2018. Anyone can level all jobs to 70 within that time frame. Though if you think your insults are constructive, by all means....