Thread: 4.25 and beyond

Originally Posted by ShanXiv

That sounds fun,
Did SE fired all XI designers? because they aren't a "modern guy"?

not exactly because *modern guy* the real was because the old team failed and nearly bankrupted the company.

I think it's more to do with players not pacing themselves then the actual game. Yes, we have four-five months before the next big batch of content comes out. I love that. It removes the pressure for me to rush though a bunch of content at once. I can take my time to get good at another class, finish a relic, grind out that Firebird, figure out how crafting works, etc. Never-mind tackle a completely different game if I want to. The game moves slow enough that if I miss a few weeks because I have to do something else I'm not completely lost when I get back. I can see how if someone where to rush the content all at once then it would feel boring.


Yoshi-P has said that he purposely designs the game so that people don't have to play it all the time and can still not feel too far behind. In my opinion, people who play it quickly and then feel like there's not a lot to do are feeling exactly like they should be. I don't think SE thinks that people who ditch the game a few weeks after new content hits only to come back for the next round of content are something to be concerned about. That's exactly the kind of play behavior this game is trying to cater to and I think it does so very well.

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Yoshi-P has said that he purposely designs the game so that people don't have to play it all the time and can still not feel too far behind. In my opinion, people who play it quickly and then feel like there's not a lot to do are feeling exactly like they should be. I don't think SE thinks that people who ditch the game a few weeks after new content hits only to come back for the next round of content are something to be concerned about. That's exactly the kind of play behavior this game is trying to cater to and I think it does so very well.

I disagree with this assessment, actually.

Setting aside the question of whether SE's goal for FFXIV is a good one, I actually see FFXIV as being quite unfriendly to sporadic players. The second you don't cap Tomestones for a week, for instance, you're almost permanently behind those who did. The first week that you don't get an item from the end-game Raids, you're behind. Hell, even the first day you miss a Roulette bonus, it's easy to feel behind the 8-ball a bit. Even Gardening - a casual activity if e'er there should be one - requires you to log on daily to water your plants (to say nothing of the House demolition timers, which I suspect are a significant reason why people don't unsub more regularly).

I'd also argue that FFXIV releases so little content, it's incredibly difficult to pace oneself. Content updates tend to offer, what, at most 20-30 hours of new content before boiling down to repetition? Content that, lest we forget, is so similar to what came before it, that we've effectively been repeating it already for years? I don't think many people will argue with the idea that people playing 25 hours a week probably shouldn't feel like they always have new stuff to do. But on the other hand, that same player also shouldn't be bored within a week of a new update releasing.

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

I think it's more to do with players not pacing themselves then the actual game. Yes, we have four-five months before the next big batch of content comes out. I love that. It removes the pressure for me to rush though a bunch of content at once. I can take my time to get good at another class, finish a relic, grind out that Firebird, figure out how crafting works, etc.

I'm not exactly calling you out personally on this, but rather a certain mindset/segment of the community.

You seem to vastly underestimate how thoroughly gutted content gets once its "expiration date" passes. Take those Relics you can work on in your spare time, for example: I farmed 234 Luminous Crystals (while leveling jobs) over, I don't know, a period of like 8 months. Someone doing that now? I think they need 78, with a drastically improved drop rate, if they too want all 13 Animas. Or just 6 if they want one like a sane person. All those huge Tomestone grinds the Anima had? Pretty much gone. The Crystal Sands? Roughly half a quarter as bad now, plus they have Zhloe and M'naago for free Scrips if they have even one eligible crafter or gatherer. On the Zodiac side, everything except the Animus Books is trivial. The Atma have a 20~25% drop rate, the stats applied via the Sphere Scroll are irrelevant, the crafting materials can be cheaply and easily obtained, the dungeon drops are guaranteed now. Light farming for both the Zodiac and the Anima is a joke. Unsync an appropriate dungeon, find a bonus window, and finish in no more than 100 mins (Zodiac)/180 mins (Anima).

You want Kirin? Most of those ARR EX Primals can be done solo with ease now, and their drop rates have been massively buffed up. Don't want to do it solo? Hop into the constant Wondrous Tails parties you see at night. Most people don't even stay to roll, either because they already have them or simply don't care. Firebird? Aside from maybe Sephirot (tethers suck) and Zurvan (Seal sucks), those are also jokes. And their drop rates are increased. And you have the Totems so no more than 100 clears, with clears taking less and less time the further our ilvl shoots up.

What I'm saying is that while there's nothing wrong with taking things slowly, unless we're talking A8S/A12S/O4S/UCoB glamours (minions/mounts/titles), the longer you wait the more even a super casual commitment will get you the things that you want. Which is to say that the ease of catching up is something of a double-edged sword.

Don't feed

I dont get why so many allways say that they are bored so to fast with this game, most of them dont even have maxed out their character (all jobs 70). This game has mutch more to offer and to do than most other MMOs out there. Sure the combat could be a bit faster (2.40 GCD is realy bit slow), but if you just focus on one direction (and i guess for the majority its pve raids) its your own fault. You have a lot of mini games you can enjoy, various Gathering and Crafting professions, collecting stuff like mounts and minions. Alone the housing is a not to small endgame part for its if you do it serious. And lets not forget pvp, achievments and sight seeing log (getting every sightseeing entry alone will take you several days). Oh and last but not least you also can spend a lot of time with desinging several outfits and glamouring your char.

Sure there could allways be more new stuff, but if you not even have done the half and allready get bored its not the games fault. Than this kind of game is simply nothing for you.

Originally Posted by Missbone

I dont get why so many allways say that they are bored so to fast with this game, most of them dont even have maxed out their character (all jobs 70). This game has mutch more to offer and to do than most other MMOs out there. Sure the combat could be a bit faster (2.40 GCD is realy bit slow), but if you just focus on one direction (and i guess for the majority its pve raids) its your own fault. You have a lot of mini games you can enjoy, various Gathering and Crafting professions, collecting stuff like mounts and minions. Alone the housing is a not to small endgame part for its if you do it serious. And lets not forget pvp, achievments and sight seeing log (getting every sightseeing entry alone will take you several days). Oh and last but not least you also can spend a lot of time with desinging several outfits and glamouring your char.

Sure there could allways be more new stuff, but if you not even have done the half and allready get bored its not the games fault. Than this kind of game is simply nothing for you.

But what if someone that's done the overwhelming majority of things in this game decides to come in and tell you, from personal experience, that your argument holds absolutely no water? That everything you're telling people to go do, even if they don't enjoy it, also takes no more than a handful of (repetitive) hours each to complete? Then what?

Hurp-a-durp let's go collect all the Triple Triad cards, youse gais! Oh it's been maybe 35 hours dedicated to this expansive, 220-card system that's been built upon for three years and we're already finished? Welp!
And most of that involves repeatedly grinding instances to get random drops, not even playing the Triple Triad card game itself. Which is even easier than when I did it because they've removed the timers from NPCs, removed the Random ruleset, and they tell you in-game whether you've beaten the NPCs and if you're missing cards from them still without having to rely on a third-party website.

Example 2: The sightseeing log doesn't take "days" to complete, it takes maybe two hours of in-game effort. As with the "fishing endgame," most of your damn time is spent not actually doing the thing you're trying to do while looking at a third-party website every couple hours to see if the thing you want is even available or not. HW and SB sightseeing logs, the pair from the Kugane jumping puzzle aside, largely don't even have time or weather conditions and you can merrily fly around and pick them all up in like 30 minutes. Mostly even without a cheat sheet because they've got giant floating balls drawing your attention to them from half a mile away.

All of which ignores that this isn't even the subject of this thread, which is decidedly in the realm of breaking the status quo and not doubling down by adding in more of what we've already got for the nth time.