Thread: 4.25 and beyond

Originally Posted by Zojha

So yeah, I'd encourage people who get burned out to take a break and experiment with other games. You might discover something that suits your needs better. And even if you don't find a better deal out there, you might come back with new appreciation of what this game has to offer.

It's not like March has a draught of games either so this is a good advice

Originally Posted by Zojha

From your previous post, I'd have wagered the complaint goes into the direction of duty finder and the "group but solo" playstyle it allows. "Allows", because all the ways and means to socialize and build a community people used back in the days are still fully intact. They have just become optional for most content (Aside maybe Savage) and people choose not to utilize them, but rather rely on the convenience tools because they are, well... more convenient.

I'd like to point out that this wasn't actually the case until 3.2. Prior to then, if you wanted to do your roulettes, you had to queue solo. For all of them.

ARR and early HW were exceptionally hostile towards the idea of building and creating a community, and delved head-first into the realm of "just playing with faceless people I'll never see again." ARR was especially bad, since Levequests were doable in a party but the NPCs would give every person a random list to choose from which made it a hassle to coordinate. And there are things that still persist, such as having to drop party to enter solo instances or needing the entire party to be in the same zone to initiate Leves or Treasure Maps.

Originally Posted by Zojha

As such, MMOs have become "single player games with online play" largely because that's what people predominantly choose if given the choice.

I'm not sure that's the case. It's like the first game that added progression elements to a FPS; it worked better than what people thought but over time a lot of people resent and hate it; it's just every AAA developer tries to put it in because they think it breeds success. WoW style MMO stuff is the same way, it's a lot more top down than ground up, but no recent AAA MMO dev is willing to buck the trend.

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?

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 said this at a earlier post in the thread, i think a couple others have also offered up solutions if you want to take a look.

Originally Posted by Molic

Going from 1.0 Character based to 2.0 Item based in terms of gaining "Power" the gear treadmill was pretty foreseeable. I don't think this is a huge issue, i think it could be improved upon though. They could add what destiny does, where say if you have a higher level piece of gear, you can have the lower level piece absorb that one to raise its lower level gear ilvl and stats.

Then they could actually add interesting stats to the gear or traits like "double attack", "5% chance of gaining triple cast", "chance to proc a fire dot", "chance to regain mana on spell cast" "Chance to quadruple your crits" random shit like that combined with the destiny style gear system, would actually make a lot of gear releavent again or at least fun to get gear.

Right now, they might as well just remove stats and have the Item level, cause its all pretty pointless and the % difference from having the best stats to just w/e at the same ilvl is insignificant.

Originally Posted by Molic

I said this at a earlier post in the thread, i think a couple others have also offered up solutions if you want to take a look.

That could be a lot of fun, but a bit of a nightmare to balance around at the same time. Imagine Primal Farming groups that say, "Triplecast Procs only," or, "Fire Dots need not apply."

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.