Quote Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth View Post
Then why do people want overworld mob grinder spots, where you just pull mobs to one spot and sit there for hours? That sounds infinitely more boring tbh.
This is why I want the game to do something - anything! - that doesn't revolve around pushing maximum DPS at all times, in every piece of combat-oriented content, on absolutely every job/role. FFXI, for example, had the overworld leveling system where camping a spot and killing nearby monsters was the norm. The difference was that XI's combat was slower, more methodical, and had tons of jobs that did things that weren't directly offensive in nature. The slower part allowed people to actually have conversations while grinding, and my time spent in leveling and Merit Point parties are easily some of my fonder memories of that game. Contrast that with XIV in general, where I can't type at all while playing because that means I'm not doing my "Always Be Castings," and particularly with the now-dead FATE trains where the only talking could happen while auto-running between them.

FATEs, as noted, are also absolutely braindead. There are only a handful of FATEs in the entire game - out of several hundred - that have enemies or bosses with any kind of mechanic at all. All they do is one or two telegraphed attacks in addition to their auto-attacks, and that's it. There are also almost no unique enemies inside the FATEs, they're all just generic monsters you see in the overworld except sometimes they're scaled up to be larger. This is a complaint I have about most of the dungeon bosses too (them being generic monsters used elsewhere, before or after), though at least there they do have some variance in attacks/patterns/mechanics.



Touching on a subject recently broached, and calling back to my first post in this thread, I was pretty happy messing around with Relics, pre-4.0 PvP and outdated raids/EX Primals/non-stupid achievements from when I started in 2.5 until somewhere around 3.56. I've learned to limit myself in a number of areas over my 3-ish years in this game (like not doing NM Raids, not keeping 2 or more jobs geared, not doing/caring about 24-man gear since Accuracy is no longer a player-controlled stat) while other parts have gotten worse (PvP ) or been abandoned entirely (Eureka Relics now being sectioned off from the rest of the game).

That's where my dissatisfaction really comes from, in addition to them having gone so long without adding in additional medium- and long-term goals to keep filling in for things that I've casually (I cannot stress that point enough - I worked on the Zetas for 3 years and the Luxes for 2) chipped away at. Things like "2,000 Mentor Roulettes to get Astrope," "Kill 3,000 A Ranks and 2,000 S Ranks for Centurio Tiger" or "Win 1,000 Feast matches on a [specified role type] for an awesome Title" are not medium or long term goals, they're obscene mountains that I would never seriously consider - and I have more patience, if not necessarily more time, than most. I really, really don't want to sit in a box (Eureka) and solo (5.0 and beyond realistically, 2 weeks after patch worst-case scenario) to continue doing what I've been doing. I really don't want to play the new PvP because it's been radically changed in ways that aren't appealing to me. I'm one of those weirdos that has leveled every job in the game exclusively through dungeons and FATEs, and I like the dungeons, so HW reducing the number we got and SB dropping that number even more - in addition to their designs getting progressively less interesting and overall worse in terms of balance/scaling - has also had a severe impact on my enjoyment.

I'm exceptionally critical of Square, and have been for well over a decade, but that's because I typically enjoy their games and want them to improve. Not to go back to "the good old days," whatever the hell that means, but to provide new and varied experiences for me. Experiences like Bravely Default, that seemingly blindsided them with how much people enjoyed that game, and less like Bravely Second that were clearly cynically made to earn a quick buck while the iron was hot. Experiences like 3.0 through 3.3 in this game story-wise, where it was cohesive and very much character driven, and less like 4.1 and 4.2 which leave me scratching my head and wondering how this has any continuity from 4.0 and why we're focusing on The Sixth Sense instead of, I don't know, actually rebuilding or facilitating and/or strengthening bonds between nations and characters.

I could probably go at this for ages - positively and negatively - but it's getting late, so I'll leave it at that.
And I'm not deleting that post from the other day so I'm sure the community team will have sent me on a vacation come morning. :P