Concern on the current state of FFXIV, and future content

[Hyperia]

It wouldn’t bother me for them to break up patches more. Release content as its ready and don’t be prisoner to a release schedule. If something isn’t ready, delay it and let us know. If the raid is ready but not other stuff, then just release the raid.

In addition to this, I’d really like them to start making login polling questions, something that takes 5 seconds to read and answer. Like: What kind of group content would you like to see more - 4 player, 8 player, 24 player, no preference
A weekly poll of the active playerbase would help then a lot.

[Mahrze]

It wouldn’t bother me for them to break up patches more. Release content as its ready and don’t be prisoner to a release schedule. If something isn’t ready, delay it and let us know. If the raid is ready but not other stuff, then just release the raid.

That's kind of what they did with Diadem, they announced it on LLPs. And look at what we got? >_>

[Aerlana]

Perform is a good thing yes...
As the glamour contest yes...

But... is what the game needed now? I admit it is fun, interesting, it is some of the side feature that make a game great but...
Where is the content? POTD, now eureka (more spam same spell endlessly yeah)/ Then hunt/treasure hunt (so depth in those, so much to discover and enjoy for so long hours) and the End game, 2x4 boss for 8 people; 4 boss for 24, and 2 primals for 8 people.

people are saying, 2 weeks after a patch "nothing more to do"
Yes not all, but they are not so rare to complain, and i dont speak about 2 month but 2 weeks.

Perform is good, but maybe work first on content, to make people have fun more and more, Than this fun but useless feature.

And for the glamour... a system that is so restrictiv that i quit it, and stay on the previous one... ... ... At least i dont loose my items

[Kaonis]

I've been worried on the direction the game has been taking since HW. But while re-reading some interviews I came across this quote from Yoshi-P and it greatly concerns me.

This can be said for Diadem as well, but when creating content for Final Fantasy XIV, we don’t envision anything we make as “content we want people to continue playing for an exceptionally long time.”

Source: http://www.siliconera.com/2017/11/10...s-relic-armor/

My main concern is in bold. While we may have vastly different definitions of what constitutes an exceptionally long time, considering how quickly a lot of content gets dropped off I don't think Yoshi-P means they design content with a life of more than a couple months if that. A lot of the recent content coming out has been extremely shallow and purely reward driven. Even something that's supposed to be fun and longer lasting like LoV, is just a convoluted mess.

I just don't know if this team has either the resources or creativity to design something that can stand on its own without rewards crammed in it.

[Zojha]

I just don't know if this team has either the resources or creativity to design something that can stand on its own without rewards crammed in it.

Well... the prime candidate here would be PvP, but you can see for yourself how that turned out. It's normally a low hanging fruit as far as long-lasting endgame activities are concerned.

[Penthea]

And for the glamour... a system that is so restrictiv that i quit it, and stay on the previous one... ... ... At least i dont loose my items

Glamour plates are designed for players with many high level classes who no longer need the stats on most of their combat gear and only keep it for glamming.

Unless you have a lot of armoire items, you're not going to use glamour plates much if you have any classes you intend to play that are still very low level, especially if they share gear with a higher level class.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Glamour plates are designed for players with many high level classes who no longer need the stats on most of their combat gear and only keep it for glamming.

Unless you have a lot of armoire items, you're not going to use glamour plates much if you have any classes you intend to play that are still very low level, especially if they share gear with a higher level class.

The system remains needlessly restrictive. We have twenty six jobs yet only ten plates. As someone who rotates through jobs frequently, I simply can't use it on even half. I opted to finally get all the crafting AF gear, but that left me with just two slots for anything else. I would use them for MIN/BTN. Unfortunately, yet another restriction—in the form of requiring you to be in a city-state—makes that cumbersome.

There just isn't a good excuse for limitations like this when nearly every other MMOs offers a better system, including ones several years older than FFXIV.

[KaldeaSahaline]

What the heck DO you guys want besides the nebulous "something creative and new?" Because Square sure has tried. People were asking for a very generic "let me do something more with my minions" and so added Lord of Verminion... But because Square didn't read their minds, the hated it. They asked for a harder raid difficulty, and then Ultimate came and people whined it was locked or Too Hard or Too Random. Asked for glamour to be redone, it's in the process of it and the preliminary stuff has been released and people complain about THAT. And I just sit here and watch and wonder what people ACTUALLY WANT because nothing seems to satisfy beyond "completely new game each expansion."

Speaking strictly IMO:

1) Looking at LoV. I would have loved they simply ported a version of FFT's engine into the game and let us use our minions on that. Let us 'customize' their abilities and 'level' them up against AI and play with/against friends. To supplement this idea, they should have a tile editor for people to create and share maps and scenarios. I literally would play this nonstop, especially if they tied in other rewards. Alternatively this could have been a squadron feature as well instead.

They even could have just gone Pokemon battles and it would have been 'sufficient', but I think drawing on inspiration from past successes and IP is a better way to go.

2) UCoB is great. Except one for glaring issue. 18 minute fights aren't fun. They weren't fun when I was progressing world first shit in WoW and they're even less fun now that I am older. They should design boss fights to be shorter and more impactful, not longer and more tiring.

3) The Glamour Dresser is a perfect example of one step forward two steps back. They should have just not touched it or spent any dev time on it until something actually good could be implemented.

Now to supplement my post with some of my own ideas:

1) Gold Saucer is downright criminally underused. Chocobo racing in its current implementation should be a felony. Much like my LoV suggestion they should have ported in a Mario Cart (or better yet Crash Team Racing) engine and let you race AI or friends for prizes. I'd have tied the entire Chocobo progression system, bardings, colors, and EXP/leveling/effects in here as well as other rewards (tomes, gil, materia, etc.) Then supply the playerbase with a tile editor and allow us to make our own maps to create and share with friends.

2) Battle Arena could have been a really cool idea if we had a slightly more robust battle/gearing system. Something like a "create a boss" thing that gets assigned a random model, random mechanics, etc. and they ramp up the longer you go on with a wheel to spin to get random debuffs/buffs to increase payout.

3) Regarding Eureka. I made a post in the exploratory missions section of this forum. It was basically a procedurally generate map using a random tileset from all available dungeons/zones and dumped you in random spot on the unexplored map. Thematically, it was the idea of the 'item world' from Disgaea where we delve into the Relic itself to empower it.

It would have random monsters in the map that had "affixes" a la Mythic+ from WoW. These monsters could have mechanics that need to be interrupted (a la CC), kited away from other mobs, killed in specific order, flee and attempt to grab other mobs, random threat drops, or advanced AI like harassing healers, or focusing down players who suddenly get low on HP, etc.

The content scaled from 1 star to 5 stars, with 1 star being similar in difficulty to current dungeons. In 1 and 2 star difficulties mobs would have their 'affixes' listed above their nameplates and give context into their difficulty and if they were worth fighting or sneaking around. At 3 stars+, affixes were hidden and were only discernible when fighting the enemies.

You would clear enemies to fill a bar that spawns a boss in a random location on the map. You could then go hunt the boss, or keep killing mobs to spawn yet another. Bosses would have a random model (think like my Battle Arena concept) and randomly assigned mechanics. Availablity and quantity of mechanics would be directly related to the star difficult. I.e. a 1 star boss might have a tank cleave/buster, and 2 isolated mechanics. It'd be equivalent to fighting a dungeon boss at say min ilvl, with maybe marginally higher outgoing damage. At higher stars bosses would get more dangerous mechanics as well as multiples and they may begin overlapping. I.e. a tank cleave that needs to be shared, and lowers max HP on hit.

The idea behind this would be repeatable battle content that scales for all player skill levels while offering meaningful engagement and rewards. In addition to mobs and bosses there'd be treasure maps to explore (they grant an instant boss spawn as well).

In summary - the idea is that there should be better battle content that scales for multiple player types as well as better side content that is well designed enough to justify its inclusion and be fun enough to keep people playing it as well as offer viable alternatives to rewards.

I'm sick and tired of the official forum becoming a cesspool of moaning because of this, an echo chamber where ppl can insult everyone that doesn't share the opinion that the game is shit and the devs are imbeciles, calling them apologist and white knights, that's really immature.

To be fair, I find the hivemind to be unsettlingly defensive of the game and completely against any and all criticism. It's exceptionally common to see 'go play x instead' instead of actually debating the quality of the persons post.

SNIP - Coil stuff

Knocking us off the edge repeatedly in Titan, Levi, Bismarck, Sophia, Exdeath, Kefka? Zzzz. Piles of circle mechanics that have to be dodged in a certain order like Shiva EX, Titan bombs, and God Kefka Trine? Blah.

I think the devs could do more. I know you and I disagree a lot when it comes to WoW, but I just want to clarify that I DO think there are some great examples of raid fight design in XIV, we just haven't seen anything in my mind that sticks out since T7. It's all been "dodge AOEs or get knocked into a fire wall/off the edge/get one-shot".

I agree on Coil stuff thats why I snipped it. But I wanted to point out that I agree with your analysis there.

On the other bits though, I REALLY enjoyed Leviathan EX. It had the right kind of randomness and RNG and made the fight really fun. I also liked Exdeath Black Holes, but otherwise agree his mechanics were boring. I actually really like Trine. I think it's a good mechanic, but otherwise agree that pretty much Primals Shiva and further were way too scripted or generic. I really loved the control aspect of Moogle Mog, Levi's randomness, Ramuh was greatly designed, and the original 3 were all fine and dandy because they were different. I also REALLY enjoyed second coil. I felt like the content was a little less scripted and more dynamic.

[Kaonis]

1) Gold Saucer is downright criminally underused. Chocobo racing in its current implementation should be a felony. Much like my LoV suggestion they should have ported in a Mario Cart (or better yet Crash Team Racing) engine and let you race AI or friends for prizes. I'd have tied the entire Chocobo progression system, bardings, colors, and EXP/leveling/effects in here as well as other rewards (tomes, gil, materia, etc.) Then supply the playerbase with a tile editor and allow us to make our own maps to create and share with friends.

Really nice post. One thing I wanted to comment was here as it's another issue I have with the game presently. But the Gold Saucer also suffers from lack of rewards. Since it's been implemented we've seen next to nothing added to the vendors for rewards outside maybe an extra mount, a few hairstyles, the cactaur weapons, and that's about it that I recall? There's large swaths of time in between any additional items added, but it seems like every other week more and more items are added to the mog shop. I just find it alarming that a subscription game invests so much into their cash shop, but the mini game content that is meant to provide fluff rewards and get players to spend time doing activities and stick with the game is largely absent.

As for the games in the Gold Saucer, they seem to suffer from either being mindlessly boring (like the moogle claw or gilgamesh punch minigames) or needlessly complex like LoV.

[Shurrikhan]

On the other bits though, I REALLY enjoyed Leviathan EX. It had the right kind of randomness and RNG and made the fight really fun. I also liked Exdeath Black Holes, but otherwise agree his mechanics were boring. I actually really like Trine. I think it's a good mechanic, but otherwise agree that pretty much Primals Shiva and further were way too scripted or generic. I really loved the control aspect of Moogle Mog, Levi's randomness, Ramuh was greatly designed, and the original 3 were all fine and dandy because they were different. I also REALLY enjoyed second coil. I felt like the content was a little less scripted and more dynamic.

Damn. My opinion, too, has already been written, it seems.

/complete agreement