Should FF14 take a new route? Discussion

[Vyriah]

I really can't understand why the game is in this situation right now.
They saved FFXIV from the ashes, remaking the game, releasing A Realm Reborn and it was great.

As many other people, I thing ARR is the current problem. More specifically, the short amount of time and the fact they had to work an already pretty broken game. It's already a feat that ARR was something playable. But now it's hard to know how much new thing can get added to it, and what you need to do to make them work. Almost everyone saw Eureka as 17 month developement long plain content but you can also see it as "that's how long making something as Eureka in FF XIV takes". Because we're talking about a game where you can't both teleport and sit at the same. Where every management to be made in both an overly simple and roundabout way at the same time, because how how much weird restrictions there is too it.

We can't rule out the possibility that we're playing an even more sophisticated version of 1.x patches meant to wait yet another more complete game, but that look like a vicious process no one sane would try to pull off. Contrary that what I've read a lot those, I think they actually base their new release on popular demand (with the most recurrent being "more content" and "new things to do") without regards on how well it could get into the game.

But getting the game to run on Switch is the good idea no matter what. Everything on Switch sells like freshly baked cookies, it's getting ridiculous.

[Lord_Zlatan]

As a life long SE fan, through the good and bad, I am going to say that I love this game and will continue to play it (even if it means less frequently) if they keep the same cycle going.

HOWEVER....

Certain things to add to the game that would mix it up a bit and breathe life into it (these are not necessarily innovations, but things I believe would improve the game drastically).

1 . First and foremost, the gear needs to be drastically improved/overhauled. I dont think this really needs to be explained. Its the single biggest problem with the game and it effects almost all aspects of the game.

2 . Raids/Trials need more diversity. Currently in HW we have 4 encounters labeled as trials: Lakshmi, Susano, Shinryu, and Byakko. You go in, fight a boss, and your done. We also have 4 "Raids". You go in, fight a boss, and your done. They are the same exact thing, just different bosses. Additionally, there are 2 versions to each (EX and Savage [isnt that the same thing, too?] as opposed to their normal incarnations). I propose that you either stop branding the raids as raids and just move them over to trials OR give us an actual raid (you know, trash pulls that will completely own you if your not up to snuff, effects within the instance that interact with the player, perhaps mechanics that make the party split up etc etc).

3 . Dungeons need to be harder. While I fully support the Duty Finder/Roulette approach, when you consider that this is all thats available for 4 man parties, it simply isn't enough because they are not challenging. As a PLD I can just Flash, Cooldown, and RoH combo the whole time if I want to. Thats what it used to be at level 50 (26 if you want to be technical) and the sad thing is, it still works (albeit not as effectively) at level 70. If they insist on keeping 4 man duty roulettes a thing, thats fine. A different option needs to be there for those that want a challenge they can just pick up and do thats not savage raids/primals, and I think one that would freshen up the pace of the game is in my next point...

4 . Open world dungeons/danger need to be a thing. Make it so that I can queue up for duty roulette if I want to have a casual/easy experience. But let me get my FC together and go on an adventure to some of the truly interesting places that exist in the game world. I remember when I looked at the Dusk Vigil in Coerthas Wester Highlands for the first time... it looked ominous, foreboding, scary, dark... evil. I queued in and it was a snoozefest. Let me go into a non instanced version of that thats harder and non linear. You dont have to give me insane gear for an open world level 51 dungeon... but maybe theres a tie in to treasure maps. maybe theres treasure hold filled with just gil. Maybe theres an altar inside there where I can take blue unconvertible there and convert it into specialized materia. Give me something to do with people on a daily basis that doesnt involve sitting in my house and queuing. Let me take my gathering friend deep into scary places so he can gather rare materials. Something besides queue and leave.

5 . I find alliance raids to be fine. Mid level content that serves its purpose.

[Nerfworthy]

No... I love the game as-is. I would like to see more QoL improvements and new content, but I don't want a drastic change. There's a reason why I quit WoW completely after being loyal to that game 10 years. It changed too much from the game I loved originally. It's a shell of its former self imo. I don't want that to happen to XIV as well.......

[Airget]

The mentality of letting old content die is a bad one. They need to take advantage of the "lv sync" option for content like Extreme Trials.

They should consider the idea of adding new loot to old content that helps in new content, like say unique accessory drops in Diadem that help in Eureka. New loot in old PoTD that helps in new PoTD. rare "primal armor" drop that can only be obtained if you do it level synced.

A little nugget of a reward to entice people to try the challenge and keep old content alive.

[Mahrze]

The mentality of letting old content die is a bad one. They need to take advantage of the "lv sync" option for content like Extreme Trials.

They should consider the idea of adding new loot to old content that helps in new content, like say unique accessory drops in Diadem that help in Eureka. New loot in old PoTD that helps in new PoTD. rare "primal armor" drop that can only be obtained if you do it level synced.

A little nugget of a reward to entice people to try the challenge and keep old content alive.

They kind of did this already. Old raids had increased drop rates as a sync party. People don't want to do them because "some players are bad".

::Stares at the numerous people complaining about the NEW Eureka content::

I can't take this thread seriously when I see the developers constantly trying things out and players hating everything because it wasn't how they imagined. I hate seeing here the demand of "hey give us something new" and "oh I hate this new thing." along with "Why do they always give us the same old content?" I would go insane if I was developer seeing all of this.

Think about it. They hype things and ask you to please look forward to something. But when you get is its the same thing you've already seen. Think of it like going to your favorite food joint. and they hype you up for a new dish, except its the same dish you've had before, with just a different sauce. I like Eureka, as a matter of fact I have been thinking of suggesting to make the diadem serve the same purpose as Eureka for the 3.0 relic weapons as an alternate route.

[Lord_Zlatan]

Side note... they nailed it with the NM music... perfect theme for clownshoes zergwipefest. I actually LOL every time the music pops on

[AppleJinx]

I am ready for a new mmo with actual decent coding this time. Eureka reveals more about how limited the codes of this game is more than anything

[KisaiTenshi]

I am ready for a new mmo with actual decent coding this time. Eureka reveals more about how limited the codes of this game is more than anything

Every time someone drops "decent coding" or "poorly optimized" in a comment or discussion about a game, is revealing of how little they actually know about coding.

There is not some "make game suck less" tick box. There is not a "bugs=0" line.

The difference between North America and Japan/Korea is that zero-latency programming can not be done. The only way to get the M for Massive in a MMO in North America is either by having shards that serve the surrounding 500km area, and can not talk to each other, or by having worlds that can talk to each other (which appears to be exclusive to FFXIV) but trading off command latency (eg no "action RPG" elements are possible.) The entire reason we can avoid AOE's at all is because there is a long window. No single player game would ever be this forgiving.

A game with better netcode would have to be written with the intent of being a MMO, from both the client and server, and that is just not the current development model. The current development model is to retro-fit single-player game engines like Unreal, CryEngine, Unity and so forth, and make every "level" or "zone" maps as small as possible (really run any of the 2.0 dungeons unsynced, solo and notice that all of them except for the V1.0 holdovers are actually very small. The V1.0 hold overs are actually larger, but they cut off some parts to make them less of a maze.) Those engines I mentioned above all share the same issues that FFXIV doesn't have when they're used as MMO's. FFXIV actually works out pretty well considering I've never seen any crashes or GPU-related garbage that these other engines have when running for long periods of time.

A game that is "better optimized" means cutting everything in half. Textures are cut in half, model sizes go back to 2004-era sizes. Like every time Square puts out a PC game, "it needs better optimization" comes up, and some good-natured modder basically disables everything that makes the PC version superior to the PS3/PS4 version.

To be fair, not every game published by SE is done in-house, and some of these third parties (like the mobile/android/ios ports of FF6/Chrono Trigger) appear not care about the finished product, creating a "SquareEnix PC ports are buggy and sloppy" reputation that may hurt PC game sales in much the same way that we all avoid licensed titles by EA due to Electronic Art's obsession with microtransactions and general IP raiding of studios they acquire and then shut down. Some people don't care and will take any dogfood they are fed.

Which is to circle back to the topic, a new MMO will not be "better" at anything. FFXIV is already using the best available technology that is also used in FFXV. Unless you want the requirements for an Action MMO to be "move to NYC, LA or Tokyo", one is not going to happen. The current allowance for lag in internet mmo games, is also what allows cheating to be prolific because the closer the cheater is to the data center, the larger advantage they will have over players that aren't local.

[Lyshell]

Call it lack of support from Square or call it fear of trying new things, but something just feels like it doesn't click.

::Stares at the numerous people complaining about the NEW Eureka content::

I can't take this thread seriously when I see the developers constantly trying things out and players hating everything because it wasn't how they imagined. I hate seeing here the demand of "hey give us something new" and "oh I hate this new thing." along with "Why do they always give us the same old content?" I would go insane if I was developer seeing all of this.

[Stanelis]

::Stares at the numerous people complaining about the NEW Eureka content::

I can't take this thread seriously when I see the developers constantly trying things out and players hating everything because it wasn't how they imagined. I hate seeing here the demand of "hey give us something new" and "oh I hate this new thing." along with "Why do they always give us the same old content?" I would go insane if I was developer seeing all of this.

"hey give us something new and good"

I fixed that for you, being new content isn't enough.