Should FF14 take a new route? Discussion

[Rufalus]

I think the alliance raids have been amazing since weeping city. Raba continues that epicness. I think Eureka is ok apart from painful leveling and potential exp loss on wipe but am concerned about it getting harder to upgrade gear when its popularity wanes since you can't solo NMs.

I think treasure map dungeons are actually fun.. if you don't get shut out by the first door 15 times in a row. I think the story is quite nice and have been enjoying our travels in the Far East.

So... mostly positive feedback from me. Rival Wings is fun but lacks rewards after you have the mount. Somebody made a topic about cheese sandwich and now I'm hungry.

[Fynlar]

No, trying to take a new route is causing lots of the game's problems.

The thing is, can you really call it taking a new route if you just take Diadem 3.0 and rebrand it as something else to try to make people think it's something new? It's still the same spawn "S rank hunt" and zerg it nonsense that we already did in Diadem and out in the open world too. It's not *really* anything new, and it's so thinly veiled that the players can see right through it.

[Vhailor]

Call it lack of support from Square or call it fear of trying new things, but something just feels like it doesn't click. There was a point where I thought about FFXIV maybe needing a new director - not that Yoshi P. hasn't done a good job with what he has, because he has been great for FFXIV and personally, I'm happy with how he managed to salvage FFXIV and turn it into one of the top MMOs on the market. That being said, I can't help but wonder if a new director would be able to take FFXIV into a new direction.

I agree.

I also don't have the high opinion of Yoshi-P as director that many others do. I think he did two things well: spearhead the launch of ARR, and ensure content updates are steadily delivered. That said, both of those accomplishments are years old. There's no long-term record of success here, and the longer FFXIV remains stagnant, the longer Yoshi-P resembles a one-hit wonder. Was the rebirth of XIV a great thing he did? Sure - but he's also overseen its slow, steady downhill slide (from a quality-of-game perspective if not a sales perspective) ever since. A new director would be a potential breath of fresh air.

[Vstarstruck]

It needs some kind of different direction, doing the same thing since 2.0 is a joke. I am really confused how it is still floating. I am around for friends but who knows when they get tired of doing the same thing just reskinned? There is also a psychology issue here. The simplified version is this, the longer someone is invested in something, be it game, relationship, gambling *part of the reason there is gambling addictions* (like say they have a FF house jobs leveled, etc) the harder it is for them to jump ship.

FFXIV 1.0 did not have this benefit so it was blacklashed early. I am guessing the 2.0 changes was from "OMG wow huge turn around" factor and they just kept doing the same thing, at some point people most likely passed the investment point to stick around and hope things change.

The only thing I can say for sure though is that it will die slowly if they keep doing the same thing over and over again, the general mass will catch on more and more as time goes on, I am just not sure how long that will take if they KEEP doing the same thing over and over again. same mistakes, same mistakes, diadem 3.0

[MilanFrozen]

I personally think that SE should see this as a wake up call for a major game revamp all the way down to the core. I do understand something like this would be a major undertaking so what I'd suggest they do is continue the stormblood stuff and if they're working on the next expansion then keep doing that, but make plans and even begin work on the major revamp to be deployed at the very least after the next expansion. Realistically this game does not have a lot of room to move and there is a LOT of things it COULD do if it was revamped.

[SourDragonfly]

The game is still printing money so clearly nothing should change.

A whole new game would be more feasible than trying to change the cash cow and risk losing everything.

[RiyahArp]

I think the problem is that they are using this game to beta test systems for the future. Like the big thing about eureka is that we now have a true cross-server persistant zone, albeit one that has a 3 hour time limit. One that you can invite parties or not, which is a huge step up technically from the current instances. You can even tell people in them. Same with the companions. Testing friendly AI through them.

If they finally realize these systems in this game, it might fix a lot of the problems we have with it. But its still testing it feels like; the features are released, but dont go beyond shallow uses of them into gameplay.

I also think staff might be diverted into their next MMO some; it's about time they start development on it, and it might be draining people from the core project.

[SenorPatty]

The game isn't going to die. SE's smart enough to do what needs to be done but only when the overall majority of the playerbase of all regions have had enough. Eureka sucks? Okay but are people still playing? How many people have cancelled their subs since then? What's the overall response global-wide? That's all things SE look at whenever they add content. That's how they study the metrics and implement according to those metrics even if those implementations are band-aid at best.

The shift that the game needs will only occur when the playerbase, again, speak with their wallets. That will be the only time SE will actually consider doing something drastic to the game. Until then, its clear their focus is entirely on retaining casual players as much as they can (not casual in the what type of content you do but rather how much time spent) and avoiding solutions that would force them to change their spaghetti code. This is why we'll keep getting abridged content. This is why we'll keep getting content that can be completed with minimal gameplay. This is why old and/or side-content won't be revitalized. Its also why we won't get overworld content.

FF14 is just simply a game at this point that managed to keep breathing despite slowly drowning and every time it looks like its going to sink to the depths, the devs manage to push it up just enough to keep getting a bit more air. It's how I see and its why I'm letting my sub run out. I don't hate the game and I've made peace with how they want to drive it but I also know that I can peacefully get off the ride for awhile and wait for the next bus that will be packed with content when I'll come back.

[Granyala]

I like the combat system and I like it's speed. (I'm not the youngest kitten on the block anymore )

What I do not like is that from a healers PoV most content has me DPSing 80% of the time b/c it's all freeloot/trivial stuff.
I'm not asking for heaps of instagibs or anything ridiculous (after all most people run the content in uncoordinated PuGs) but I'd like to be able to heal a wee bit more in dungeons. Maybe make it a 60/30 split?

Also please, for the love of Hræsvelgr, stop with the idiotic and uninspired asia grinder side content. Divert more resources to what FF-XIV and MMOs do well in general: instanced content with interesting mechanics instead of mindless open world zerg fests.

Addendum: also do NOT fall into the trap WoW has fallen into: over-rewarding boring content. Content should be fun in itself and the rewards should be the icing on the cake. I see tons of people pushing through Eureka despite telling me that they hate it because they desperately want some reward from it.

[silentwindfr]

i did play wow for a veeeeeery long time, outside pvp (that wasn't present at the start outside savage pvp....Xroad i will never forget your defense) and raid, what are the end game content added by the patch? more important the recent decline of wow was mostly because they did receive less and less content patch...
most of the other activity like craft and such can be done quite fast (in comparaison of FF14) yes, you have achievement that can be your focus, or the minion fighting... but can they really be called endgame content? yes you have too the mythical dungeon, but they have the same trouble that most of the heroic of wow since day 1 they are only dungeon with monster that have more hp and hit harder (didn't try legion then maybe it was changed from here).
i did heard about the class place and relic that indeed look interesting, but do it's really end game content? it's means, not an end... like the gears was a means to beat the last boss of raid... a good example from wow... like you wasn't not able to beat bwl without craft onyxia cape... kill onyxia was not the goal, the scale was the goal for be able to slay bwl last boss.
or like me and my guild was spending countless hours to prepare consumable like pot and such for face AQ40... in the end the goal of this action is to beat the boss of the raid... they are indeed activity outside the raid, but take out the raid, what it's left?

what i point out, is the fact that outside this they have a huge trouble to really create other challenge or content that will be on par. plus i did used wow as example of what did lead to this situation.

people will say is not true, then explain me why the best weapon is only in the raid (that not the case for the x.55 patch, but mostly because that the last patch before expansion)
why relic that can end to ask more time than raiding end to be a below weapon? instead to treat it like an alternative way to equip yourself, to have more choice in the activity and equipement you receive?

why didn't we have seen a sort of arena pve where player are forced to fight wave after wave of randomly generate enemy for see if they can beat a challenge and be able to receive a reward for them teamwork and skill?
why didn't we have seen a content challenging as as hard than savage for group of 4 player? it's was simple to do it, create content that will ask a certain level of skill, teamwork and equipement for be completed, while one more time receive a decent reward?
why didn't we have seen a true hunt system a la FF12 by example, where player need to hunt down a monster for them group only, avoiding the zergfest mess we did seen? is more enraging since they show with eureka that it's possible to make it. (here i say it's possible to create a hunt that will only allows a target to spawn if you have the right hour or weather or because you did slay a certain number of enemy in an area)
why didn't we have seen more FC or GC activity that will have offer reward with the color of your guild or GC?

and i can continue encore and encore and encore.... you have soo many idea that can be simply added to the game that will have offer more CHOICE.... more ACTIVITY.... but what is the focus of FF14 right now?
- do it's pvp? nope
- do it's craft? nope
- do it's dungeon? nope

it's raid... most of them time is invested in raiding... we did receive 4 different raid(without count primordial) since the release of stormblood... pvp did receive one new mode and new map, we did receive 5 new dungeon.. 2 tribes quest... uznair and Eureka.

soo far i dare anyone to tell me that the main focus of FF14 is not raiding.

people want change, like said it's nice, but do people are ready to make FF14 not focus only on raiding and accept that other content can be called the other endgame content? i doubt it...