Expectations about development of the game

[CainCrimson]

My main expectation is for them to continue supporting the game for at least another 10 years.

Adding cool features is always fun, but nothing stings quite like the heartbreak of your favorite MMO shutting down after years of daily fun.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I highly doubt they will do this but here would be my suggestions; and to add to credibility...I design develop systems for a living.

Upgrade the Engine
It is quite obvious that many of XIV's technical limitations are due to the game originally being developed for the PC and PS3. The lighting, shadows, and even character meshes, models, and normal mappings are all subpar compared to modern AAA games. Heck, this game looks worse than TERA and BnS and too close to FFXI

We're in 2018. Look at Black Desert Online, Blade and Soul, and TERA. If we get into the single player realm, Monster Hunter World, Witcher 3, and many others are rivaling BDO. Graphics, physics, lighting, shadows, and all of this matters because video games have become more and more immersive. When someone goes from, say, Monster Hunter World to XIV, the very first thing they're gonna notice is "why is everything so flat and bland?"

I'd argue that single player focused games should be kept seperate from MMO's. As for TERA, I tried to play it again recently, and it looks AWFUL. It has bright colors at first, but once you get past that, the character models actually look terrible. Even the hair, which is not XIV's strong point, looks better than TERA's. BDO and B&S have been praised for their character creation... and not much else. XIV has very good lighting for what its worth, really the only things that could use an upgrade are character and equipment textures and mapping, but the rest looks good.

This game looks nothing like XI. That's laughable.

It also helps to change your graphics settings to output in RGB full instead of limited, as I recently did that and the washed out look vanished.

Move to Real Time Combat
Tab targeting is antiquated. The reason tab targeting existed in the first place was due to technical limitations in the old days. WoW has slowly been moving away from tab targeting with many skills becoming free aiming. Tab targeting, believe it or not, needs to go similar to turn based combat which was also done due to technical limitations (and why everything now is real time). While I do not mind it tab targeting, many of my friends who have tried to get into XIV have described it as "too slow and boring."

I don't really like "full action" as it got incredibly boring once the novelty wore off in both GW2 and TERA. I feel XIV actually controls better than both of those. I don't really like the way most MMO's have their controls set up compared to XIV, it seems a lot more fluid moving in this game compared to others, and I don't really have any complaints about the battle system other than the extreme reliance on DPS for mechanics. I feel your friends were expecting something different. Tab targeting isn't slow, they probably just didn't like the GCD at 2.5 seconds at early levels and blamed it on tab targeting. I find more people clamoring for turn based RPG's these days, and disliking the move to action oriented.

Streamline the MSQ for ARR
As others have state, this takes too long to run through, and has way too much filler content. Revamp it. I tried to get my fiancee into XIV and she straight up told me it was too boring. We're now playing Elder Scrolls Online together instead.

NOTE
I mentioned BDO, BnS, and TERA a lot. The reason why I am not playing any of those games is because Square-Enix is a FAR MORE reputable company that have built a reputation from accepting their mistake (FFXIV 1.0), and literally pulling off a miracle with ARR. As a software developer and long time gamer, they've gained immense respect from me by doing this as I've been involved in projects that have sank due to disregarding customer feedback, and seen games do the same (Hellgate London anyone?) So please do not take the above as bashing...I'm simply stating obvious trends. And while I don't mind XIV's tab targeting....the fact that I can't get anyone to play with me is a pretty good indicator as to what's wrong.

The main story isn't that bad honestly. It is a far cry from MMO's of old, where "catching up" was a multi-year process, where in XIV, it might take 2 months to finish both expansions and cap level. I've done a few characters to 3.0, and I'm in the process of doing another out of boredom, and haven't found the process to be that gruelling.

[Rinuko]

They really need to stop thinking 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' and come up with something new. We more or less had same content since ARR, with some changes but it still run dungeons for tome, wait to next patch do over.

My main expectation is for them to continue supporting the game for at least another 10 years.

Adding cool features is always fun, but nothing stings quite like the heartbreak of your favorite MMO shutting down after years of daily fun.

At least if not more. FF11 is 15 years old and still supported. Though i kinda wish they give us a remake or very least vanilla server.

[RokkuEkkusu]

They really need to stop thinking 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' and come up with something new. We more or less had same content since ARR, with some changes but it still run dungeons for tome, wait to next patch do over.

I don't blame the Devs. I mean after the Final Fantasy XIII games and Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 becoming the DmC of all of Final Fantasy, sometimes radically changing a working formula is not advisable.


Back on topic, as long as the game plays fine, I get rewarded, and I have opportunities to talk with others in game, then I'm satisfied most of the time.

[KisaiTenshi]

I don't blame the Devs. I mean after the Final Fantasy XIII games and Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 becoming the DmC of all of Final Fantasy, sometimes radically changing a working formula is not advisable.

With a MMORPG, you actually want to change as little as possible that "works", because that risks alienating most of the players. They took a rather large risk in reducing the complexity of the skills between V1.0 and V1.x when Yoshi-P took over, and again when they axed half of them in V2.0 and in V4.0.

Based on this pattern, Version 6.0, will just have "auto-attack/auto-tank/auto-heal" and we will just be non-stop dodging choreographed AOE's s/.

In all honestly the need to keep it 12-button/twin-axis controller-friendly is why these simplifications are required, and adding anything in V5.0 is going to come at the cost of more things being simplified.

Other MMO's are exclusive keyboard, thus you get these wacky MMO mouse/keyboards that have an extra 20-30 buttons. Assuming you use 4 shoulder buttons for switching the effects of the main 4 buttons, you have a maximum of 36 reachable commands, the same as 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/-/= on three bars on the keyboard controlled with shift and ctrl.

What I'd like to see is a complete removal of the role-actions, because the way they're setup now, they're seen as completely optional anyway. Put everything that the job needs back into the base class/job, and make them unique per job, even if they are functionally the same. The cross-class stuff is a V1.0 hold over, just get rid of it entirely. The game design doesn't support it.

But in V5, or 6 or whatever, where are additional skills going to go? They're going to have to obsolete something that is already on the bar. But replacing every skill with Skill+1 isn't interesting at all (eg Holy, becomes Holy II, Aero III becomes Aero V, Aero II becomes Aero IV) and the naming structure doesn't make sense anyways. Maybe with the next version they can rename all the "numbered" skills to have their own identities, and make the II/III/IV versions the more powerful version that replaces the weaker version.

The same has to be said about the DPS/Tank combos. Everything is basically a 1+2+3 combo, but they are difficult to execute on the keyboard and the controller. They could make this less difficult by aligning all the DPS and Tanking combos (see Monk) where the available actions replace the non-available/inefficient actions. But I don't main a DPS, and perhaps DPS players may feel different about that. But it would allow replacing weak combo's with stronger ones without having to change the layout between older and newer content.