Expectations about development of the game

[KisaiTenshi]

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?"

Sorry no. The is some issue with PS3-quality textures in XIV, but those were present in V1.0 as well. I actually like the visual style of XIV, and while I think XV looks somewhat nicer, the character creator in XV produces more samey-faces because players don't actually want to spend 4 hours creating a character, and in the case of games like BDO, doesn't even look like the character created. Until it becomes possible to scan your face with a conventional webcam to auto-model for people who want to look "just like" their selves comes along, this is always going to be an issue between people's beauty sense and peoples ability to understand how the model works. Like we know enough about DNA right now that letting the game parse your DNA SNP's from 23andme, should at least be able to set your eyes, hair and general face shape from that info. Neither solution is applicable to people who either don't want to look like themselves, or don't like how they look in the first place. To say nothing of making cat-people.

All other games "cat people" look terribly ugly. Part of that issue is because some people want their "cat person" to look more like a beast, and others do not. I think the Miqo'te is the perfect balance, they look like slightly shorter humans with cat ears, cat eyes, cat tails, pointy teeth. No body fur, no claws.

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."

No, this game is still a "turn based game" despite having "dodge-the-aoe" mechanics. It is not possible to create a real-time combat MMO in North America due to latency and crappy ISP's. Until such time everyone has fiber, and 20ms latency, real-time combat will never be a thing. Various games have tried certain "real time" combat bits before, and those game work in Korea and Japan due to the lower latency and higher quality internet, but when those games get localized here, the people closest to the data center have a substantial advantage over those who live on the other side of the continent, to say nothing of people who live in Europe or Australia who can't play at all.

What we have right now is the right compromise that allows people anywhere on the planet play equally. That means 3 second "ticks", and the occasional mis-fire of casting.

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.

BnS and Tera are generic Korean style MMO's that look pretty on the outside, but they all their quests and flavor text are not given any focus. You goto a NPC, you get a page lenght explanation of the quest, no NPC dialog. That's not "streamlined" that is "quest doesn't mean anything."

That is something that K-RPG's tend to do. You're in the game to spend your money and socialize. Here's some pretty character classes, wouldn't your character look better if you paid $20 for that cash shop outfit. Oh look it's Christmas, how about this years Christmas outfit? Now it's Spring, how about this spring outfit?

If you can't get people to play the game with you, that mean you are playing the wrong game. People jump from game to game until they find something they like, and if your friends don't care for a story-driven game, and instead prefer the essentially solo game with "one cutscene after the boss fight" style of story telling. Then that's what floats their boat.

I've played Tera and BnS, and they are not action MMO's. They are turn-based MMO's with typical short-lived Unreal-engine style character creation that is exactly the same in every unreal engine game. When a new engine comes out, they start working on a sequel to the game, so they can go raid your wallet again.

Don't get sucked into F2P Korean MMORPG's. They look pretty, but they are nothing more than a generic third party engine skinned with a story world, but they all play exactly the same. They sometimes do have good stories, but most of it's hidden in walls of text in the quest with a static NPC.

FFXIV, characters actually feel like they are part of the world due to the alternating between animated conversations, and cutscene animations. The only way they could improve this is by not gluing the characters to the ground, and that would require making PC's, NPC's, and belligerents equal. We only see this with the "guard" NPC's in the areas.

I'd like to see a MMO, pick up the gauntlet from Ultima Online. Where everything can be interacted with in a rather seamless world. Pair that with the reasonably pretty art style like that Asian MMO's, and the high-fantasy or sci-fi'ish setting of Final Fantasy. Nobody really wants to do another UO, because that would mean detaching all manner of story from "expansion packs" (and their revenue), and NPC's no longer immutable. Stories are only possible because the NPC's are immutable now. If a PC decides to kill a story-relevant NPC while they sleep, then that prevents the story from being completed for everyone. You solve that by making the NPC revive the same way the player does.

However, such a thing is unlikely to ever happen. Right now fantastic amounts of money are being flushed down the toilet chasing "VR" MMO's because that's what developers think people want due to entertainment like Sword Art Online and .Hack giving this idea that a persistent world should be realtime free-aiming combat. This because the board of directors of some of these companies are chasing "the next big thing" and somehow think VR version 3 will work this time, when it didn't work the last two times. (Remember shutter glasses on 8-bit consoles?, Remember the Virtual boy? Then we had a return to shutter glasses when 3D GPU's came out, and then it got shelved again until "3D TV"'s became a thing, and then got shelved.) It's not going work this time either, and the experiences available in VR right now, are worse experiences than we had in 1995. In 1995 other than the virtual boy, the GPU's were only capable of making games about on par with the PS1. They were awful, awful things. But our collective memory soon forgets why (they make people physically sick, blue LED's are linked cancer.)

So as much as I'd like to see a true immersive experience, the technology for it will never get within a stones throw of being there, and never be safe. .Hack//Sign at least put it up front that what they are playing is a MMORPG that uses a HMD and conventional controllers, like what current VR systems have, and is used mostly as a social outlet. Because one of the characters is physically disabled, the VR environment provides them with freedom they don't actually have, and thus fits the setting.

But I think the current trend in MMO development is towards Shooty Battle-Royale (Fortnite, PUBG) and Capture-the-Flag (Team Fortress 2 , Overwatch, CS:GO, etc) because these don't require stories, and can be monetized by P2W garbage like gachapon/lootboxes. FFXIV has it's own mini-version of these (Frontlines is CTF, Lord of Verminion is a mini-MOBA.) FFXIV hasn't done it's take on a Battle-Royale PvP yet, and I'd argue that the reason why it's popularity in the west suddenly happened was due to the Hunger Games films, even though the Battle Royale predates the Hunger Games.

So here's my pitch for a FFXIV Battle Royale:

Up to 144 players can enter (like Eureka), but once the 144th person enters, or the "starting time elapses" (eg every person added extends the count down by 30 seconds.) a count-down begins before the PvP mode begins, and random "crates" appear. Enter as any role (including DoL and DoH), and the winning strategy is different for each.
- Tanks can be instantly KO'd by fixed traps
- Healers can be instantly KO'd by traps.
- DPS can be instantly KO'd by traps.
- DoL can be instantly KO'd by traps, but can also disarm and reset them.
- DoH, can be instantly KO'd by traps, but can disarm, reset, and craft new ones.

So if you enter as DoL or DoH, you need to find as many crates as possible. If you enter as DoM/DoW, you want to destroy as many crates as possible.
-DOL can gather materials to heal themselves if injured.
-DoH can not heal themselves, and thus need to find healing items on the field.
-Healers can heal themselves, thus you want to one-shot KO them. Tanks and DPS can not heal themselves and thus need to find healing items on the field.

- DoL can be one-shot KO'd by DPS, but can also hide from all players.
- DoH can be one-shot KO'd by DPS, can can build decoys or camouflage.
- Healers and Tanks can not be one-shot by DPS.

As the global timer ticks down, the edges of the arena start to collapse (see various "railings have been destroyed" mechanics) and thus another way to get rid of players is by pushing them off the arena. The areas that will collapse in 1 minute will be highlighted (a la Titan), so don't stand there.

Any player KO'd is immediately removed from the Arena to the "observer" area. Stay here to get rewards for the time you survived, or exit immediately to give up all rewards. Anything the player was carrying in their Arena inventory is left on the ground for other players to pick up or destroy.

Cure pools will cure everything, (will look like a puddle, and will be in different random locations once used a few times) but they have a cool down. Nice places to place traps around.

Various traps can be found or tripped:
- Fetter/Paralyze traps, simply freeze a player for 30 seconds, while a DoW/DoM can kill them, DoL/DoH will need to use a bomb on them.
- Explosion traps, knock 99% of the HP off a player and stun them for 3 seconds, and thus a DoL or DoH can "hit them" once for a KO.
- Curse Frog/Imp/Chicken traps, permanently transform the player, making them vulnerable to one-hit-ko's by all players including DoL/DoH. This does give them a "hide" skill while transformed, but can't be untransformed without finding a "cure" pool.
- (DoH) Poison traps, set a non-clenseable poison debuff
- (DoH) Doom traps, set a non-clenseable doom debuff
- (DoH) Charm traps, make the player run directly towards the closest player within line-of-sight, with only auto-attack.
- (DoH) Drown traps, trap players in a bubble and slowly quickly drain their HP if not popped.
- (DoH) Ballista/Catapult traps, sends a player flying in a certain direction, either through the air (hopefully out of the arena) or along the ground (thus tripping additional traps)

All traps can be "reset" by DoL/DoH, but only destroyed by DoW/DoM. DoW/DoM can not see traps on the map, and their location isn't known until after they've stepped on it (or another player steps on it.) DoL can see all set traps while using Hide, but only within 1y. DoH can see all set traps within 1y. AOE's can be used to trip traps, but also alert people to your presence.

So your choice of entry depends on what you think is more fun/skillful. Tanks are the most survivable, but are weak to traps. Healers can recover from damage, but traps are deadly. Ranged DPS can sneak up on players and kill them from afar. Melee DPS can take out everyone if they get a surpise attack. DoL and DoH can KO people with traps, and DoL can hide while doing so.

That's all I can think of right now.