Where is the "never before seen content"?

[Hestzhyen]

How quickly people forget about Final Fantasxy XIV 1.0. It's like this game didn't almost completely fail, got saved and follows a model that continues to prove to be successful.

EDIT:
Click the link and learn a bit of the history of the game.

Now that the game has been saved for over four years (and two expansions), can we expect them to shake it up a little? All this niche content that's been in other MMOs for decades, or truly fluff things like Perform, aren't exactly the new and amazing things that SE wants me to think they are.

1.0 deserved to be obliterated from all I've read about it, but that doesn't mean 2.0 and onward must stay the same forever lest Dalamud be recreated too.

[SmokeyTheSequel]

I knew this years ago when it became obvious that theme park was going to be clone park X.0. Everyone is starting to wake up now and take off their rose tinted glasses and see that given their now 4 years in the making that we are on a hilly rollercoaster and that's all it will ever be. Couple turns here and there but no loopdeloops or corkscrews. Gotta play it safe... next expansion is going to be exactly what this one was... and the next. Please look forward to it!

[JunseiKei]

Now that the game has been saved for over four years (and two expansions), can we expect them to shake it up a little? All this niche content that's been in other MMOs for decades, or truly fluff things like Perform, aren't exactly the new and amazing things that SE wants me to think they are.

1.0 deserved to be obliterated from all I've read about it, but that doesn't mean 2.0 and onward must stay the same forever lest Dalamud be recreated too.

"Shake it up" how? What are you suggesting that is reasonable, knowing the limitations of the game? FFXIV, like a lot of popular MMOs, is a "generalist" MMO - it has content that can appeal to many people. However, it means when you add content that appeases one group, the others think they are being left out. Things like perform appeals to some, but from your own wording, it doesn't appeal to you, so you think it's a wasted addition to the game. Am I correct?

Right now, the game's model is content released in a steady rhythm, yet spaced out enough that you can incur breaks. These breaks can be taken and when you return, you can also easy fall back into being current. The major issue I see people complain on is the amount of dungeons (which I don't, personally, understand) and when something is added they have no interest in, they suddenly mistakenly say "no content."

Also, me pointing out what happened in 1.0 doesn't mean the game's future need suffer. It's mainly to remind people that at one point, XIV was more similar to XI than it is currently and it didn't work out.

However, please keep in mind that the last time SE did what players asked in terms of difficulty and content, we obtained Gordias Savage. Those were dark times, indeed.

I knew this years ago when it became obvious that theme park was going to be clone park X.0. Everyone is starting to wake up now and take off their rose tinted glasses and see that given their now 4 years in the making that we are on a hilly rollercoaster and that's all it will ever be. Couple turns here and there but no loopdeloops or corkscrews. Gotta play it safe... next expansion is going to be exactly what this one was... and the next. Please look forward to it!

This is most MMOs, not just XIV. If this is the core of your argument, perhaps you are playing the wrong genre. I highly recommend this channel's "Death of a Game" for various reasons my MMOs have come and gone. Some of them have been because of "risks" taken.

[BillyKaplan]

Right now, the game's model is content released in a steady rhythm, yet spaced out enough that you can incur breaks.

As has been said before, the rhythm right now is such that many are forced to take breaks. If I wasn't so fond of hunting (content that's meant to be a grind and nothing actually new) I really wouldn't have had anything to do even now that they finally introduced Heaven on High, and how long did we have to wait for that? Eureka was such a horrible content lull most of my friends ended up on a break despite new content being released with that patch. The rhythm may be steady, but so is a patient's heartbeat right before the final, long, steady "dooooooooooo".

The major issue I see people complain on is the amount of dungeons (which I don't, personally, understand)

Before we used to get two new dungeons to grind in Expert roulette every so often. Now, we have to wait twice as long for that new content, and in between we get more of the same content with MAYBE once in a while a different dungeon. When people already MAYBE log in daily to run that thing, it exponentially worsens burnout. Go back to where the game forces you to take breaks, rather than permits it.

[Hestzhyen]

"Shake it up" how? What are you suggesting that is reasonable, knowing the limitations of the game? FFXIV, like a lot of popular MMOs, is a "generalist" MMO - it has content that can appeal to many people. However, it means when you add content that appeases one group, the others think they are being left out. Things like perform appeals to some, but from your own wording, it doesn't appeal to you, so you think it's a wasted addition to the game. Am I correct?

Right now, the game's model is content released in a steady rhythm, yet spaced out enough that you can incur breaks. These breaks can be taken and when you return, you can also easy fall back into being current. The major issue I see people complain on is the amount of dungeons (which I don't, personally, understand) and when something is added they have no interest in, they suddenly mistakenly say "no content."

Also, me pointing out what happened in 1.0 doesn't mean the game's future need suffer. It's mainly to remind people that at one point, XIV was more similar to XI than it is currently and it didn't work out.

However, please keep in mind that the last time SE did want players asked in terms of difficulty and content, we obtained Gordias Savage. Those were dark times, indeed.

In terms of "shaking it up", I'm not thinking of impossible asks like re-inventing combat from the ground up or adding a 1000-man boss fight. Working within the systems have have been established, we could have...

- 8-man dungeons (without the story cutscenes this time), perhaps for various goals like find the most treasure or defeat the most enemies within the time limit. PotD/HoH could have been this too, but the implementation is pretty bare and the lack of direction can cause friction within groups.
- more large-scale content that takes advantage of having a large amount of players... I remember reading about a version of "Hamlet Defense" where combat jobs would fight off hordes of enemies as crafters and gatherers would supply the defenses. That sounds cool and I would be willing to try it from a combat and DoH/DoL role.
- play to the strength of the game. XIV is all about DPS, so introduce some content that is all about how fast you can push through it. Have teams race to the finish and award some prizes. Enforce the trinity, have different modes (AoE runs, single target runs, etc.) for everyone to have a chance to shine. You could even do something crazy like having healer-specific modes that test how efficiently players use their skills to keep an NPC alive.

It would also be great to see them rely less on established mechanics. How many boss fights do we have that involve the boss going invulnerable or leaving for a period of time so we can deal with adds while they charge an attack? I lose interest in a fight as soon as the boss does that any more. Like "oh, this again...". Or all the dungeon bosses who don't care whether you ignore their mechanics or not. It's pretty sad when ARR leveling dungeons have more teeth than some of the level 70 dungeons in SB isn't it?

These wouldn't necessarily be unique to MMOs, but they would be to XIV. And with the constant stream of reskinned dungeons, bosses, and catch-up quests, it would be refreshing if they even tried to branch out a little more. So I'm not asking for a revolution or for SE to take huge risks here. Just to build on what they've already got instead of stagnating like I feel they're currently doing.

[Moomba33]

Before we used to get two new dungeons to grind in Expert roulette every so often. Now, we have to wait twice as long for that new content, and in between we get more of the same content with MAYBE once in a while a different dungeon. When people already MAYBE log in daily to run that thing, it exponentially worsens burnout. Go back to where the game forces you to take breaks, rather than permits it.

To add on, we used to get 3 new dungeons in Expert per patch back in ARR (one brand new and two hard modes).
It's been a steady decline in the number of new dungeons as the game has gone on and some people feel we haven't gotten enough new content to justify it. How much you enjoy the new stuff that has been added will affect your perception of course.

[BillyKaplan]

It's been a steady decline in the number of new dungeons as the game has gone on and some people feel we haven't gotten enough new content to justify it.

It's not an equal trade-off, either. From my understanding of it, one of the things we've been getting less dungeons for is things like the Lakshmi trial in 4.1, or the trial that came alongside the Swallow's Compass. I personally admired both trials, but they're one-hit wonders. You run them the once for their respective stories and poof, they're gone. It's not just a decline in content, it's a decline in repetitive, sustainable content.
Or, more directly on-topic for this thread, the "never before seen in our MMORPG" content. Ok cool I got to play as Alphi. Not only is this another cool trial I will never see again unless I take another character through the MSQ, I wonder how much time went into developing a system that let us play as him in the first place, how much they patted themselves on the back for that, and how little we actually got out of it.

[JunseiKei]

As has been said before, the rhythm right now is such that many are forced to take breaks. If I wasn't so fond of hunting (content that's meant to be a grind and nothing actually new) I really wouldn't have had anything to do even now that they finally introduced Heaven on High, and how long did we have to wait for that? Eureka was such a horrible content lull most of my friends ended up on a break despite new content being released with that patch. The rhythm may be steady, but so is a patient's heartbeat right before the final, long, steady "dooooooooooo".

Before we used to get two new dungeons to grind in Expert roulette every so often. Now, we have to wait twice as long for that new content, and in between we get more of the same content with MAYBE once in a while a different dungeon. When people already MAYBE log in daily to run that thing, it exponentially worsens burnout. Go back to where the game forces you to take breaks, rather than permits it.

That's fine. Breaks are good. Not everything needs to be constant, least you get burned out on it. I know some people play MMOs (or games in general) like addicts. Just because some people have an unhealthy addiction does not mean every business needs to capitalize on this addiction.

A dungeon is a dungeon. I don't care if it's 1 new dungeon a patch or 50 - they're all mindless after one or two runs and get boring fast. Quantity doesn't matter. It's content, yes, but I wouldn't ever call a dungeon riveting. I throw it in the same pile as perform - appeals to some, but it's fluff. Especially when SE forced means of stopping speedruns (I still recall doing Brayflox HM in 5 minutes to the first two bosses; under 10 for the whole dungeon at level 50).

In terms of "shaking it up", I'm not thinking of impossible asks like re-inventing combat from the ground up or adding a 1000-man boss fight. Working within the systems have have been established, we could have...

- 8-man dungeons (without the story cutscenes this time), perhaps for various goals like find the most treasure or defeat the most enemies within the time limit. PotD/HoH could have been this too, but the implementation is pretty bare and the lack of direction can cause friction within groups.
- more large-scale content that takes advantage of having a large amount of players... I remember reading about a version of "Hamlet Defense" where combat jobs would fight off hordes of enemies as crafters and gatherers would supply the defenses. That sounds cool and I would be willing to try it from a combat and DoH/DoL role.
- play to the strength of the game. XIV is all about DPS, so introduce some content that is all about how fast you can push through it. Have teams race to the finish and award some prizes. Enforce the trinity, have different modes (AoE runs, single target runs, etc.) for everyone to have a chance to shine. You could even do something crazy like having healer-specific modes that test how efficiently players use their skills to keep an NPC alive.

It would also be great to see them rely less on established mechanics. How many boss fights do we have that involve the boss going invulnerable or leaving for a period of time so we can deal with adds while they charge an attack? I lose interest in a fight as soon as the boss does that any more. Like "oh, this again...". Or all the dungeon bosses who don't care whether you ignore their mechanics or not. It's pretty sad when ARR leveling dungeons have more teeth than some of the level 70 dungeons in SB isn't it?

These wouldn't necessarily be unique to MMOs, but they would be to XIV. And with the constant stream of reskinned dungeons, bosses, and catch-up quests, it would be refreshing if they even tried to branch out a little more. So I'm not asking for a revolution or for SE to take huge risks here. Just to build on what they've already got instead of stagnating like I feel they're currently doing.

8- man dungeons do sound pretty OK.

I remember once, before ARR actually launched, FATEs were supposed to act like that, in a way. That settlements would be attacked and would have outcomes of win and loss (you see a part of this in South Shroud and the Redbelly Hive). Reflecting back on that idea, I'm glad they didn't go with this. Having things like aetherytes being disabled because not enough players were around to defend, as well as something that must be constantly upkept, sounds like a massive hassle in an MMO. Especially if you have no interest in it (and can't force players to take part in it).

That was also addressed in a LLP. The response back is that they are wary of implementing time attacks because of speed hacks and other exploits that would ruin this kind of mode. I can't really blame them; going after bots is largely an exercise in futility (I don't really want to go into the topic).

Mechanics themselves... that's a matter of personal taste, wouldn't it? A boss jumping or going invulnerable doesn't bother me. Some of the more interesting mechanics can happen doing them. My first experience with a boss jumping was T5's Twintania dives. A boss fight where bosses tend to not go invulnerable and jump tend to end up being punching bags - THAT'S where I lose interest. Unless you have interesting mechanics to pair with it (but this is largely lacking outside of raids/savage).

I can't unbiasedly weigh in ARR vs HW vs SB. I like ARR because I liked the fact that raids were directly tied to story while still being a challenge and people wanted to run things (like dungeons) with an emphasis on efficiency. Gordias savage pretty much still left a bad taste in my mouth (even though I enjoyed Alexander's fight and Cruise Chaser's). I don't have nostalgia that would probably get me more into ExDeath or Kefka's fights, but for what we've got in FFXIV, they're alright. It also largely depends on what part of each expansion you're asking, because that will change which expansion I'll answer with. (Right now, I'd answer with SB for dungeons, because after it's all said in done, love it, hate it, whatever, the second boss in Bardam's Mettle is definitely interestingt; I'd love to see more of 'alternative fights' in normal dungeons. That's not to say it didn't exist before, like the second boss in Stone Vigil hard being done with cannons rather than your job.)

Reskinned dungeons are not unique to FFXIV, unless you were referring to something else? It's a new paragraph so I'm a bit confused to which exactly you are referring to - bosses jumping or older dungeons?

[Ameela]

The reason 2.x seemed to have way more content than 4.x is because 2.x was mostly riding on the coattails of 1.0.
They were able to release 3 new trials, 3 new dungeons, a plethora of new side quests and QoL improvements because a big part of the content back then was stuff from 1.0 repurposed to fit in the new version of the game, while the other portion of content was either stuff that was already in development way before 2.0 had even been released or it was things using old assets so it wasn't exactly that much of a challenge to make.

Now that we're in patch 4.3 there's pretty much nothing left to "recycle", as it were, and all the content we're getting is 100% original and built from the ground up. This is especially noticeable in the dungeons, go back to the ARR dungeon list and look at how many of them are hard modes which are just reused assets from the original dungeon with new enemies and bosses, there was pretty much only one completely new dungeon per patch. Meanwhile SB so far has only had 1 hard mode dungeon (about to be 2 in 4.4) with every other dungeon being completely original and with much higher production values. I don't mean to undermine the developer's work however it's clear a lot more effort was put into Swallow's Compass than Snowcloak just in terms of design, for example.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

"Shake it up" how? What are you suggesting that is reasonable, knowing the limitations of the game? FFXIV, like a lot of popular MMOs, is a "generalist" MMO - it has content that can appeal to many people. However, it means when you add content that appeases one group, the others think they are being left out. Things like perform appeals to some, but from your own wording, it doesn't appeal to you, so you think it's a wasted addition to the game. Am I correct?

Perform is a perfect example of poor appeasement. It's only intended for an incredibly niche audience, released in a patch where the entirety of its content was also niche. Casual players had one dungeon, Rabanastre and a beast tribe as content intended to last through the duration of 4.1. That is abysmal, hence why you saw frequent complaints of boredom. 4.3, currently, offers similarly less, though at least Heaven on High attracts a far less niche audience. Unfortunately, it's more than a little lackluster before you reach the higher floors. We shall see if Eureka alleviates things despite it taking forever and a day to actually release.

A general content focus is fine, in theory, but Stormblood as a whole simply has very little to offer unless you like virtually everything. And if we go by the unofficial censuses, the numbers demonstrate a clear lack of interest. Stormblood is seeing 3.1 levels of disinterest, which is staggering if one considers the state of the game back then. While these numbers are by no means definitive, it remains disconcerting all the same, especially as WoW enters is latest expansion. Meanwhile, FFXIV is likely to undergo a significant drought unless something surprising occurs in 4.5.

However, please keep in mind that the last time SE did want players asked in terms of difficulty and content, we obtained Gordias Savage. Those were dark times, indeed.

Contrary popular belief, Gordias Savage did not destroy the game, though it did severely impact the raid scene. Let's review what released between 3.0 to 3.2

Gordias
Thordan EX
Four dungeons
Void Ark
Lords of Verminion
Diadem

This spanned over eight months, the longest delay between updates since FFXIV's relaunch. Both major content updates were essentially DoA, thus casual players had literally nothing new to keep themselves occupied. Meanwhile, the devs openly acknowledged they undertoned Void Ark and severely overtuned Goridas Savage. Bear in mind, unlike any other tier ever released, Gordias was gear locked, making it impossible to clear until tome weapons were available. Even Ultimate didn't impose such a restriction. Had Gordias been properly tuned, it never would have been the monster it became. Furthermore, the game lacked key components which heavily impacted raid progression: cooldown resets and cross world PF. The former forced players to either pull with necessary abilities still on CD or wait several minutes in between (No wonder PLD was unpopular) while the latter made recruitment pools swallow at best. Hence why Gilgamesh ballooned.

It's entirely disingenuous to fault Gordias for the disaster of 3.1.