We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Edax]

The issue with gear and progression isn't raids or anything it's simply the lifespan at which content is designed.. and that includes raids. the moment 4.4 lands even the top tier gear raiders have from sigma scape will be trashed by crafted gear with a few melds tossed in. the other issue is the gear stats ahve been dumbed down and simplified so much that the only option they have is just keep throwing out bigger numbers. and that ultimately makes all previous content obselete and expired... when you look at it this game actually has a shed load of content. yet players never have anything to do. because 99% of that content is obselete and a total waste of time... everything is trash or dead on arrival not because of raids but because of design. even if you ignore the rewards content is still DOA.

In theory, the random routlettes was a system to solve this. If evenly spaced out, you'd only do a repeat once every 2-3 weeks if you did it everyday and you got a universal currency that helped you. Yet somehow when I was leveling my Dark Knight in Stormblood, the leveling roulette sent me to Sunken Temple 4 times in a single week, which only made me take a good long break from tanking. The system definitely could use some work.

there's no satisfaction in getting gear or rewards either because it's all so incredibly bland and worthless junk that will be tossed in a month or glamoured over in minutes because it's ugly as hell all it really does is boost your strength or int by a few points.. wowwwwwwww.. nothing ever actually changes.... look at spell speed as a stat. a level 50 blm with something like 300 spell speed casts flare at the exact same speed as a level 70 player with like 1500 spell speed. so what does that stat actually doooo... absolutely nothing..... and that is a major factor of why stats are soo boring and uninteresting... the game just isnt a rewarding one to play and thats why retention is so bad. everything is soo easy that theres no accomplishment or satisfaction in clearing it. and often the lack of difficulty actually destroys the sense of atmosphere the story tries to create.

Yeah, stat inflation is really bad. It was amazing how when playing the original KOTOR game, just getting +5 Strength gave my character such a massive boost in damage. Whereas in this game, if I add +100 Strength to my character, I don't even notice a difference. If feels like all that's left to care about is the gear level, and that's somewhat just a matter of prestige now. While some other games might give you actually game numbers to tell you what +1 Strength does, the character menu in this game only tell you what the stat does and what number it is. I think you have to use 3rd party sites to even know what the numbers even mean. I'm not surprised most casual players don't even care.

[Magic-Mal]

Snip...

While I was mainly talking about new player retention, I completely agree with pretty much everything in your post. +1.

[Dzian]

While I was mainly talking about new player retention, I completely agree with pretty much everything in your post. +1.

Yeah but I think new players are often heavily Influenced by existing or former ones.

Some of my friends see me playing xiv on steam or psn depending which I'm using at the time. Ask me if its any good or should they buy it. I generally say not really. The main reason I play is because I have some very long standing connections. Some over 15 years...

Or friends look through the store find final fantasy 14. See that loads of there friends have played it. But then wonder why none still do... can't be that good won't buy It...

It doesn't create a positive image if people are getting to 70 smashing a content patch in a day and then not playing for several weeks or even months... no point even getting to 70 if that's what they see players doing....

[Magic-Mal]

Yeah but I think new players are often heavily Influenced by existing or former ones.

Some of my friends see me playing xiv on steam or psn depending which I'm using at the time. Ask me if its any good or should they buy it. I generally say not really. The main reason I play is because I have some very long standing connections. Some over 15 years...

Or friends look through the store find final fantasy 14. See that loads of there friends have played it. But then wonder why none still do... can't be that good won't buy It...

It doesn't create a positive image if people are getting to 70 smashing a content patch in a day and then not playing for several weeks or even months... no point even getting to 70 if that's what they see players doing....

I mainly only had friends/newbies who were just starting and really wanted to play with the much stronger FC members but just couldn't make it through the story. Approximately 0 made it to the end of base SB/HW story. ARR is just that bad.

[KisaiTenshi]

I mainly only had friends/newbies who were just starting and really wanted to play with the much stronger FC members but just couldn't make it through the story. Approximately 0 made it to the end of base SB/HW story. ARR is just that bad.

That sounds like a problem of them wanting to be carried through everything.

SE should stick to it's guns and not ever nerf the storyline. They put the cash shop jump pot out there, the community didn't want that, but we also realize that some players just want to play with each other and don't have a week to commit to doing the entirety of ARR. It doesn't help that players who roll a DPS get blocked by DPS queues.

Which if that's true, that means MMORPG's are too much of a commitment for casual "get friends together" and SE should instead make something like Mario Party Online.

[Dzian]

That sounds like a problem of them wanting to be carried through everything.

SE should stick to it's guns and not ever nerf the storyline. They put the cash shop jump pot out there, the community didn't want that, but we also realize that some players just want to play with each other and don't have a week to commit to doing the entirety of ARR. It doesn't help that players who roll a DPS get blocked by DPS queues.

Which if that's true, that means MMORPG's are too much of a commitment for casual "get friends together" and SE should instead make something like Mario Party Online.

i think its an issue of how much junk there is in the story.. admitedly expansions have had less of the junk.. but in ARR for example there's 44 maybe 48 quests just in that section between killing titan and going to do battle with garuda.. and how many of those 44 or 48 quests have any relevence to the actual plot..............

most of them exist for the sole purpose of handing the player some exp.

i think at present theres something like 600 msq quests in total.. i honestly think you could delete more than 300 (half) and not impact the core story at all... because most of them aren't relevent they're just tacked on as an excuse to throw some exp at you.. and often times you get a string of 4 or 5 quests that could quite easily be 1..

there's never any epic moments in the story either and when there is a high point (i.e fighting titan) its immediately followed by a soul crushing grind of another 44 quests before you get to the net one... and most of those high points are so easy there's no real satisfaction from clearing them. so its like
ok cool i gotta fight titan >> what the hell was that it???? >>>>> slog grind slog grind bash head against wall >> ok cool gotta fight garuda >>>> wait that was it??? what the helll???

i use that part as an example because thats the bit where i've had quite a few friends just give up because its so tedious, monotonous and unsatisfying

[OurMom]

That sounds like a problem of them wanting to be carried through everything.

That's not them wanting to be carried, I brought some friends with me here and all of them got bored with MSQs and quit.

The quests are just boring and most mmo players don't play mmos for story, they play it for the content/gameplay. Forcing MSQs and then locking content, expansions, and even jobs behind it is bizarre in the mmo world. I mean want MMO makes you play the entirety of an expansion as a class you don't want to play at all?


That's nothing to do with commitment, that's just dumb design.

[KisaiTenshi]

The quests are just boring and most mmo players don't play mmos for story, they play it for the content/gameplay. .

I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component. Especially a Final Fantasy game, which has long story components to it (where the "oh no unskippable cutscene" meta-joke comes from.) It's true some of the MSQ feels more like it was padded out, but consider that was the initial game, you wouldn't want people to burn through all of it in less than 60 hours, and you need to get 50 levels out of it.

If ones friends don't like story, they are playing the wrong genre, and should step away from RPG's entirely. If you like playing the game, and your friends do not want to play it, then you can't force them. The complaint I've heard from people who play MMO games and won't play MMORPG's anymore is not the story, it's the "gear grind". So they don't want to repeat content in order to progress. You can play the entirety of ARR without repeating any dungeon if you do the sidequests, or you can skip all of them and play the FATE's or repeat each level 30+ dungeon twice as you get it, since you've missed the sidequest-unlocked dungeons.

The expansions are less of an issue because you only need to get 10 levels out of them, so the story for the expansion can usually be done in a day.

[Skivvy]

I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component. Especially a Final Fantasy game, which has long story components to it (where the "oh no unskippable cutscene" meta-joke comes from.) It's true some of the MSQ feels more like it was padded out, but consider that was the initial game, you wouldn't want people to burn through all of it in less than 60 hours, and you need to get 50 levels out of it.

If ones friends don't like story, they are playing the wrong genre, and should step away from RPG's entirely. If you like playing the game, and your friends do not want to play it, then you can't force them. The complaint I've heard from people who play MMO games and won't play MMORPG's anymore is not the story, it's the "gear grind". So they don't want to repeat content in order to progress. You can play the entirety of ARR without repeating any dungeon if you do the sidequests, or you can skip all of them and play the FATE's or repeat each level 30+ dungeon twice as you get it, since you've missed the sidequest-unlocked dungeons.

The expansions are less of an issue because you only need to get 10 levels out of them, so the story for the expansion can usually be done in a day.

I will disagree with you. An MMORPG is a game where you get to pick your class, pick your character, pick your path, gear your character, etc. That in itself covers that "RPG" factor nicely. It does not mean that you also have to enjoy story telling in order to play the genre. That is why MMOs generally have so much varied content - to appeal to a broad spectrum of players. Story lines do exist in MMOs, but it does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that these games are not for you if you don't like the story.

[347SPECTRE]

Not everyone plays an MMO for story. While personally I do enjoy a good story within an MMO, I will definitely agree (mostly on the 2.1-2.55 MSQ) that the ARR MSQ is dragged out a lot longer than it should. I damn near quit trying to get through it but the reward of DRK at the time is what kept me going. For many others that's probably not the case. They really should try to consolidate the 2.1-2.55 MSQ.