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

[Dzian]

You're misunderstanding what I meant. I'll say it again, I'm not talking about getting top-end gear from little dungeons or FATE farms. I know that content needs to have some sort of difficulty or special grind involved to grant gear that's as strong or stronger than the raid gear. I'm referring to new methods to get gear that aren't raids.

The raid system is exactly the same in pattern except the raids are trials now. I'm tired of raids. Or at least Omega. I'm taking about things that could benefit both raiders and non-raiders. 1.0 was that kind of thing. In the end, a high level raider could also get super-powered piece of i210. The difference being that they actually know how to use it. Diadem was the first kind of horizontal progression we ever had. Diadem had incentive. That's a fact. Raids? You do them, gear up. And then what? Nothing that's released in the next 6 months will have any use to you and you won't even get Ultimate anymore(right?). So just quit until raid cycle reset? Where crafted gear is better than your awesome raid gear? I guess if you like it then hey.. but to me it's bad. To me anyway. We need gear worth something. As it stands all gear in the game is released already trash...

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. the ridoraa lighthouse is an i335 raid released at a time when most player are 360+ it's obselete content before you even look at the rewards....

the main reason gear is governed by raids is because of the pace at which content is made obselete.. if you allowed hoh or lighthouse to provide better gear than savage raids then all you succeed in doing is increase the power creep massivly. which in turn would only serve to kill content even faster....

Oh, and I also don't like how everything is so easy. I did say that in the opening post after all. So please, understand I'm not talking about getting i380 gear from expert roulette. Howeverrrr if they made something where you had to do 100 expert roulettes to get a piece of powerful gear then maybe I might accept it xD.

No Way.. many people i know dont even touch expert these days or dungeons at all. grinding them 100 times for a gear reward would just be another monotoous unfun grind. braindead easy just time consuming...
instead of make it easy and grind it 100 times just make it harder it is called "expert" after all. make it actually challenging and people wouldnt be so mind numbingly brainless when they did it. and would feel more accomplished at the end. where as currently nothing is ever satisfying its just another chore ticked of the endless list.

you mentioned player retention and how the game loses many players because the levelling experience is so dull and the msq is so bloated with crap.. what about the other side of the game? many of my friends and contacts have stopped playing because of the endgame structure and game design. everything is ridiculously easy that its never satisfying when you clear a piece of content. a patch lands you enter the new omega raid and within a couple of hours you've completed it all.. they add a new dungeon and players just rofl stomp it.. and get literally nothing from it.. 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.

even in ARR the garlean empire was meant to be this major threat to eorzea because they were so strong and unbeatable it would take the whole eorzean alliance to even stand a chance.... yet 1 level 50 player could run around the castrum in mordhona or the one near vesper bay and absolutely roflstomp the whole place... completely destroys the strength the tension the stories tries to create.. heavensward was the same and stormblood was even worse... the plot made it out to be this really difficult task to retake that bridge where minaago glamours the flag. this whole big build up and tension creating and knock knock courier at my door put my controller down go to sort out my packages make a sandwhich come back duty complete.... probalby like 6-8 minutes of not even being in the room and i still roflstomped that fight....

i think its also why people complain about so many players being so bad because so much of the games content would actually take more effort to fail than it would to suceed.. when it's that easy why the hell do players need to up there game.... and when the rewards for everything players do are nothing but junk trash that players don't even care about whats there motivation to improve... there's no incentive..

the other issue is the devs never seem to actually listen to the players. they might hear them but they don't listen..

it's like eureka. what players said was they wanting some endgame content like XI's endgame. structured content with purpose and objectives and stuff like how most of ffxis endgmae was built. what the devs heard was "stuff......xi... stuff" and what we got was basically a vlakurm dunes exp grind and the devs said that is what we asked for......

glamours another one.. players have asked for a glamour log for years and quite often came up with detailed ways that would literally take no server resources at all... and what the devs gave us was some highly messed up glamour dresser with some major restrictions that were just blatently uneccessary and for some reason uses like 100 times more resources than it needed to.

diadem was another players hated it told the devs why. the devs closed it down. spent some time on it apparantly listening to our feedback and then reluanched diadem 2.0 and it was everything players hated from the first one and they somehow made it even worse... then players went and said they hated it and told the devs why... and then we got eureka which is diadem 3.0 everytihng players hated and made even worse.... and now we got pagos which i hear is basically diadem 4.0 and people still hate it for the exact same reasons..... are the devs actually listening.....

they really need to change up the formulae and make content relevent for longer than a single patch.. ramp up the difficulty. increase the value of the rewards. and they'd probably find players find the game to be alot more rewarding and satisfying and that would probalby do a lot for player retention.. if the game is rewarding. players will continue to play it..

they need to bring eorzea to life as well. i've said in threads before ffxis vanadiel was 100 times deeper and more dynamic and living than eorzea. and vanadiel is almost 20 years old... how the hell can eorzea be so static dead and lifeless.. technology has advanced so much but the game world has gone backwards not evolved...

in ffxi literally everything you did impacted the whole game world in some way. it was dynamic and ever changing based on player actions.. eorzea never changes.. oh look a fate... ignore it or complete it. makes no difference at all. nothing you do ever does

the other issue is that many of XIVS problems have been the same ones players have complained about ever since ARR. players said way back then that the treadmill was horrilbe that the vertical progression was dull and stats were meaningless. the comabt system was crap... and back then players would flame the hell out of anyone who said such things but more recently a lot more people agree. its like players are opening there eyes and seeing waht these players said years ago...

[Wolf_Heartnet]

I disagree with the bit about flying. One of the biggest means of transportation in this game is teleportation. If you are asking to get rid of flying, you might aswell get rid of teleportation.

Thing is, It doesn't work for W.O.W. so well because W.O.W. is a HUGE open world game that can take a long time to get from point a to b. You can't just teleport 50 different places at a moments notice so the flying really kills the open world for that game. This game however? No, it doesn't. Everything is seperated into small instances with 2 or so atherytes in many of these areas.

For exploration, flying can work too. In fact, areas can be DESIGNED for flying like in Flyff mmo. WoW designed Wotlk so that u can truly admire the expansions area design only from a flying perspective and honestly, if you just want to walk everywhere... you still can. Just walk to the places you cant reach and ONLY fly when its to get up a place you can't reach. I mean... If you can only reach places by flying its still exploration... You say that It would be unfair cause you would progress slower than others but again, this is something YOU personally want. Why should others be restricted/punished because of your own subjective sense of whats fun? THAT is pretty selfish.

[Mahrze]

The Open World:
---TL;DR: HW and SB maps are filled with nothing. No exploration. No incentive. No danger.

But thinking the opposite is needed is ludicrous though, because of the second 'no'. Incentive. Ruby sea's incentive is HoH and the Kojin. Fringes' incentive is the Ananta, etc. No matter how 'good' the carrot is, its only there for so long. ARR maps, even with all the nuance were mostly empty because people stay in cities or housing wards, unless you want those to be lost in favor of 'better' over-world maps.

Flying:
---TL;DR: Can I just say that imo, flying ruined everything that FFXIV was? I had to make a section just for flight.. it has ruined so many things now that I don't think I'll ever get the feelings back unless it's removed.

No, it didn't ruin it, it made obvious how barren most maps are. I know I fight an uphill battle with nostalgia and sense of wonder but maps, unless they have some sort of 'natural progression' or 'are very much alive' are only interesting after so long. Maps can be interesting with flight, but SE still has no idea on how that one works.

Glamours and Customization:
---TLDR: We get less and less, more restrictions, and more boring.

But this is mostly because they can only do so much with the glamour system they have, but expecting more at this point is a bit far-fetched since the gear is the carrot, they've already perpetuated this mentality. "Do this to get this", its how every game works. And the circle jerk with the devs is they mostly play female characters so that's why most gear is usually favoring female characters.

Dungeons, Trials, and Raids:
---TL;DR: SE, you cut corners and I see it but you don't give us anything in return. You're just giving us less and less here.

Problem hear is that 'intricate' dungeons will just have 'the path of least resistance' as 'the right path/way' and every other option as 'bad' not only by design, but by player consensus. Even when 'all roads lead to rome' everyone wants the shortest one.

Gear Rewards, Progression, and Raiders:
---TL;DR: This might spark negativity but here's my opinion.. Raiders and raids are restricting the game and causing all gear progression to go stale.

Throwing raiders into the fray is a hit/miss issue. Because reality is, the devs decided to use the raider rewards as the highest worth measure. If the devs decided to keep this value, then its all the more reason to think 'its the best' (even though sub-stats can prove otherwise as a 'bis' and relic has been bis at expansion end due to stat customization) but even those items are not needed for most of content, plenty of raiders clear stuff under the ilvl cap and farm it. Its more of a 'medal in the form of gear' than an actual reward.

Overall I think we're being to fatalistic with what the game does since its been doing the same thing since 2.0. Its simply more people are "woke' to the thought. But adding nuance to maps, expanding gear and other tid-bits would only mean: "this isn't enough, SE because <reasons>".

They themselves have an uphill battle with overly high expectations that they also seem to foment. Specially when the game has 30 categories of different types of content that needs investment or qol treatment and they seem to only be able to work on 1 thing every 3 months.

[AngelCheese77]

Catching up with this thread, I do feel that Squeenix is behind the ball when it comes to glamours and the like.

They need to be able to be worn by all races, genders, and classes. This is 2018. This isn't a game with gender or race locked classes like other eastern MMOs can have. This isn't EverQuest from 1999.

If a person works to get a piece of armor or weapon, then they should be able to wear it on whatever class they want to.

They could just make the glamour toilet remove all restrictions when the item is placed in it. If they can make it so you can remove a piece and make it back into armor .... /shrug

[Kazgrel]

OP argument automatically invalidated by suggesting removal of flight. There’s no flight in Eureka and yet that’s not even a discussion point in why that place (Pagos in particular) sucks ass.

[Redname]

To everyone posting here...How many times we talked about this? In different shape and form. Only to repeat over and over what we already said.
You said its needed. Granted, nobody will listen us if we dont voice our concerns.
But we are the only ones talking now, we are talking to a brick wall. Take a look at the dev tracker. You see some dev replying something meaningful or caring about us? Only silly contests about housing or art, or pvp. The feedback from them is 0. Begin demanding real communication. Thats the only way we can advance

[Riko_Futatabi]

The truth in your post is very gratifying. I can agree with everything you have said. The original post should have triple the amount of likes that it currently has.

That is all I wanted to say, I don't feel like I need to say much else. You have echoed my problems with this game almost perfectly.

[Arek]

The truth in your post is very gratifying. I can agree with everything you have said. The original post should have triple the amount of likes that it currently has.

That is all I wanted to say, I don't feel like I need to say much else. You have echoed my problems with this game almost perfectly.

I liked it at 1st, then I read it carefully. If OP didn't "blame" Raiders for the state of the game right now, I would like it. Unfortunately, it's not "raider's fault", it's designers fault, Vertical Progression + Lack of interesting Stats and Equipement personnalisation. (Aka Itemisation as a whole.)

Can't like the post if there is one thing I absolutely not agree with. Even if I agree with some or more of it.

So This post :

I've finally gotten myself caught up on each post in the thread since pages piled up extra fast within 2 days. So now I feel I can post about something for real...

There's been alot of talk gear and how raider gear should only be for raiders and what all that. It feels like it was mainly going in circles instead of discussing a solution? After reading the whole thing in full, I do have an idea of how that something could work similar to what I posted long ago but it was buried fairly quickly. Varied Gear Sets.My idea is this, I repeat with some modifications to it:
Raid Path: Stays the same as it always was. Raids offer raid gear that is ilvl cap. i340, i370, i400, whichever when completed. They have their own designs and whatever. No changes.

Tome Path: Stays the same. Although I wish they could remove the unique tag on gear so we could finally have duplicates. Not being able to have duplicates where we have multiple jobs using the same pieces of gear but wanting different melds is just horrible. Oh, and tome weapon upgrades really should to be made available much earlier than a month before next raid cycle. It's pretty pointless otherwise.

Crafter Path: I do believe there should be a path that crafters can take to get highest level gear. It would mix it up to see some new top ilvl pieces to choose from. We already have the crafted gear upgrade system, which was welcome. Why not come out with an i360 step and i370 step? With the i370 being untradable of course. Peak Crafted armor. Example:
1. Craft a HQ armor piece and hand it to the exchange to get the tokens
2. Aquire Thavnarian Rains to get the piece upgraded to i360 Augmented
3. Now you must repeat #1 and trade in the i360 piece however, the other trade-in item must be crafted. The craft should be difficult to create. Craft the mat and trade that with the new tokens to get the HQ i370 Peak piece. This process will need to be repeated for as many times you want an i370 Peak piece.

Also, having a 2nd crafting recipe to create the same trade-in item but with ingredients dropped from raids would be nice as well. On the even patch, Recipe A with raid mats would be available first. On the odd patch, recipe B without raid mats will be available. This would broaden out the horizontal progression and set building to have more gear pieces with different stat mixups available.

Primal Path: I was pleasantly surprised to see Lakshmi jewelry available during 4.0. That was an amazing addition! Why the heck was it discontinued? Having Primals drop jewelry would make them relevant to gear-building again. Even patch Primals can give jewelry the same ilvl as normal raids and default crafted jewelry while off patch Primals give jewelry with the same ilvl as upgraded tome jewelry, Peak Crafted jewelry, and Raid jewelry.

In other words... Byakko would give i350 jewelry along with the i350 weapons and Tsyukoyomi would give i370 jewelry along with her i365 weapon(although just making the weapon i370 would be better to be honest..) for example.

24-Man Raid Path: Need I even explain this? For goodness's sake devs allow us to upgrade gear gotten from 24-man raids. Make them require the same upgrade tokens as tome gear. Or if you must stretch the time, implement ways to upgrade 24-man Raid gear on the .5 patches that release content like Heaven-On-High. Make it so Heaven-On-High drops trade-in items needed to augment 24-man gear.



With all of this in mind, we end up with Augmented Tome Gear, Raid Gear, and Peak Crafted Gear released on even patches with raids without devaluing the raids themselves while adding more incentive to crafting + raid AND adding more options to creating the perfect BiS, along with primal jewelry for the beginning raiders. Then comes the odd patch with Primal jewelry and weapons at ilvl cap for incentive and gear-building while allowing non-raiders to get Augmented Crafted gear and Peak Crafted Gear. Shortly after, the mid X.X5 patch releases with 24-man Raid Gear Augmentation.

By the X.X5 odd patch we have 4 different armor options of equal ilvl, 3 different weapon options(not including raid as that's always 5 ilvls above) of equal ilvl and 4 different jewelry options of equal ilvl. All having different stats from each other which would bring incentive to do ALL content to reach absolute BiS. Not just for casual players but raiders as well. As that undoubtedly includes the completion raids for perfection. The horizontal progression we could definitely use.. Sounds like a dream right? I know. I just woke up myself.

is MUCH more pertinent to me.

*thumbs up*

[Miste]

I like it at 1st, then I read it carefully. If OP didn't "blame" Raiders for the state of the game right now, I would like it.

^This.

It seems we can't have any kind of content or rewards worth something "because raids".
-We can't have relics worth getting "because raids"
-We can't have trial rewards worth getting "because raids"
-We can't have side content with rewards worth trying it for "because raids"
-We can't have tome gear worth working for "because raids"
-We can't have difficult-to-make but powerful crafted gear "because raids"
-24 mans are a waste of time "because raids"
-We can't have good open world gear drops "because raids"
-We can't have overpowered current gear "because future raids"
-We can't have powerful PvP gear "because raids"
-We can't even have materia slots now "because raids"

This section in Mal's OP called "Gear Rewards, Progression, and Raiders" is just full of nonsense and misinformation.

-Relics are worth getting, even raiders make them, just because some people think they aren't worth it doesn't make it the raid or raider's fault

-Trial rewards are worth getting, even raiders get them

-We can have side content with rewards worth trying it for, go ask SE for more

-Tome gear is worth working for, it upgrades to max item level for the tier, even raiders get tome gear, what game are you playing? It doesn't sound like it is this one?

-24 mans are not a waste of time, it is the some of the most fun experiences I've had in this game besides raiding, fun is the best reward and the gear can be used to gear alt jobs or even main if it has better substats or you are missing some pieces

-We can have good open world gear drops, go ask SE for it

-We can't have overpowered current gear.....because overpowered is broken and balance is a thing people appreciate....? If you want to game shark play a solo game

-We can have powerful PvP gear if people want it, it can just be for PVP only and glams, how is this raid or raider fault?? Go ask SE for it

-We have usable materia slots in our gear, seriously are we talking about the same game here?

You are just scapegoating raids and raiders for stuff that isn't their fault. The reason MMOs piece meal you gear is because they are trying to make the content last as long as possible. They know that players can eat through content in a few days or weeks that took them up to 6 months to create, so they have weekly and/or difficult restraints in place so that people cannot clear stuff or gear up too fast.

SE needs the content to last 6 months or as close to 6 months as possible since it takes them that long to create more content to keep the player base subbed and playing.

If they deleted savage next patch you really think the formula will change? Not likely. You will have the same setup of slow relic progression, weekly tome gear, trial gear, and 24 man gear.

People seem to illogically think raids are stopping SE from giving them more gear, but SE is simply not giving you more gear because they are trying to stretch the content to last longer.

More gear options from more avenues = gearing up to max quicker = clearing content easier = less need to do content to get clears or geared up = less people actively playing since they have nothing left to do = less people subbing longer = SE losing money.

It is not in SE's best interest to let you gear up quicker by giving you multiple avenues to get the best gear of the current tier.

This is not the raids or raider's fault. You simply don't like how the game is designed and are trying to find something else to blame besides the creator of said design which makes zero sense.

This ends up with us getting content that will always reward something lower than whatever the raid stuff is, meaning that none of it is ever going to be any good or worth the work. Know what that means? It means we end up with rewards that aren't good enough to give incentives for casual players with marginally weaker gear to actually play it to get it and rewards that are absolutely dead on arrival to raiders. Raiders have no point in playing anything after a raid besides Ultimate which is stopping.

This paragraph doesn't make any sense. If you progged savage yourself I think you would realize why this doesn't make any sense.

As a raider myself:
-I buy some crafted gear at the beginning of a tier
-I try to get the new trial primal weapon at beginning of tier and even midtier (Shinryu weapons and Tsukiyomi weapons helped people clear O4S and O8S)
-I work for my raid gear
-I work for my tome gear
-I use 24 man gear to close gaps in my gear
-I use the catch up patch upgrade items from the 24 man to close gaps in my gear

None of these things were dead on arrival for me even though I raid.

If all of this content is incentive for even someone like me who raids savage and has access to savage gear then how is it possible that casual players have no incentive to run the same content????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? The logic is non-existent.

[SaitoHikari]

This paragraph doesn't make any sense. If you progged savage yourself I think you would realize why this doesn't make any sense.

As a raider myself:
-I buy some crafted gear at the beginning of a tier
-I try to get the new trial primal weapon at beginning of tier and even midtier (Shinryu weapons and Tsukiyomi weapons helped people clear O4S and O8S)
-I work for my raid gear
-I work for my tome gear
-I use 24 man gear to close gaps in my gear
-I use the catch up patch upgrade items from the 24 man to close gaps in my gear

None of these things were dead on arrival for me even though I raid.

If all of this content is incentive for even someone like me who raids savage and has access to savage gear then how is it possible that casual players have no incentive to run the same content????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? The logic is non-existent.

Actually this. I think the person you're replying to either doesn't actually play the game enough to know how gearing actually works, or is being willfully obtuse.

As a Bard personally who had to wait until 4.3 before I was able to clear O8S, I went through the same phase you did, except I got my upgraded ilvl 370 tome weapon fairly early and thus had no reason to do Tsukiyomi EX (not to mention Tsuki EX bow doesn't have crit IIRC), and I skipped over the 24-man raid in terms of gearing since the chest piece from Ridorana didn't have crit on it (unlike Rabanastre). Meaning that Bards have to go from ilvl 350 (which became 360, see below) crafted chest piece to ilvl 370 diamond shirt if they wanted to maintain their critical hit rate.

At the very least, SE did introduce -upgraded- crafted armor that lets us upgrade said armor from 350 to 360 (at the cost of making them untradeable, which is going to happen anyway if you intend to actually use them), which is a plus and actually a very good idea.

The people in this thread acting like raiders don't do other content is actually pretty hilarious. This is especially considering that a good population of the raiders actively raid precisely because there's not much else to do in this game otherwise. This was one of only two reasons I decided to raid myself come Alexander Creator after not having the confidence to raid during the year prior (the other being some friends dragging me into it because they had trouble finding decent Bards in HW).

(I still run Ridorana frequently, probably more than the 'self-proclaimed casuals', just because I find 24-mans fun and hilarious. I usually run it about 3-4 times a week, and I ran Rabanastre about 10 times one week because I was literally that bored.)