Level Syncing isn't the best solution

[Dualgunner]

You are wrong, because when we re-do dungeons is through the echo. Nice try though.

The best you got is a "no u"? Nice.

If we were reliving the instance through the echo we would necessarily have to be the job we originally were or it wouldn't really be "reliving" it.

Basically the lore angle is crap.

[Spiroth]

The best you got is a "no u"? Nice.

If we were reliving the instance through the echo we would necessarily have to be the job we originally were or it wouldn't really be "reliving" it.

Basically the lore angle is crap.

Please try harder to troll.
Echo is not "relive events with the same job we were. We can basically experience the Echo even in stuff we were not there to begin with.

[Dzian]

It IS the best FINAL FANTASY MMO with its approach to storytelling, that is undisputable.
And of course "Story first" it is NOT this game's Achilles heel, as evidenced by the reception of it and the marginally bigger total player count than any other FINAL FANTASY MMO at the same point of its lifecycle.

I always find this amusing. XIV is heavily marketed .they spend bucket loads on pr and marketing hype for it. And it's playerbase is to quote you. "marginally bigger" than the other final fantasy MMO.

It's funny because the other final fantasy MMO had almost no marketing at all in comparison especially in the West.. A lot of people only found out it existed when the ps games jumped from 10 to 12... what happened to 11?? Or they happened to chance it on a shelf in a shop.

XIV pulls players in by the truck load but they just don't stay largely because of the story...
It's pulled in over 10 million players. Yet it's playerbase is "marginally bigger" than the other final fantasy MMO.

Can you really say xiv has a better approach to story telling than xi did?

[kikix12]

Final Fantasy XI had a lot of marketing as well. I've seen adds of FFXI before it was out and over the early duration of its existence if I recall. To be honest, I personally saw FFXI adds more frequently when it was fresh than I did FFXIV.

That being said, comparing those two in such a way is absolutely horrible. There are many players that would be interested in FFXIV at any point of its life, but weren't due to how much they invested in FFXI. If FFXI was after FFXIV, it'd have the same issue. That's because both RPG's are fundamentally aiming at the same market, so unless there's something REALLY wrong (like...what was the case with both MMO's early on in their life), the first one out have a massive advantage.

As for MMO's...one could technically count Mobius Final Fantasy...though that's a mobile-style RPG mixed with cards mixed with "Pay tons or you suck"...thus it doesn't even have a semblance of balance.

[Spiroth]

I always find this amusing. XIV is heavily marketed .they spend bucket loads on pr and marketing hype for it. And it's playerbase is to quote you. "marginally bigger" than the other final fantasy MMO.

It's funny because the other final fantasy MMO had almost no marketing at all in comparison especially in the West.. A lot of people only found out it existed when the ps games jumped from 10 to 12... what happened to 11?? Or they happened to chance it on a shelf in a shop.

XIV pulls players in by the truck load but they just don't stay largely because of the story...
It's pulled in over 10 million players. Yet it's playerbase is "marginally bigger" than the other final fantasy MMO.

Can you really say xiv has a better approach to story telling than xi did?

If marginally means "very little" I used the wrong word.
Ii meant "alot more".
Sorry, English is not my first language.

So, yeah, it's alot more.

And yeah FINAL FANTASY XIV's approach to storytelling is miles better than FINAL FANTASY XI's. Iit's basically the one indisputable thing it does better than FINAL FANTASY XI.

[Darrcyphfeid]

You did not. That post has zero valid solutions.
Nastrond using Lancer in Sastasha is not acceptable, and everything you "offered" mandates that. So no.

:thinking:

They need to redesign virtually every job in the game, from the ground up, to be functionally complete by level 30. Having an AoE spell/skill, having at least one full rotation, and that rotation being something that feels like it naturally evolves into whatever the lv80 rotation is (and lv50, lv60 and lv70 along the way).

This is the only legitimate solution to this problem. It requires the least amount of work on Square's end as well, unless "do nothing" is the route they choose to take.

Varying attack potency based on level is... like, really dumb. The outcome of that should be obvious as well: If they were to retain any semblance of balance between a lv15 and a lv70 in Sastasha, the lv70 would have a lot of buttons they could press, but would still opt not to because using the unscaled attacks (the ones the lv15 player has) would likely always be better.

See also: Pre-SB DRG where until we got Full Thrust at lv26 we just spammed Impulse Drive (while maintaining Heavy Thrust, if available/worthwhile) instead of doing True Thrust -> Vorpal Thrust.

That quote referencing "Titan's arc" makes me wonder if they actually meant story Titan or Titan Extreme.

I put "(30~34)" there to indicate that it's the arc of story surrounding Titan, the Company of Heroes, and like 4 hours of heinous back-and-forth fetch quests (+ Brayflox's Longstep, for good measure).

Those are the three most commonly cited areas new players report checking out of the game/story with, or otherwise raise their hands and ask how much longer until "it gets good." Good presumably being HW.

[Dzian]

And yeah FINAL FANTASY XIV's approach to storytelling is miles better than FINAL FANTASY XI's. Iit's basically the one indisputable thing it does better than FINAL FANTASY XI.

Again I disagree.

Final Fantasy XI's approach to the story was in my opinion very well done. Many separate chapters all interconnected and inter-weaved but by and large entirely up to the player how they worked through it. You could if you chose skip an entire story such as COP and jump straight into say the ToAU story without any issues at all. What was really smart though is that as much as they were separate they were also pretty well entwined. If you beat ToAU and went back to do CoP you'd learn little tid bits that may have answered a few of your questions along the ToAU path. Also in many ways it was much more accessible than what we have in XIV as there wasn't that much in the way of gates for a lot of it. A player with RoTZ for example could unlock and make it to Kazham and Norg pretty easily regardless of where they were in the story. The same could be said for Aht Ungan and Al Zhabi. this generally meant players could play together a lot more regardless of where in the story they were.

In XIV the story is for a lot of people nothing more than a huge obstacle that prevents them from getting to and playing with there friends. It's such a terrible road bloak that the devs had to add a skip potion to let players bypass a good section of it. and it is without doubt a big reason why a lot of new players don't stick around. The msq at present is getting close to like 600 quests long all entirely mandatory and thats an incredibly huge hurdle for players. Whats worse is a significant portion of those quests are literally just filler junk... "Oh hey you've defeated a mighty primal. now go kill some slugs ruining my crops....." wtf???

By comparison CoP widely regarded as one of the best stories XI ever told was roughly 35 missions or quests long significantly shorter than even just 2.0s main story. Yet despite being only 35 quests long it told an incredibly deep and detailed story and it was generally much better because there was almost no filler crap involved. Aht unghans was only 44 quests long and again told a deep and involved story that players could work through at there own pace. XIV's story is far to padded out with fluff and pointless quests that bare absolutely no significance at all to the actual plot... there just there as arbitrary filler and to throw players some exp.

Another big difference is XI's stories were all centered around Vana'diel. The entire game revolved around its world and the actions of its inhabitants. and thus players felt alot more connected to it. In XIV the story revolves around the player and the whole world of Eorzea is dead and lifeless as a result. A common compliant is it also breaks bonds between players and there characters because you might hate particular npcs with a passion but your character is best buddies with them. Even the dialogues that have choices in dont change. a character might say what about you? you can say of course or shake your head in disagreement. but the story still takes you to the exact same place and the npcs don't treat you any differently.

This also means the world never changes. at the risk of spoiling it for a few players...

take a look at the azim steppe you have this whole story thing building up about the naadam and you basically help the underdogs come out victorious. yet absolutely nothing in the steppe changes as a result of that. it's basically as if you never did it in the first place. hell some of the npcs in the dawn throne still make out they are the champions even though they got there butts handed to them.. so what exactly was the point??

There is also difficulty. In XI there was a good connection between the atmosphere the story tried to create and the difficulty of any fights that centred around it.... In XIV that just isn't the case. The story tries so many times to paint a tense or dire situation sometimes even one that all hope is lost. But then that gets completely destroyed when players roflstomp there way to vicotry with zero risk of ever failing.. Even in ARR, the Garleans were meant to be this mighty powerfull threat to the whole of Eorzea. Yet one level 50 player in i80 or there abouts could roflstomp the castrum in mordhona or wineport and completely destroy entire armies of Garleans.. It completely invalidates all the tension and atmosphere the story tries to create and that generally makes massive amounts of the story so forgettable...
Why exactly did we go into the Copperbell Mines again?
or Stone Vigil?
or Haukke Manor?
or Global Library?
or well take your pick....

So yeah I'm disputing your one indisputable thing. If you'd like to tell me why you believe its indisputable please do go ahead.. but IMO XI handled story telling way better than XIV does for so many reasons. some i've just stated and I could probably add more...

[Dualgunner]

Please try harder to troll.
Echo is not "relive events with the same job we were. We can basically experience the Echo even in stuff we were not there to begin with.

Then there's no reason, from a lore perspective, that we have to be level locked.

[GunksFoy]

I actually had this conversation yesterday. I feel like, at the very least, we could have all class abilities in any dungeon. I.e. all abilities 1-50 except the job ones. This would limit the number of skills they need to scale, but also provide Dragoons more to do at level 25 and below than Heavy Thurst -> Impulse Drive ad nauseum (just an example.)

That said, I'm also totally fine with having all abilities, and would prefer it. I don't think balance is important at all in lower level content, aside from tanks still being able to hold aggro. But with the enmity buffs from 4.0, holding aggro is easier then ever. However, I feel like granting the class skills would at least make dungeons like Sastasha bearable.

Red Mage is actually a good example of this - by the time you hit level 10, you have all the spells necessary to utilize Dualcast, and by 30 you have your full spell ST spell repertoire except Verholy and Verflare. This makes Red Mage very enjoyable at lower levels, as you don't feel nearly as gimped.

EDIT: Red Mages don't get their oGCDs until later, but as far as GCD skills go, my point stands. Didn't want to get "gotcha'd" on that point.

[kikix12]

I don't think balance is important at all in lower level content, aside from tanks still being able to hold aggro.

That's so wrong, I don't even know how to approach it.

1) Lack of low-level balance absolutely trashes new players, therefore, player retention. This is literally a game-killer! Low player retention is the #1 reason for games to be canceled!
2) It absolutely destroys any semblance of copy-driven progress. It's far harder to learn by experience, making more effort necessary. And most people already put in way too little effort. You would see even LESS players with any decent skills at high levels, simply because their understanding of the game would be skewered.
3) It promotes toxicity. Players would be excluded for being too weak/too new. The difference between the "new" player and an "old" player would widen the already wide gap of "crap player" and "good player". And "new good" player would think he's crap simply because he met a "decent old" player that outperforms him...even if he plays worse.
4) It invalidates most of the content. Even now the dungeons are too worthless. Their experience sucks. The items they offer are useless. They are too easy. They should be made more demanding, not less! A scholar in Sastasha literally NEVER needs to use a single heal if the tank and DPS are decent. The fairy is enough. That's how easy early content is due to the syncing not being harsh enough. I dare say that older content could actually be lot more fun, even with limited tool kit (if that limited tool kit still did include some AoE...) IF it would demand players attention.


Early-stages balance is absolutely crucial. As much, if not more so, than end-game balance. Literally everyone will go through it and it's what makes or breaks a game for someone. By the end players are more willing to forgive lack of balance since they are attached to the game, friends or whatever. Not to mention there's always the possibility that the next update will change it in their favor, since end-game is frequently changing in ALL MMO games. Early-levels don't have that luxury, be it in practice or in hopes.