A little scared of the future

[AxlStream]

The issue with the quests is that you are a freakin Warrior of Light. At this point we have killed about 20+ godlike beings and saved the realm how many times? Yet we are treated as little more than an errands boy. There is no evolution in how the NPCs see your character. They will still tell you to go kill 8 galecats or whatever.

[SenorPatty]

I don't disagree, but the people that absolutely hate questing can't just jump in and find something worth playing in a reasonable amount of time. Those hundreds (emphasis, hundreds) of fedex quests are required, or you pay to skip some of them and then you "only" have a couple hundred left.

Literally this night I had a sprout log in all excited they cleared Praetorium last night thinking they can now unlock Machinist, and I had to give them the whole "Oh sweet summer child" speech about 2.x. I don't even remember how many times I've had to give this speech now.

Oh man, I laughed harder than I should have.


BTW, about the waking sands, you forgot to add "ANON"

If I have to see that word ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME, I'll find a way for my character to convert to an Ascian. Someway, somehow.

[van_arn]

The issue with the quests is that you are a freakin Warrior of Light. At this point we have killed about 20+ godlike beings and saved the realm how many times? Yet we are treated as little more than an errands boy. There is no evolution in how the NPCs see your character. They will still tell you to go kill 8 galecats or whatever.

This is fair, and a great way to prune the MSQ.

Delete every quest that requires the WoL to do something that isn't WoL-like. Every quest. No longer shall he be the picker-up-of-things or the return-to-waking-sands-anon or the be-my-messenger.

[Kirsten_Rev]

If theres not a decent way to catch up in item level you end up with a mass exodus and no new players.

I think this is a deceptive statement. It implies that the MSQ is the only suitable mechanism to catch players up in terms of iLevel, for one thing - which clearly it isn't. I'd also suggest that XIV can avoid a mass exodus through other means via a vastly more horizontal itemization system. Indeed, in terms of catch-up capability specifically, I found FFXI to be far more accessible than XIV. Some of the best items in the game were well below level cap, and once you got something great, you could rely on it being useful for years. In FFXIV, that's simply not the case: at any point in time, BiS gear will be outside of the 10 best gear sets in two update cycles. That's insane. The best set of equipment available in 4.3 is surpassed by no less than five sets in 4.4.

For me as a player, this is exhausting. It means I have to keep running on the treadmill to avoid having to play the catch-up game. And that catch-up game, despite SE's efforts, is long and expensive: usually the most accessible points of entry are either Tomestone gear or Crafted gear, either of which requires significant amounts of time and/or money. In XI this wasn't the case: despite the game handing me absolutely nothing, what you earned was kept relevant. I took several months-long breaks from FFXI over the years I played it, and when I came back, the only catch-up required was in terms of exploring new content, not re-gearing my entire character and all its jobs.

The MSQ itself is the problem for new players at this point. You need to clear 400+ boring-ass fetch quests to begin to matter, and that's going to cause the exodus.

Not difficulty.

Wholeheartedly agree, and I'd add to that the fact that the same-y feeling of FFXIV's content updates really hits home when you're trying to zerg it just to get to current, relevant stuff. I should know, I joined a few months before Stormblood. By the time I hit level 70, I was mentally exhausted, and promptly backed off the game for several months. It was the gaming equivalent of eating a few gallons of ice cream, all of it the same flavour: no matter how good the ice cream, it would suck by the end.

SE desperately needs to stop tying so much of their content around quest progression. Want to run current instances? Better catch up through the MSQ. Want to access any of the current maps? Same deal. Want to access some of the 'side content' like Suzaku EX? Well odds are there's going to be a side-quest that has to be completed to kick off the Four Lords chain, and that side quest is going to have a half-dozen other side quests as pre-requisites. It's exhausting.

Let players do what they want to do. Decouple leveling, end-game instanced content, and the MSQ. It'll afford us the opportunity to have far more imaginative content in each of the three core areas of FFXIV, and I think it would make for a much more empowering experience for me as a player.

[Bright-Flower]

What would you propose for a horizontal progression system to replace what we have?

Personally I don't really have a problem with the vertical system. Sure I'll take breaks from it now and then, but in generally I like gearing up and getting items, and wouldn't neccisarily want a pair of boots that are going to be better than anything I get for a couple years. I never played XI or any MMO with a horizontal system and nobody's ever really explained it in a way that makes sense to me.

[Ilan]

I'm fine with people disliking the story. If they decide to not read anything, just click through it all mindlessly and that is how they like it, then great.

What I'm not fine with is when people constantly complain about encountering any storytelling. I have met a few like this and it gets so tiresome to explain over and over that storytelling is central to the game and they can't escape it. The jump potion only lets you skip up to lvl 60 msq. All the msq beyond that and any side-quests have to be worked through. Even gathering and crafting quests have story. Literally every snippet of content has story. If the mere act of encountering story is so offensive to someone then they should play something else.

I used to like the story up until the somewhere in HW. After that it went a way i didn't like, so i stopped following the story. Does that make the game for me less enjoyable? No because i don't play here because of the story, i play here because of the people i know and like.

[Mixt]

You know what they say, the reward for work well done...is more work.
Even the menial work that could be left to the grunts somehow finds it's way into your lap simply because it's a known fact you get things done better than anybody else.

"Sorry WOL, you are great and we realize this is below you, but this needs doing and we don't trust anyone else to not screw it up somehow, go deliver this package for me would you?"
WOL: (Internal screaming)

The downside of being exceptionally competent, a lot of people less capable than you go out of their way to make you do their work for them.
This is even seen in gameplay with bads demanding carries.

In that sense, the endless fetch quests are at least realistic, infuriating as they can be.
Poor overworked WOL...

[Deceptus]

I used to like the story up until the somewhere in HW. After that it went a way i didn't like, so i stopped following the story. Does that make the game for me less enjoyable? No because i don't play here because of the story, i play here because of the people i know and like.

The exact same thing happened to me. The 4.0 launch debacle combined with the lackluster story had me skipping a lot of story content. I wanted to get as far as I could, as fast as I could so I wouldnt hit another roadblock like Rauhban and Pippin.

I honestly only know bits and pieces of the SB story. It's pretty barebones. Your typical resistance against the empire blah blah blah. Yotsuyu was mean, then she wasn't, then she was.

[Ilan]

The exact same thing happened to me. The 4.0 launch debacle combined with the lackluster story had me skipping a lot of story content. I wanted to get as far as I could, as fast as I could so I wouldnt hit another roadblock like Rauhban and Pippin.

I honestly only know bits and pieces of the SB story. It's pretty barebones. Your typical resistance against the empire blah blah blah.

Japp thats about as much as i know too and it doesn't bother me at all.

[Kirsten_Rev]

What would you propose for a horizontal progression system to replace what we have?

Personally I don't really have a problem with the vertical system. Sure I'll take breaks from it now and then, but in generally I like gearing up and getting items, and wouldn't neccisarily want a pair of boots that are going to be better than anything I get for a couple years. I never played XI or any MMO with a horizontal system and nobody's ever really explained it in a way that makes sense to me.

I'd recommend a horizontal progression system that functions a bit like Diablo 2 / 3's itemization. However, first, let me explain a few reasons why I dislike vertical itemization:

(1) Item tiers are boring. There aren't any real upgrades: numbers just get bigger. There's no more a sense of power at i400 in an Expert Roulette than there was when we were all under i100 in ARR. Nothing impacts how we play.
(2) Items are rapidly rendered irrelevant, resulting in a treadmill sort of feeling.
(3) Large swaths of game content are rapidly rendered irrelevant, as well, resulting in a relatively narrow band of content to play at any given time if one is interested in progression. There's generally one 8-person Raid tier, maybe an Ultimate fight, 2-3 Expert dungeons, and the latest 24-person Raid. SE's only real tool to keep older content populated is Tomestone bribery and Roulettes, but it's an imperfect mechanism at best.
(4) Most instanced content and all non-instanced content (re: overworld creatures) are rendered largely toothless because of item level scaling, resulting in the relatively low average skill that we see in PUGs.

I can certainly respect that others don't have a problem with all this; to each their own. For me, however, it's largely shredded the enjoyment of sinking into FF's level cap game. I've contented myself for quite awhile now leveling up alts and playing with my significant other, but eventually I'll grow tired of that, and there's precious little to replace it right now.

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Now, for horizontal progression. As I said, I'd recommend something along the lines of Diablo 3. Essentially, gear in that game acts as a sort of 'skill tree' system in a way: every class will base their build around one of several item sets, and those sets will strongly control how the job plays. In FFXIV, this would have to be tempered most likely, but I'd envision an expansion in which, initially, every role (melee DD, ranged DD, tanks, healers, magic DD) would have maybe three gear sets that emphasize certain play styles, altering how some skills work at the expense of other skills. Maybe one build focuses on groups of monsters, while another focuses on utility in groups, and still another benefits low-man play. The details are obviously SE's responsibility.

As an expansion progresses in this model, instead of seeing gear completely replaced, we'd see maybe one or two new play style sets added, and also additional augmented pieces introduced, ideally in the form of materia (a wonderful system for itemization that SE has shamefully neglected over the years).

The benefits to this are obvious, from the player's point of view. One's item set selection is an interesting decision, and empowers the player to emphasize the style they're most comfortable with. Within the life cycle of at least an expansion, no content nor item is rendered truly irrelevant, because new gear that's introduced focuses on different styles of play, not being flat-out superior. Content and the overworld can remain appropriately challenging, because there's no perpetual scaling mechanism.

There are a few downsides, of course, but they're mostly on SE's end. This approach obviously requires careful balancing, and a development team not afraid to backtrack on decisions or tinker with things (in fact, I'd argue it would necessitate a public test realm). It also requires creativity on the part of the dev team, something XIV's current system absolutely doesn't need. There's also the inevitable risk in terms of the end-game meta, wherein certain base gear sets are objectively superior for the hardest content, but it's arguable that this sort of meta will always exist. If it's not focused on itemization, it'll focus on parse results and ability rotations, which is what it's doing now.

Anyway. Just my two cents. This sort of system is far more compelling for me, and would encourage me to participate in a wider variety of content. I've never cleared past Deltascape v2, as an example, because the storyline didn't interest me and the item rewards are invalidated within six months, so why bother? If I knew that Deltascape / Sigmascape / Alphascape dropped items for particular styles of play that I wanted to try, though...? Well, now there's incentive: because I'd only need to get the items once, and then I'd have relevant stuff to enjoy for many months to years. I might not be able to get the best of the best stuff from the Savage raid tiers, but I'd get a taste of it at least. To me, that's a lot better than what we've got right now.