State of the Game: The Problem with the Current Progression System

[Jojoya]

Why go to such extremes? I need something to do. There is literally nothing to do in this game once you've leveled all the jobs.
If you remove progression you're not playing an MMO - you're playing the Sims.

You still don't understand what a MMO is if you think MMOs require neverending progression to be a MMO.

Massively Multiplayer Online - I don't see the phrase "unending progression" contained in that anywhere. I'm not sure why you do.

If you want neverending progression, go play a single player game where that's a viable format. It will never be a viable format in a MMO.

[Ruinfeild]

Did we REALLY need another topic like this?

[Ilyrian]

Its false.

Gatherer and/or crafter, PvP, treasure map, triple triad or verminion or whatever. Gear every job, sadic raid or ultimate trial are here too.

There is plenty to do, but you don't enjoy them its quite different.

I've yet to see anyone who claims to like Verminion. PVP...really...reallly?!

Anyway - clearly I enjoy something that you guys don't. You carry on with your ERP or whatever it is you crazy kids get up to.

[Dzian]

It's a MMO. You can't have continued progression or the gap between long time players and new players creates an unbalanced experience.

That's not entirely true it's all about how it's done. many of the old school MMO's had long term progression things like EVE online where it could take you literally years to maximise your skill tree but that didn't really put new players at an unreachable place.

or FFXI where progression was incredibly long term still didnt make it to bad for newer players. hell there's times a newer player would join our endgame shell and basically make out like a bandit andgear up incredibly quickly so again they were never to far behind .

one of the things i find ironic is FFXI was actually a lot more casual friendly than XIV is. I could and did quite often go travelling withwork and holidays for months at a time and yet i was never behind on progression. or times where i would literally only play for 2 evenings a week and spend the rest of the week out with the family or playing counterstrike..

this game players feel trapped as i said above take a break for even a week and bam your behind on progression...

Its false.

Gatherer and/or crafter, PvP, treasure map, triple triad or verminion or whatever. Gear every job, sadic raid or ultimate trial are here too.

There is plenty to do, but you don't enjoy them its quite different.

there's plenty to do technically yes but most of it is pointless and worthless. as has been said many times players are tired of the endless treadmill so gearing up jobs just to gear them up again next month is basically a joke. and gear up every job is basically impossible with all the lockouts and restrictions in place.

verminion / triple triad even doh / dol are most side content than progressive to your character...... and 99% of the games content is obselete as well

[LauraAdalena]

Alright, let's look at these proposed ideas.

1. Good idea to not do: Cite Destiny 2 as an example for anything given how divided opinions are in it (at least, that I've seen). That being said, let's actually look at what you cited before dismissing your argument entirely like a jerk.

So, are you proposing a light engram system? Because that's what your post implies given you said that's what Destiny 2 does well. Here's a fact: It doesn't. That system is constantly being fiddled with by Bungie to influence players to buy their lootbox variant. So, I'm going to give a hard disagree with this statement. Do I believe we should have a better endgame system for max level? Certainly. But this is not the example I want going into it.I also would say random rewards should be limited to side dungeons such as The Lost Canals or Aquapolis. It works fine there. If I were to amend your statement, I'd do it as such:

1. So first up, give a treasure coffer of set rewards that help progress a player further from where they are. Something that gives gear meaning past their current ilvl value even if it's merely some item it becomes later. Could be random chance drop or some coin/token they redeem later.

At least, that's my opinion.

2. The problem with suggesting FFXI items into FFXIV is that MMO design has changed greatly. I'm not against a merit point system, but I'd much rather it not be any of what you said in terms of your merit rewards... except one, but even then I'd change it in one way.

h. Use Merit points to buy unique mounts/minions/glamour gear (all tradable too)

If I earned those with merit and saw some rando who just started the game with one, I'd be really upset. Which is the opposite I feel about items that are on the MB. Items on the MB are frequently random chance drops, so having them tradable would be a really bad thing imo.


3. A lot of people suggest this, but SE'd have to do it themselves to make me see it as viable. I'm not against or for items that give traits, I just want to see what they are like before I say I agree with the idea or disagree. As it is with FFXIV I don't see a way of making this gear any different than what they've been doing without radically re-designing the game. And that being said, I am all for a new progression system if it's interesting. At the moment, I don't see a point in doing this when they can barely balance the jobs they have with each other at points. (I'm also kind of trying to avoid this topic because this is the one that frequently divides people in this community.)

4. Agree... and disagree. I like the idea of separate progression systems... but I'm not sure that them being that way is a good or a bad thing. I'd like to be able to work on the Elemental leveling system outside of Eureka, but at the same time I'd also like to be able to craft, gather, or even queue for other duties within Eureka, or adjust glamours. Just anything beside waiting, chaining, or sitting in a train the entire time. I just want them to either make it so you can work on it in the overworld, or do other things in Eureka.

[Ilyrian]

You still don't understand what a MMO is if you think MMOs require neverending progression to be a MMO.

Massively Multiplayer Online - I don't see the phrase "unending progression" contained in that anywhere. I'm not sure why you do.

If you want neverending progression, go play a single player game where that's a viable format. It will never be a viable format in a MMO.

We clearly have a very different idea of what an MMO is. That's cool.
I didn't say I wanted 'unending progression' - but I would like something to aim for. What form that takes is why we are having this discussion.

[Andevom]

This is a game with fairly regular content updates. Your suggestions sound more fitting for a dead game where nothing really big is planned on the horizon. FFXI added capacity points when they literally had nothing else left to offer, just to keep people going at it. XIV is not at that level yet.

[KaimaSansun]

For exp, i suggest they add a merit system like how ffxi has, where you can slightly improve skills or add bonus effects to customize the job. As for taking a break i believe the housing thing is dumb, they should just remove the demolishing feature and take care of the actual situation by instancing smaller housing zones. Also i think that the tome cap weekly is limiting because, some people play the game to just do the harder content and some just play it casually but they shouldn't limit your progression, they should just take current armors, 1-70 and make different versions of styles as lv. 70 armor and weapons that you can obtain by grinding tomes, such as a haste set, crit set, det set, tank set and such. Right now it just seems like it's either be the same and do the same as everyone else or you aren't worth anything, as opposed to say ffxi where you could do so many different things and have different gear and still be better or worse than someone else because of 1 piece of gear that they took more time getting.

[PyurBlue]

Why go to such extremes? I need something to do. There is literally nothing to do in this game once you've leveled all the jobs.
If you remove progression you're not playing an MMO - you're playing the Sims.

I'm really weary of MMO's that are all about progression. I got into this game later than my friends did. They were all out of my level range, I couldn't join them in anything important for the longest time, and low level FF14 in general wasn't really interesting. Having to level through a really long story, sometimes alone, absolutely made me play the game less often. I might even say that I felt like there wasn't much that was meaningful to do until I approached the level cap and had more freedom to access content and play with friends. I don't want to have to worry about XP again.

As for things to do beyond capping all classes, there are achievements, items to collect, or even progressing from the beginning again on a second character.

[Ilyrian]

As for things to do beyond capping all classes, there are achievements, items to collect, or even progressing from the beginning again on a second character.

In fairness the achievements are just pointless in their current state - running X amount of dungeons isn't an achievement.

Items to collect... yeah but farming old content for a mount doesn't really appeal to me, the glamouring isn't really my bag either. Fun for 5 mins. Not that I'm knocking that - this being an internet forum people are always jumping to extremes; just because I don't think glamour is worth my subscription fee alone doesn't mean I begrudge other people enjoying it.

I have a house, I have more useless gil than I'll ever need. I've leveled all the crafters and desynth. I've won the Triple Triad Tournament and collect all the npc cards. I have ARR and HW relics, I have 3 Pagos weapons.

What I want is some PVE progression that keeps me logging in. I really don't think that's too much to ask in an MMO. I enjoy healing dungeons etc - but there is zero need for me to do any of it outside of Tuesday reset. Even that is pointless as the gear is all but meaningless.

People suggesting leveling up another character from scratch is a bit mental - giving that it completely negates one of the best aspects of the game i.e you don't have to to play all the jobs.