WARNING! EXTRA EXTRA LONG POST
After reading a Reddit thread about the state of FFXIV(https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...hy_squareenix/), it made me think about a bunch of things in FFXIV and it just made me want to talk about it more in-depth.
I've been playing FFXIV for about 4 years now and I have to say that the Stormblood expansion is bad in a way that actually has me worried about the future of the game for real. It all started with HW and now that SB is ending, I feel(or maybe even know) that the next expansion will be exactly the same. There's just so many things wrong with the state of the game right now that it will require a long list and at this point, I think I'll actually go through each one. It really needs to be discussed here on the forums. Where to start O.o.. I organized the text walls in boxes so it can be more organized and not the Wall of China.
The Open World:
---TL;DR: HW and SB maps are filled with nothing. No exploration. No incentive. No danger.
• The maps. No matter what people say about the HW and SB maps, they all share one thing in common. They're just big wide open masses of nothing. They're either a valley of a crater. Let's describe each map.
-Coerthas Western Highlands: A barren, frozen wasteland where a war was fought
-Sea Of Clouds: Floating rocks, plants, and enemies walking around
-Dravanian Forelands: Dang near empty wasteland with a river.
-Dravanian Hinterlands: Deserted wasteland. No civilization
-Churning Mists: Old wasteland in ruins. No civilization
-Azys La: Deserted floating rocks with enemies in it.
-The Fringes: A dusty, barren desert wasteland where a war was fought
-The Peaks: A dusty, barren desert but with with old shacks!
-The Lochs: A dusty, salty, barren wasteland
-Ruby Sea: Water and islands with nothing on them. Oh, and underwater with nothing in it
-Yanxia: A huge valley with nothing but a tiny village and ruins on the other side
-Azim Steppe: A huge plain that's literally supposed to be nothing but open space
• All the maps have nothing inside them but enemies and the only settlements or civilization are places where there are aetherytes. There's nothing but enemies. No collectables. No treasure. No gear to be gotten. Can't do the big boss FATEs because no one does them. The only reason to ever go there is to gather and do beast tribes. None of which require you to even pay attention to the map.
• SB maps have even less interaction involved than the HW maps. Remember in ARR when almost every house(And there are ALOT) could be entered and you can mess around inside or see what NPCs are chatting about? Well they got rid of mostly all of that in HW but at least there were still some places in Coerthas W.H, Dravanian Forelands, and Azys La where you could walk into(if you didn't know, Azys La actually has buildings to enter! It's pretty neat). In SB, out of 6 zones there's only ONE house that you can go into that actually has a door. The other 2 or 3 buildings have no doors at all. Leaving the other 100 houses scattered across the maps just have painted on doors.
• I need to tap into the emptiness again. All the maps share the same issue of having dozens of landmarks and sights but there's absolutely nothing there. The Peaks is especially bad with this. SO. MANY. SPOTS. And they're all completely empty. Not even enemies there. No quests there. It's just nothing. I went diving in all the maps and found that there was absoluuutely nothing in the water. Nothing but random Easter Island heads randomly placed in spots with no story or purpose, plants, and big fish that don't react to your existence(Huge bus-sized shark). We have these huge maps with nothing but random enemies scattered all over the place with no consistency or thought put in and nothing to gain from them(sounds familiar..).
• Beast Tribes in SB and HW are absolutely pathetic. Not only are the enemies inside the territory not even close to level cap like ARR, 90% of the quests you do don't even take you into the territory. And even worse, we have this stupid level sync system where now even if you're just level 60 doing Ananta quests, any enemies will be 60 too so there's no danger. That is just do terrible. In ARR, you couldn't just be a level 40 and walk into the Lv48-49 strongholds. In SB, you can be a level 60 and wipe the floor with all of the Kojin in their own base.
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.
• Flying has took any and all purpose of maps away. Who cares about whatever the map is made out of? Who cares what enemies are there? Who cares about how beautiful the maps are? In the end, we are just auto-flying over everything in the map to get to whatever our errand is then teleporting off. How can we have any sort of difficulty when we can fly over any sort of danger? There's no adventure, not even when getting map achievements because 1. You just fly over the unmapped area and 2. You already know there's going to be nothing there anyway so whatever.
• Maps are made super huge now to accommodate the speed and ability of flight. Because they're so huge, they end up being empty space.
• Flight isn't optional. There are a ton of quests, nodes, hunts, sightseeing logs, and FATEs that require flight just to get to them. Saying "Don't fly then" doesn't help at all either. Especially when it involves purposely slow, inefficient, and unable to get to anything.
• My opinion here but flying ruined mounts. Because flying was introduced, for a time, every mount that came out was some kind of bird or floating thing. Now because "Every mount must fly!!", We have bears, T-Rexs, tigers, horses and elephants floating in the air looking ridiculous. I was much happier seeing the devs be innovative with Magitek Armors, Garo mounts, Robogorilla, Magitek Predator, Magic chairs(Where is my freaking carpet), Witch's broom, and the other mounts that had wings that could reasonably fly and not run in the air. I think flight might even be hindering what kinds of mounts the devs can make because they have to design/imagine a way of flight. This may sound weird but if flight wasn't possible anymore, I'd actually use a ton of other mounts. Mounts like the elephant.
• And lastly another opinion but I kinda hate flying's existence now and would very much like it for it to NOT be in future expansions. I don't think it's compatible with the way XIV is. It just ruins the world, exploration, and the maps. Sorry.
Glamours and Customization:
---TLDR: We get less and less, more restrictions, and more boring
• Have you noticed how limited glamour has been in Stormblood? Most of all the glamour is all recolored stuff. Crafted gear is all recolored stuff while in HW the armor was actually NEW for each cycle, i180, i220 and i250, each uniquely designed. Now we're getting recolored 24-man gear and zodiac relic weapons(Lol!) as new gear. How lazy..
• So many class locks. Non-AF Gatherer and Crafter gear is locked now and for what!? Why is it locked SE? Options just taken away.. Is it so you can stretch subs 3-6 months to give them back as Eureka rewards and call it new glamour? That doesn't work and it's pretty grimy. Geez.. Then in terms of male characters, everything ends up being made for females but branded "Unisex". So the guys are wrecked. Everything is wrecked. While not an actual restriction, for most it's a mental restriction. They can't make something to their imagination
•Glamour in this expansion is so boring especially since over half of it is all Asian. The mendacity gear looks like stuff we already got. Everything is dull and crappy. Too much of the stuff we get looks the same and they're already recoloring gear from the Lv69 dungeon and giving it as a reward. Holy cow devs come on. At least make it from the lv61 dunge- oh wait I forgot. That gear is recolored HW gear too.. unlike HW dungeons that all gave unique gear sets. Oops.
• For some reason we are now getting one haircut per patch now. We went from 4-5 per patch release in HW to SB where we got 2, and now 1. Hmm.. I wonder where those resources are going because I'd love to know why we're getting less customization in an already limited customization area while we're already getting less dungeons as well.
• Design Contests. USE THE DESIGNS. Please! I beg you. You get dozens upon dozens upon dozens of hairstyle and designs created by your loyal fans, hundreds even, and you restrict yourself to only making one every 3 months? Seriously? What's the issue here? We could really use some spicing up with the designs.. We get raid armor, 24-man armor, dungeon armor, tome armor, PvP armor, crafted armor, glamour gear, and artifact armor every patch and expansion. Why not take take fan-made designs to fill in all of those spots so we can actually have some variety? Does it really hurt? I'm the players will absolutely love it.
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.
• Dungeons. In ARR and early HW, dungeons used to have actual maps. Rooms to explore, places to go, extra loot to find, puzzles, and dangers inside. When you got the mapping achievement it was because you* actually mapped out the whole dungeon. Now, and starting with HW endgame, all dungeons are literal straight lines. You can look at them yourself. It's appalling. There are no rooms, there are no puzzles, no meaningful loot to find, and no dungeon dangers with the only exception being Bardam's Mettle which is a great dungeon. We just pull enemies till we can't anymore then fight boss and repeat. Oh I can't forget this annoying new trend of having a "Sub-sub Boss" before the final boss. Just an enemy or 2 with inflated HP and no purpose. It all started with 3.3. It was unique then. Now it's in every dungeon and it's just annoying. Then there's the SB mechanic of every final boss having some sort of phase where it's "Do this before the boss meter fills or you die!!!". Switch it up please -.-'. It's almost like the trials issue now. Getting to that.
• Trials. Hmm how can I explain..
- Step 1. Begin fight
- Step 2. Adds appear out of nowhere. Kill them before the boss does their special attack!!! That is weaker now for some reason!!
- Step 3. End fight
- Literally every freaking trial in FFXIV. Need I say more? Even Rathalos followed the same fate....
• Raids. Or should I call them Traids now? What happened to raids actually being places? Where they felt like actual mini dungeons? Coil raids felt like that and were amazing. Even Alexander had it even though it was a lesser scale. Then Omega comes in and gives us... Trials! Yay! We just get a circle with an enemy in it. But wait! Some of them are squares 0.0. So here we get another example of less content, less work, same price. Why does no one talk about this?
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.
• The gear progression is extra bad in FFXIV and I believe the existence of raids and raiders are indirectly the root of the problem or maybe making it worse alongside the dev team. I'll try to explain. Please bear with me..
• The item level "space" in any given raid cycle is 25, with crafted being the lowest and upgraded tome gear and raid gear being 20 above and raid weapons being 25 above. This wouldn't be so bad but the issue is that anything the devs create within and entire patch cycle MUST be weaker than or barely equal to rewards gotten from a raid. 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.
• How can we fix that? I don't know. When Diadem 1.0 came out that was probably the most unique content ever with the most unique gear rewards. We had an RNG system where we could get armor with crazy stats or we could get crap. But we could get it! And some were even stronger than raid gear gear pieces! The ultimate incentive. Hundreds of people constantly grinding Diadem. That was like the best time of 3.1. Then it went downhill.. what happened? The raiders complained. They complained that gear stronger than raid gear could drop in a content that wasn't a raid and that non-raiders could obtain it. Then SE nerfed Diadem gear and what happened? Diadem died instantly. Never to live again. And here we are...
• 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"
• Raiders, don't you see how raids restrict the entire content formula? Some casual players care about things other than glamour. Literally an entire 7-8 months worth of potential content revolves around raids and the level of their rewards at a time. This needs to be fixed. It can be fixed by the devs letting loose once more and just making unique reward structures. Players don't log in to get gear because they already know exactly what's going to happen no matter what. We can predict the ilvl of everything before it ever comes out. That's a big issue.
Added Sections:
Early Leveling Structure and Player Retention:
---TL;DR: The job leveling in SB is absolutely atrocious. With the release of SB came alot of job editing and attack pruning. Devs, you've absolutely GUTTED the jobs for Level 1-60. It's mind-numbingly boring to level jobs because all of the tools and attacks we used to have available that would mix up gameplay are now gone.
• Dragoon and MCH suffer hard from this as they don't get anything meaningful to gameplay at all way until Lv61 and up. It's just spamming the 1-2-3 combo buttons mainly with MCH being a little different but similar in the end anyway. No oGCD attacks or anything, especially for MCH. Just extremely boring play.
• Even worse, the classes feel totally off or incomplete before level 70 in a way where it can sometimes feel like it's made incorrectly. MCH is yet again, another example of this. I feel the gauge system is the cause of the issue as gauges are a new system and almost every class revolves around it. There are some exceptions like AST, MNK, and BRD. These are more well-designed jobs that are not restricted by gauges and leveling instead, adds on to the existing attacks and abilities. Jobs like DRG, DRK, and MCH, have gauges added in later that don't sync well with the leveling. Nothing beats MCH however.
• The pure frustration of how odd MCH felt when leveling 30-64 made me want to quit early on. Devs, please take early leveling into account when changing core job mechanics that are learned in the future. It would make the leveling experience way more fun.
• On one last side topic, the new player retention is - from what I know - extremely low. Not many players make it to level 70 because they quit early on. FFXIV gets constant complaints on the early game. The bland, and boring early leveling experience and inflated main story quest with fillers is likely the cause of the complaints. SE, I sincerely hope you do something to fix this issue.
Ideas On Alternative Gear Progression:
I have an idea of how that something could work.Varied Gear Sets.
• I ask, what defines "raid gear" or "raid level"? Is it the ilvl of the gear or the gear from the raid itself? Is tome gear not "raid level"? It certainly isn't raid gear because it's not from raids. Why has this been overlooked? In terms of the discussion, yes, I do not believe raid gear should not be able to be crafted. That's silly. Having new "raid-level" options isn't silly at all to me. Especially during a catch-up patch, with top ilvl gear being available to non-raiders. There is more to best gear than raid gear and more to best gear than ilvl. What we need are options from many kinds of content to encourage true BiS sets that (SOME) raiders can make so they can be as strong as possible. Which in turn, means they have incentive to do all content instead of just raids and expert roulette for tomes then unsub.(SOME raiders)
• 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..
I think that's all I'm willing to type right now.. maybe later I'll type up the concerns about Eureka and PvP.
Please, we really need a change. I never thought I'd get bored of FFXIV. I've always been a huge fan and it really sucks to see it this way. Not even taking a break for 2 patches did anything at all. It's just the exact same stuff. Like a book.. Same beginning and end. Same plot. Different cover and name.
I said I played for 4 years and when I think of it, that's not even a long time lol. It's really bad imo, that many players players(not all, let me clarify) feel this way in about the same amount of time each time. I think of all the FFXI players saying stuff like "I played XI for 13 years" etc etc.. and the first thing I think of now is "XIV is not something I can play for 6 years let alone 13". It hurts.
Originally Posted by Ruinfeild
Reply With Quote
