Anyone else getting bored of FF14’s repetativeness?

[Cled-cat]

Hi everyone. I’ve played the game since ARR and I absolutely adore the story and world of FF14, but there’s one glaring issue with the game that’s getting more and more apparent as it ages. The combat, jobs and general lack of innovation surrounding them is feeling pretty stifling at this point. When you boil the jobs down, many of them feel like clones or reskins with no customisation or innovation. Obviously it’s an MMO and that dictates how much or little they can really experiment without making jobs unbalanced, but they err so much on the side of familiarity It’s stifling. It just feeling so boring now and it’s really detracting from the game experience for me.

I’m struggling more and more to enjoy the jobs as the game gets older, what do you guys think?

[Edax]

Hi everyone. I’ve played the game since ARR and I absolutely adore the story and world of FF14, but there’s one glaring issue with the game that’s getting more and more apparent as it ages. The combat, jobs and general lack of innovation surrounding them is feeling pretty stifling at this point. When you boil the jobs down, many of them feel like clones or reskins with no customisation or innovation. Obviously it’s an MMO and that dictates how much or little they can really experiment without making jobs unbalanced, but they err so much on the side of familiarity It’s stifling. It just feeling so boring now and it’s really detracting from the game experience for me.

I’m struggling more and more to enjoy the jobs as the game gets older, what do you guys think?

Even if they made a job totally unique...it's still be repetitive. You'd still be doing the same thing every day with that job.

[Mikhaill]

Even if they made a job totally unique...it's still be repetitive. You'd still be doing the same thing every day with that job.

The fact that that homogenize the jobs more (Healers + Tanks mainly) only makes the combat even more stale.
Before the mob comes a running...I am more bored than not with the game. You can only blame it being a theme park.
New patch? Throw wide the flood gates only for me to play for like a month and leave for 3-6 months at a time.
I'm okay with that for the most part.

Combat for me is the real kicker. It's because the core of the battle system is so dated, you can only do so much
with it. That's when I just unsub and play other stuff. All you can do really.

[Vahlnir]

MMOs are repetitive my default. Considering they've been my main source of entertainment for 12+ years or so I guess it just doesn't bother me.

[Diggles]

OP, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it’s very possible that MMOs just aren’t for you. MMOs, by their very nature, are extremely repetitive. It’s also possible that you may just need a break from this particular game. ESO, while not nearly as good, is a fantastic alternative to this game if you haven’t tried it yet.

[Cled-cat]

Anything can become stale and repetitive when played a lot, obviously, but that’s why the devs should be looking to innovate and experiment more. Sure, it may be riskier than walking the well trodden path, but how else do we get exciting new things? ARR itself was the product of such risk taking and innovation.

However, they can’t expect to ride the coat tails of that epic turnaround forever. It’s been over half a decade now, and it’s barely changed, it’s getting really, REALLY stale. Sure there will always be people white knighting and kissing the ground the devs walk on, but that won’t bring about any change you know?

[Cled-cat]

OP, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it’s very possible that MMOs just aren’t for you. MMOs, by their very nature, are extremely repetitive. It’s also possible that you may just need a break from this particular game. ESO, while not nearly as good, is a fantastic alternative to this game if you haven’t tried it yet.

Thank you for putting it in a civil way! I’m definitely not a hardcore MMO player, so that’s also something to consider. However I’ve played this game for so long and frequently I feel that makes up for it a bit. I just don’t want this game to get staler and staler.

[Shougun]

What would you suggest they do to spice it up?

I think you said as much in your own OP but because it's an MMO some things are harder to do, like they could just entirely redesign every job every expansion but could you imagine the chaos? "Oh yeah Paladin is DD, Warrior is Healer, Dark Knight is a limited job, and we've removed combos" = fire, so much fire lol (hyperbole just for fun ). So there are some strict chains for both balance and also risk of just ripping the carpet from underneath people who do enjoy something. . . creating the recipe for a calamity.

You mentioned job specifically so it's not a content issue per say? Just more that the jobs are feeling a bit too known? Maybe their next job could spin that a bit, depending on what you're looking for? I'm pretty happy with the evolution of the jobs I've played so far (lots of Paladin), but I've not played all of them yet, and I don't really love all the jobs but I do like most of them and love a few of them (like I don't dislike monk but I only level it because "I can", I'd rather play some other jobs, but that's obviously my opinion lol).

Personally I think they have some room to play with jobs in differing styles of play like mage tank (golbez/ex-death?), and "constructing"/building job (perhaps creating aether structures on the field like a magical engineer), maybe a heavy area/spacial awareness job (like classic geomancer concepts), a physical healer or a healer that has a lot of combative aggressive properties (semi-related self post), and a job that morphs and shifts play styles over it's rotation with some light mechanics that shift the rotation of forms itself on top of that (another self post lol).

On the new jobs I feel Dancer is pretty cool addition to the system and does something a bit different, and while Gunbreaker seems interesting I've only played it like 20 minutes total so I don't really want to comment on that. What did you think of them?

Since I mentioned two self posts may as well complete the self posts theme, XD, with that I had originally thought of a tank mage inspired by geomancer and golbez who wields two large aetheryte shaped weapons that hover behind them and their gameplay consists of planting, buildings, and utilizing different effects of their pylons (then with gunbreaker released I figured tank isn't going to happen anytime soon.. so trying to imagine it as a damage dealer now hehe).

Or is it you're looking for new systems not really a new job? I've wondered if they could ever bring back the dismemberment system from 1.0 (on some monsters you could target specific parts of the body with certain skills, to get certain drops and/or mess up certain skills). Not sure how it'd be brought back so it wasn't "spam X until broken though" lol and so probably not a good fit for normal combat; however, I feel it might work really well with more monster hunter like content (like our cross over). There the monsters would be designed around the concept and so it's not always on but certain monsters behave more like an ARPG (everything has direction / dodge cases, position of damage being important, etc). Perhaps a new open world content that can be done solo and small groups, like Monster Hunter .

[Evergrey]

Try a more sandbox MMO instead of a Themepark MMO like FFXIV is.
There are sandbox games that let you create a class using lists of specializations and skills to pick and choose from.

[Diggles]

Anything can become stale and repetitive when played a lot, obviously, but that’s why the devs should be looking to innovate and experiment more. Sure, it may be riskier than walking the well trodden path, but how else do we get exciting new things? ARR itself was the product of such risk taking and innovation.

However, they can’t expect to ride the coat tails of that epic turnaround forever. It’s been over half a decade now, and it’s barely changed, it’s getting really, REALLY stale. Sure there will always be people white knighting and kissing the ground the devs walk on, but that won’t bring about any change you know?

I understand your view, but I appreciate the game for what it is. I am a new player, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I come from WoW where they do the opposite and try to reinvent the wheel each expansion and it’s frustrating as hell (and one of the reasons why I ultimately left it for good). You will have abilities and game systems that are only relevant for a single expansion cycle before there’s a good chance that the way your favorite class/spec is played is shaken up again. It’s very irritating having to relearn your class each new expansion and wondering if you’ll get to even keep your favorite abilities.

They do the same thing with other things introduced to the game. Gardening was a thing introduced and touted as a major feature in Mists of Pandaria, and it was never used again after that. Their game design philosophy is AWFUL and just all over the place. I appreciate this game and knowing that they aren’t going to try to reinvent each class every expansion. Familiarity is comforting.

It honestly just sounds like you need a break. I’d recommend stepping away from the game for a few months. Come back for the next major patch and you’ll probably be surprised at how enjoyable it is again. This advice is coming from someone with 20 years of MMO experience =]