Anyone else having problem with big changes (job system/main story)

[Virtualwarp]

Over the years square enix started to introduce one change after the other to balance the game. Since I have a job for earning my one money and other things to do than gamming, I can only spent limited time on the game. So it happens to me several times that I returned to the game after a break find a lot of things in the character and job system changed and need to relearn.

When I started four years ago and FFXIV was new for me I really liked it the way it was and the number of jobs to choose from was overseeable.

Here are just some things which I observed in the game over the years:

* assignment of attribute point while leveling up
* using ice,fire, etc. ward potions to increase resistence during normal game play
* cross class skills, a motivation to level on multiple crafting classes
* druid protess command
* command from archer were removed to make bard stronger

While I have some understanding that the game needs to be kept modern and easy for being interesting for new players and keep existing ones, I am not so happy how it is done. Most of the changes are not that critical for me but may be for other veterans. For me the most anoying thing are command and job system changes.

Now according to producer live letter part lviii they want to shorten the main story. What I dislike here is that the players once again have just to accept whatever they do.

Am I belonging to an old fraction of players used to offline-games where I had the choice when to apply a patch and when not.

Anyone else dislikes these changes? Is it the same with other online games as well?

[Raltar]

This is par for the course in MMO games. Things change over the years, expansions add more levels and abilities that need to be balanced, new classes, and so on. The shortening of the main quest has been asked for for a long time because of how much of a slog and how many pointless filler quests there are in the 2.X story. Considering you have to do the main story of every expansion, it makes it more difficult for new players to get into the game to play with their friends, for example, because they have to slog through some seriously boring stuff in that section of the main story.

[MariaArvana]

It's just how online games are. As the game ages, certain systems become obsolete or new systems are designed to streamline them, or some systems were obsolete from day 1 and basically serve no purpose, so the devs take time to remove them, tune them better, or replace them with more engaging systems. As an example:

* assignment of attribute point while leveling up
* using ice,fire, etc. ward potions to increase resistence during normal game play
* cross class skills, a motivation to level on multiple crafting classes
* druid protess command
* command from archer were removed to make bard stronger

-Assignment points was an illusionary choice and served little purpose. DPS & healers put them into their main stat that's used for damage without looking back, it made SMN/SCH harder to play optimally if you liked to play both since you'd have to constantly shift the points back and forth. Tanks were the only arguable case that it could benefit, since their VIT didn't boost their attack (At least until Midas/Creator)

-Outside of boss-specific mechanics where the game gives you buffs to survive anyway (Scylla), the ward potions were effectively useless. The damage reduction they gave was so miniscule due to how elemental resistance are programmed that popping a damage potion to kill the enemy faster gave you more damage mitigation.

-While interesting in theory, it was again an illusionary choice and a forced system. No tank worth their salt is not going to level GLD to 22 for provoke. No healer worth their salt was not going to level CNJ to get protect. The worst of all was Blood for Blood behind 34 LNC, or quelling strikes behind 34 (38?) ARC. Extremely powerful tools that literally made you weaker for not getting them, or worse, literally incapable of doing certain fights (Any fight with a tank swap in provoke's case.) Now every job has all the tools it needs to function correctly without playing 2-3 other jobs that the person may not have even the slightest desire to play.

-CNJ protect was bad game design. Only WHM's protect gave magic defense till they changed it, meaning in high-end fights your whole party was taking way more magic damage for literally no reason other than 'well, you didn't bring a WHM'! It's the same logic that made WAR unstoppable throughout HW due to it being the only tank giving slash resist, along with a permanent 10% damage down on Storm's Path. besides that, protect was a kinda useless skill. There's literally no reason you'd ever not use it, the buff lasted 30mins so its not like you had to do any timing, fights were designed with it in mind, so it was more of a punishment for not having it then a benefit for having it.

-Not sure which command you were talking about on ARC, so I won't comment.

The point is, a lot of the things they trim or change are useless, obsolete, or worse, actively harmed the game's balance. It'll be the same case with the main story. There are a TON of useless quests in the ARR MSQ that could be trimmed and literally nothing would be lost from the story, they're simply quests for the sake of padding out the story, without contributing anything. Like, 90% of the Titan questline can be cut out and nothing would change to impact the overall story due to how pointless it was. (A whole bunch of fetchquests without meaningful character development that could have been summarized with, 'let's have a party!' then next quest the party starts, put all exposition about the band of heroes here, done. 10-15 quests + a dungeon summarized in 1/100th of the time.)

The MSQ is especially egregious and needing a trim-down because a lot of players just get stuck through the horrible, long drawn out slog that is ARR and quit the game before they ever see the actual good story.

[Yencat]

While some changes have been controversial I can't imagine there's many players, new or old, that will be sad to see them shorten the ARR MSQ. It's easily the most complained about thing in this game, and SE probably has the numbers of around which level people drop out of the game to back it up.

[Insertusernamehere]

I never played WOW or ESO but my friends who joined to FFXIV try it for free left before reaching 30 level. I don't know the difference between WOW / ESO / FFXIV but something with FFXIV wrong apparently
I am guessing slow progressing story and unappealing early jobs with limited skill set with 1 button spam.
But I can't make true comparison because I don't know anything about WOW or ESO. I will try their game when I have spare time and money.

[Fynlar]

* druid protess command

What


/10char

[Yencat]

I never played WOW or ESO but my friends who joined to FFXIV try it for free left before reaching 30 level. I don't know the difference between WOW / ESO / FFXIV but something with FFXIV wrong apparently
I am guessing slow progressing story and unappealing early jobs with limited skill set with 1 button spam.
But I can't make true comparison because I don't know anything about WOW or ESO. I will try their game when I have spare time and money.

I can't speak for ESO, but WoW doesn't have a MSQ. As long as you have the level for it you're free to go and do whatever you want. The downside to this is the storytelling can become a bit incoherent as you're zooming through multiple expansions and timelines before resolving the previous.

[SturmChurro]

I never played WOW or ESO but my friends who joined to FFXIV try it for free left before reaching 30 level. I don't know the difference between WOW / ESO / FFXIV but something with FFXIV wrong apparently
I am guessing slow progressing story and unappealing early jobs with limited skill set with 1 button spam.
But I can't make true comparison because I don't know anything about WOW or ESO. I will try their game when I have spare time and money.

The ARR new player experience sucks for the most part. I've had a lot of people I know try the game and hate it.

ESO, you only get like 4 skills and an ult, and you have to switch weapons to have access to other skills. It's annoying. The animations are pretty clunky, the cash shop is horrendous, among other things.. I play it from time to time to do the story since I like Elder Scrolls, and it has some decent armor designs I use to make outfits with, but that's about it. I received an account warning last time I played, so I'm probably never gonna touch that game again.. just my personal opinion. Can't really talk on WoW. I have played that game on and off, primarily and pretty much only for PvP. I like it's PvP.

[Edax]

* assignment of attribute point while leveling up
* using ice,fire, etc. ward potions to increase resistence during normal game play
* cross class skills, a motivation to level on multiple crafting classes
* druid protess command
* command from archer were removed to make bard stronger
Anyone else dislikes these changes? Is it the same with other online games as well?

What's the point of assigning attribute points? People won't like you to assigning points to the wrong attributes so what's the point? This game isn't setup for experimentation, if you find an exploit, it's just going to get patched out. Because of all the stat point inflation, your never going to perceive a change in damage or tankiness like you would in KOTOR.

There already is a huge amount of item and spell bloat, do we really need to add a bunch of elemental potions onto our hotbars as well? Does that even make the game more fun, in-depth or interesting? It seems to just make it harder and tedious.

It's not so much a motivation but rather a requirement if the cross class skills are critically important. You have more class freedom if you don't have cross class skills.

I google searched "druid protess command" and all I got was a link to this thread, I have no idea what this is.

[Kuroka]

Protess was the Protect spell and ye i kinda miss it >_>

I dont like the huge mess they always make, over the years its gettin more annoying every time, at least for me.