FFXIV is too simplistic and bland

[Daniolaut]

Simple does not necessarily mean bad.

This is very true. In fact, most people prefer simplicity.

Lets use music as an example.

Pop music is the most popular genre. It is the most simplistic of all genres.

Death Metal is not very popular much at all, but it requires significantly more talent and time to create and produce. The lyrics have significantly more depth, the notes are more intricate, there are more instruments the require more harmonious team work with the band, I could go on and on.

The point I'm making, is well.. this is a RPG.

Even Yoshida himself said FFXIV is a Final Fantasy first, and a MMO second.

But what is Final Fantasy? Its certainly not a platform game like Mario. Mario is significantly more popular than Final Fantasy.

What has been happening to FFXIV, and the Final Fantasy franchise in more recent years, while I still enjoy each and every one, including this one, they seem to be forgetting what a RPG is, and that, well, Final Fantasy is a RPG.

A RPG is not just a game with a great story. Mario, or Tomb Raider, or Dynasty Warriors, or even Halo can have great stories and focus a lot of time making those games with great stories. What makes a RPG a RPG is not just a good story, but character development. Something that FFXIV is nearly entirely devoid of. This was my point.

A great RPG can balance simplicity, and optional character development/customization.

[Daniolaut]

Wait, how is GNB limited? It’s the most fleshed out tank after the simplifying of the role.

Good question!

Imagine if Gunbreaker had unique traits or actions!

Meaning, what if there was a reason to play GNB instead of DRK outside of FFLogs/aesthetics!

What if all 4 tanks were perfectly balanced, but they each had unique features outside of aesthetics?

One example of this could be:

PLD Job trait: Level 30 1% reduction to gear durability loss. Level 50 Reduction of 3% gear durability loss., level 57 Reduction of 4% gear durability loss. etc.
WAR: Job trait: Level 30 increase of 1% food duration. Level 48 increase of 3% food duration. etc.
DRK: Job trait: level 50 Edge of Darkness enhancement 20% chance death effect to open world mobs only. ++ as you level
GNB: Job trait: Level 45 Triple Triad card acquisition rate +10%, Level 55 Triple Triad card acquisition rate + 20% ++ as you level!

This makes jobs more unique without changing anything balance wise.

Then taking that even further, what if there were super difficult and engaging side quests to unlock these traits so they became tied to your character (after leveling the job for the said trait of course) so you didnt have to be on that job specifically to use the acquired trait!

What this type of system would do, is it would 1: encourage the player to level said job to obtain said stat/trait, then to do the optional quests, to allow full access to said traits!

FFXIV could do many many things, instead its in super safe easy mode.

[Penthea]

Pop music is the most popular genre. It is the most simplistic of all genres.

Haha no.

Pop music can be very complex if you look at the whole picture. People usually think "oh the lyrics are basic" or "there is a lot of repetition", but they often don't think of stuff like interesting chord progressions, key changes, rhythm, texture changes and of course the tremendous amount of mixing that is done, especially today. However I will say that the complexity does very much depend on what is trendy and what part of the world you're looking at. For example I have noticed that key changes happen far more currently in kpop than western pop, but that wasn't always the case because...

...pop music has been the fastest evolving genre music has ever had. Every genre evolves but because pop specifically targets trends, it is changes A LOT. Why? Because it is not a specific genre in of itself. The genre is simply "music that takes advantage of what the masses find appealing" which is something that constantly changes. This can be seen in how only a handful of old hits persist in radio play today, while a large amount of hits from the same era no longer have enough listeners that enjoy it.

Also complexity doesn't necessarily make something enjoyable. I have encountered a lot of music that impressed me as a classically trained musician but I didn't actually like the music. I can appreciate what composers and vocalists achieved because I understand what they're doing, but that doesn't guarantee that I will actually enjoy listening to it more than once. This has happened to me in literally every genre I have listened to, and I'm the sort of person who listens to a long list of music genres.

As for gaming, there are a lot of games whose complexity I appreciate but the particular way it has been done is not personally appealing for me. RTS games for example. There is often an incredible amount of complexity in those games, but on a personal level I rarely enjoy them. The pacing is not to my taste, and I am more interested in playing as an individual on the battlefield than being a commander that delegates others to do battle.

What has been happening to FFXIV, and the Final Fantasy franchise in more recent years, while I still enjoy each and every one, including this one, they seem to be forgetting what a RPG is, and that, well, Final Fantasy is a RPG.

I don't think SE are forgetting what a rpg is. I far prefer the older FF games but I don't think the modern FF games are any less of a rpg than the older titles. They still have everything that makes a rpg a rpg. The difference is technology has moved on far enough that mechanics that were impossible to develop before can be done now. As much as I adore the old FF games at their core they're very samey, and that's because the tech didn't exist to do much more than that. It just happened that particular core appealed to a large amount of people, so those games were successful.

Also audiences change. While sometimes people feel that changing games to suit a change in audience can be a bad thing, at the end of the day SE are a business. They need to create something that sells well. And well...FFXIV is becoming more popular with each expansion. A person may not like the direction the game is going in, but they cannot dispute the fact that the formula is a success.

-----

And as for OP...I wonder why they even play this game. I have seen so many threads by them that go into great detail about why they think the game isn't good and honestly it just looks like they wish FFXIV was a completely different game. When I realised WoW was no longer the game for me I didn't make thread after thread after thread about how I disliked the majority of the game. I just left and played something else.

[Sauteed]

I understand about a game no longer being for someone and playing something else. I think what the OP is getting at is they came to the FF series early on and enjoyed the games by and large on the whole.
I am not as loyal to the FF series, I think some really SUCKED, can't stand them, can't believe they were even made and released as is, and people can even remotely look at them and find them entertaining or whatever else or view them as good games. To list a few I hated beyond imagining, Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy 12, Final Fantasy 13, Final Fantasy X-2, some of the FFT spin off stuff.. I also did not like IX, like that is one I will not replay or even look back on fondly, I thought it sucked, big time.. but I didn't hate it. I played it through but never like made it a point to beat Ozma or any of that. I thought well, it was a weak point in the series, it'll redeem itself.. So I came across X some time later, and liked it well enough. I did not like the voice acting. But I enjoyed it. I did not beat everything in the 'extras' category of the game, but I did do quite a bit of the monster hunting and sphere grid stuff. I got to XII and was like oh boy, this sucks. It was like an offline MMO, with all the bad elements of MMO's and the pacing of a dead not good while it was a live race horse.. This was the game that caused me to make a forum account on a gaming forum to voice my concern, and people chased me with their little digitial pitch forks and torches to try and beat my viewpoints into their little shapes and mindsets but I was unphazed. I completely even to this day hold that XII in the FF series was a massive down turn in terms of game design and game play. Story and character writing also completely sucked in my view. Like I will hold no punches when talking of that game. It's garbage in my honest opinion and I was like if they release another game like this, I'm pretty well done with the series... On to, XIII.. which was in every single way MUCH more inferior even to XII save for some of the graphical elements.. And I say SOME because in a lot of ways I feel everything was lesser than XII. Less visually appealing to me that is. Character customization also much less involved, even the control you have over your "active" character seemed lesser. Less resource management, less interesting character design, just everything was pretty much horrible, again in my honest opinion. I hated it. At that point I told myself, never again with the offline ff series.. I've not played XV and never will. I doubt I'd play it if it was freely given to me.

XIV on the other hand, has fun content, and I completely feel the story while it started semi - ok and not good by any stretch of the imagination, fell completely apart for me by the time we're into ShB, and I've completely lost interest in that. It's kind of a useless waste of time and effort trying to make sense of it in my opinion, and any "cool" hopes or thoughts into seems to blast off into the most eefus idiotic dumbness I could ever imagine it spinning into. All things pertaining to Zenos are just absolutely fantastical blunders of story telling, I'm convinced the character was written up by some dev's child and out of a sense of love possibly trying to encourage the child they took what was written up and tried to cram it into the story so they didn't make their kid feel bad? That's about the best way I can explain my view of how the character is. Ran'jit, Vaulthry, Emet Selch, and the current Ascian stuff along with Elidibus has been for me the most like unengaging and ridiculous stuff I've seen in Fantasy in my nearly 40 years of life. Vaulthry (not evne sure I'm spelling that right) sits atop the stack as the best of the worst tho, in that he seemed the most in place of them all. I feel like the whole crystal exarch thing was like a huge how far from left field can we take the plot and roll with it. The entire ShB storyline to me is just shambles, and an excuse to take us to some other completely different world build. Some of the zones I like more than others, but on the whole just don't care for the First and all it's "stuff". But this is just my personal views, I don't expect everyone to feel this way, but I honestly fail to see how people can say "the best story evar!!!" or best ff story etc. As basic and not fleshed out as Final Fantasy 6 was, at the time it really left an impression on me and yes I saw the allusions to Star Wars in some of it, and hammy writing in some places, and I was in my teens at the time and I was the epitome teen fanboism that is typically associated with the age group in a lot of ways. So I get that some people may feel passionately about this game. Like the actual term esper to me was some cool new term! It wasn't until some time later the term was drawn from Extra Sensory Perception 'er Or ESP'er.. I played Phantasy Star II on the Sega Genesis, many years ago, and the term ESPER is in that too, a guy named Lux on the 2nd planet there is an ESPER, so the term is not a FF only term.

Back to the point I was sorta kinda getting at tho, I can understand wanting to let the OP know that hey it's ok not to like a game, and it might even a bit misguided to come on the forums and expect to set some Bunsen burners under the devs um.. buns and get some "positive" encouragement going amongst them. But I can also understand where the OP is coming from as well. For a lot of newer gamers XI just flat sucks. Big time. For me personally XI is great, I loved it. I loved it before Abyssea, and just can't get invested in the modern incarnation. But for what few things I still enjoy about XIV, I play for. And when it gets to that same point that I just kind of view XI in, I'll find something else. There are only a few things I still like about XIV, and for what I do like about it, I'll just continue enjoying til they eventually "mess" that up too. But my enthusiasm is fading over it. The housing situation needs help. The closer we get to "ishgard" being rebuilt, the more I realize they probably really are going to ham that up and release it in the same way Goblet, Shirogane, Lavender Beds, and The Mist is with limited amounts of plots and people viciously gobbling them up and leaving a large portion of hopefuls out in the dust.

Additional stuff I'm not slightly stoked for in XIV = pvp, side content cutting up and tossing in the fire like hard mode dungeons, "Dwarves" being called a beast tribe (racist to lala confirmation! > _ >) music direction in general, there's still a few gems showing up at times, and Zenos/Fandaniel plotline probably gonna equate to me slamming escape when cut scenes show up. Which isn't good for a 'story driven' mmorpg. Lack of world based objectives is starting to set in.

I like the how fates in the first work, I like a few things about how gathering works, but outside of that, HUNTS and the way those are handled suck in implementation. More and more people seem to complain about needing mega beef computers just to load in before a hunt is felled, and people complain of toxic behavior and exploits revolving around the system. I don't care because the drip feed method of gearing up to me is completely irrelevant and boring in the first place, which is well, bad. Boring is probably the main sin of games that needs to be seriously addressed. And a lot of the game to me is kind of boring, but what I like, makes up for it. It isn't that this is some Final Fantasy game that I like. I'd say the things I like about Final Fantasy games in general are absent and have been absent from the series for going on a decade or more. This whole new wave of stuff they seem to toss in these games is like the complete opposite of what I want in a video game at all. And to kind of go a step further, I saw the trailer for XVI and thought it was kind of just not good at all or remotely interesting to me. So, I guess I'm not even a FF fan now. I like MMO's tho, for their social aspects. And XIV has a way of kind of removing that more and more in all the content it has been releasing lately. Maybe not completely, but seems that it is finding ways to get around the multi-player aspects more and more. Anyhow enough of my rambling.

[MsMisato]

And as for OP...I wonder why they even play this game. I have seen so many threads by them that go into great detail about why they think the game isn't good and honestly it just looks like they wish FFXIV was a completely different game. When I realised WoW was no longer the game for me I didn't make thread after thread after thread about how I disliked the majority of the game. I just left and played something else.

They like the game but don't agree with the direction and that is ok. They post here to see if other people feel the same way and or hoping the devs see's it.From what I gathered its a mix bag of nuts honestly. Some people agree, some don't, but regardless its always good to see what people like and don't like imo. I don't think its any different from any one else posting the same thing over in any of the other forums here. But then again its the forums. I see the same people on twitter post the same thing over and over lol.

[Ravenblade1979]

*claps* interesting high quality bait. You can deny and say it's not but it is.

Let's face it. The game became geared to casuals because they make up the huge bulk of the subscribers. That iant saying they dont give content for those wanting more but you gotta work for it.

Like seriously. End of the day this game is a bit to old for the complete overhaul you think it should have simple because you wanna relive the glory of the ffxi days.

Which by the way is still active and you can sub too

[Xatsh]

The FFXI is still there argument does not work. They overhauled ffxi, so sorta a different game then it use to be. Can't really go back to it if you want to play what most say when they want "FFXI". Would be like saying classic WoW and Current WoW are the exact same game just one has less content. FFXI current and Pre-abysea are the same situation, same theme but drastically different play style, feel, and focus.

But yes FFXIV is probably the most causal focused mmo on the market, and it is ungodly simplistic, overly casual, and dumbed down to the point of a major fault. The game is almost 100% revolving around glamour, mount farming, and vanity at this point. but it is way too old to do any major overhauls though as it would take a rework of almost everything to unsimplify it and add some unique things, depth, and any kind of player choice. It honestly has the same problem WoW had in BfA and legion and such had. Only different is the story in FFXIV is drastically better, and it is even more casual focused.

The main reason it will not change though is Yoshida. He does not want a full deep and complex mmo. The player choice, risk vs reward, large guilds, huge open world, rare loot farming, strong economy, complex classes and so on. He wants a casual, highly polished co-op themepark style ff game that is designed for people who have very little game time to play.

And for those people with families, 10-20hrs of max game time a week, or those wanting something they can just log into and log out of without any commitment FFXIV is the best choice of a mmo style game atm. An overhaul at this point would cause alot of the playerbase to quit, because most the players of this game after all these years are extremely casual players who want this style of game. There was alot more hardcore player back in ARR's day but they either moved on and quit entirely, or they log in for major raid patches play for a few months then unsub for a half a year.

Tldr; FFXIV is not a game that has Depth and Complexity and it is that way by design. If you like it keep playing if not go elsewhere because the devs made it clear this style game was their intent.

[Sauteed]

The FFXI is still there argument does not work. They overhauled ffxi, so sorta a different game then it use to be. Can't really go back to it if you want to play what most say when they want "FFXI". Would be like saying classic WoW and Current WoW are the exact same game just one has less content. FFXI current and Pre-abysea are the same situation, same theme but drastically different play style, feel, and focus.


Tldr; FFXIV is not a game that has Depth and Complexity and it is that way by design. If you like it keep playing if not go elsewhere because the devs made it clear this style game was their intent.

Very well said. Both points here.

[Psytic]

Its unfortunate that the wording of the title will bring out all the white knights when there's solid points in this post. I 100% agree that the open world leveling feels like something Circa 2000 and needs work. Its one of the largest turn-offs to new players. Most people rush past it via potd because its just not a good expiernace.

The world is actually extremely bland he's right. Some of that may be due to memory limitation on PS4 they can't add too many varied objects etc. but the answer to that is to make more smaller zones with more unique features. We dont need large swaths of barren red sand desert nothing going on. Repeated rock wall textures. Its boring. The ARR zones actually seemed to have more unique map features so it seems to coincide with the addition of flying that they felt they needed to make large zones but couldn't fill them with anything but repeated rocks and trees due to said limitations.

The game is fun but I have to agree open world needs more effort. Look at a Guild Wars 2 zone on a much older Direct X 9 engine and you'll see the difference in artistic creativity on a much worse engine.

[Razard]

Its unfortunate that the wording of the title will bring out all the """"""""""white knights"""""""""" when there's solid points in this post.

Then maybe TC should learn how to communicate his point without resorting to shrieking melodrama.

Also, classy.