Fix ARR

[tatatatatata]

Please don't just talk the talk, but actually walk the talk, Square Enix: If you want this game to have longevity, you need to fix ARR. Because players will eventually quit the game and you need fresh blood to replace it. And if they play through ARR, a lot of them will be extremely unimpressed. FF14 is drifting on the tailwinds of its success from Shadowbringers and, probably in the near future, Endwalker. It is also benefitting from the dearth of decent MMOs out there. I'm willing to bet this game's recent success owes in large part to the failure of other MMOs to produce good content, especially in WoW, not because FF14 did anything much better, other than the story. Longevity of an MMO will never be derived from being the least worst option in the genre. With new MMOs with budgets on the horizon such as New World and Ashes of Creation, along with a billion ex-Blizzard indie MMO projects, now cannot be the time for Square Enix to drop its vigilance.

While there are many other issues with the game, the biggest issue right now is that, frankly, ARR sucks. Not just when compared to Shadowbringers, but in a vacuum it still sucks. The quest abridgement did nothing. Half the quests in ARR are still boring fillers with no meat to them, with the pace only picking up in 2.4-2.5 and Lv42-50. While there's not much that Square Enix can do without rewriting the story, they have not gone far enough to remove the bloat that no one cares about and does not pay off in the future.

With the skill gutting that comes with each expansion, the leveling experience below Lv 50 is also horribly boring now. On many jobs, such as Dragoon, healers, and so on, you only get one AoE ability. One. Even a player completely new to MMOs will be quickly bored by their sparse toolkit at Lv50, particularly since there are more than a dozen dungeons, eight trials, and quite a few raids that they have access to at Lv50. Veteran MMO players will likely doze off before they even reach Heavensward. The story alone is not enough to carry the leveling experience, Square Enix. This game is a Final Fantasy before an MMO, but previous Final Fantasy's have also iterated on gameplay to keep things fresh. You need to look at the gameplay below Lv50. It's in an atrocious state right now.

There is also next to no challenge or thought required in the ARR endgame. Because of job changes and a huge ton of item level advantages, you're skipping mechanics left and right in the Lv 50 dungeons. This isn't unique to the ARR endgame - it's also an issue with Lv 60 and Lv 70 content. But unlike the HW and SB endgame, truthfully the dungeons and raids cannot be carried by the beautiful aesthetics and soundtracks of the later endgames. Tam-Tara Hard Mode still looks dull and murky, no matter how many fresh coats of paint you apply on it. It cannot compare to say, the beautiful sky islands of Neverreap or the much more intricate designs of the Skallic ruins. So it's all the more urgent that Square Enix make sure that players get to see the creativity in the mechanics of Lv 50 content instead of just skipping them through sheer brute force of overgearing. While the stat squish will no doubt help somewhat, they need to manually tweak the content so that playing them synced feels like playing Lv 80 content synced right now. Either impose a lower item level sync in Lv 50 content or buff the HP of bosses. I want to see players having to figure out what to do with the Zu eggs in Pharos Sirius, not just have players brute force through the fight and winning anyways because everyone's HP and damage is too high for the content.

There are many more issues with ARR but these are the biggest culprits - bland story, boring gameplay, and content that does not require any thinking due to overgearing. It is imperative for Square Enix to fix these issues with a permanent approach, so that new players will come to this game and not be bored with ARR and leave - I've known many such players.

[tatatatatata]

Square Enix needs to realize that when an entire playerbase tells newcomers that "yeah ARR sucks but it's worth it later just go through it" on the regular, something is very wrong and it needs to be addressed. First impressions matter and no matter how good Endwalker is going to be, that is not going to help the sprout going through ARR to enjoy the outdated content. If anything it is only going to encourage them to bumrush through ARR to get to the "good stuff". Why not just make ARR the good stuff in the first place.

[Stepjam]

While in an ideal world, they would go back and fix ARR to make it more interesting, I don't think you realize how much of an undertaking that would be. That would basically require them to rewrite and remake ARR so that it's more narratively interesting but still covers all of ARR's beats (even though ARR didn't have a strong through plot like the expansions, it still does a lot of leg work. It sets up basically everything to come in HW on).

And that would cost a lot of resources for something that most of their current playerbase won't even touch since they've already done ARR and would rather just get new stuff. And if recent reports are anything to go by, newbies aren't much of an issue right now either. The game is doing fine population wise.

In a perfect world where Squeenix had infinite resources and infinitie staff, an ARR overhaul woukd be cool. But as things stand, from a business standpoint they'd be crazy to spend time and energy on it. ARR is the worst part of XIV, but as things stand, it's good enough.

[tatatatatata]

While in an ideal world, they would go back and fix ARR to make it more interesting, I don't think you realize how much of an undertaking that would be. That would basically require them to rewrite and remake ARR so that it's more narratively interesting but still covers all of ARR's beats (even though ARR didn't have a strong through plot like the expansions, it still does a lot of leg work. It sets up basically everything to come in HW on).

And that would cost a lot of resources for something that most of their current playerbase won't even touch since they've already done ARR and would rather just get new stuff. And if recent reports are anything to go by, newbies aren't much of an issue right now either. The game is doing fine population wise.

In a perfect world where Squeenix had infinite resources and infinitie staff, an ARR overhaul woukd be cool. But as things stand, from a business standpoint they'd be crazy to spend time and energy on it. ARR is the worst part of XIV, but as things stand, it's good enough.

I think you completely missed the first part of my post. Things are fine now but that is literally because the MMO genre is a mess right now and FF14 happens to be the only game that isn't screwing things up. What will happen when actual competition arises or when WoW actually gets a grip and fixes their game? Most players, like it or not, won't want to grind through 40 hours of outdated content when there are greener pastures in other games that promise immediate gratification.

[Stepjam]

I think you completely missed the first part of my post. Things are fine now but that is literally because the MMO genre is a mess right now and FF14 happens to be the only game that isn't screwing things up. What will happen when actual competition arises or when WoW actually gets a grip and fixes their game?

And I'm telling you that it's a bigger undertaking than you probably realize. They already have to pick and choose projects for smaller content. Like we didn't get deep dungeon or Hildebrand this expansion and we got less combat content overall because they put more work into crafter/gatherer stuff. Do you think they'd be able to just rebuild ARR from the ground up while doing everything else?

And if they decided to do an ARR rework instead of a new expansion, how do you think the current playerbase would react. Do you think most would be okay with no brand new content for 1-2 years? They'd probably lose a lot of their regular subscrbers if that hapoened, and that would be bad for them.

ARR isn't the best, but it isn't inherently broken. Maybe they'll continue to make small fixes here and there. But right now a complete overhaul isn't necessary and budget wise probably isn't a good idea

[LisSquid]

It needs to happen sooner rather than later. I have given enough pep talks to new players getting through ARR. It's rough.

The common story you hear is "Yeah, I was so burned out after finishing ARR that I quit. I eventually came back, and was hooked!" Except I don't think that golden zone is as golden as it used to be. HW, SB, and now ShB will be obstacles to people getting to the content everyone is talking about. HW, as good as the story may be, is not really any less of a marathon grind as the post-ARR patch contents.

It's the double edged sword with having an MSQ mandatory game. As the expansions pile up, the gap widens between new players and where everyone else is. We're all current players, and I can assume we're all caught up to date on the MSQ. A new patch isn't going to feel like anything, and we welcome it! Now, think of leveling an alt through the entirety of the MSQ from ARR to this current patch. Most people are going to say no. It's kind of brilliant when you think about it, because it's the ultimate sunk cost trap: time. However, it will become increasingly difficult to convince people to carry on.

FFXIV will become a game of dedicated vets and filled with a niche audience who want to play for the story, mostly alone. I think SE would do well to not just start with ARR, but take consideration of all past content when looking to make the MSQ more approachable to a new player. No, story skips aren't an option and are actually insulting to have in a cash shop.

In fact, I can think of a lot of quests that are little more than "Go here to see x person nod, and send you here to see y person nod, to go here and see z person make a surprised face" that could be cut entirely without losing a single story beat.

edit:

I forgot to mention that the fact the marathon is so bad now is tied into how classes behave at low levels. You're locked into it for so long, and it makes the experience worse.

[tatatatatata]

And I'm telling you that it's a bigger undertaking than you probably realize. They already have to pick and choose projects for smaller content. Like we didn't get deep dungeon or Hildebrand this expansion and we got less combat content overall because they put more work into crafter/gatherer stuff. Do you think they'd be able to just rebuild ARR from the ground up while doing everything else?

And if they decided to do an ARR rework instead of a new expansion, how do you think the current playerbase would react. Do you think most would be okay with no brand new content for 1-2 years? They'd probably lose a lot of their regular subscrbers if that hapoened, and that would be bad for them.

ARR isn't the best, but it isn't inherently broken. Maybe they'll continue to make small fixes here and there. But right now a complete overhaul isn't necessary and budget wise probably isn't a good idea

This is not about rebuilding everything from the ground up. Combatting skill pruning is basically asking them to be more thoughtful about the skill progression of various jobs. You should unlock your core rotation by Lv 50. This is not asking for new skills. It's literally just asking them to change the order in which you acquire skills, so that the early game is engaging. Combatting the insane outgearing in old content would likely be tackled with some sort of Unreal system or simply a flat decrease to the ilvl sync to be closer to the minimum item level requirements. The stat squish might also go some way in solving that.

Please actually read my post.

[tatatatatata]

It needs to happen sooner rather than later. I have given enough pep talks to new players getting through ARR. It's rough.

The common story you hear is "Yeah, I was so burned out after finishing ARR that I quit. I eventually came back, and was hooked!" Except I don't think that golden zone is as golden as it used to be. HW, SB, and now ShB will be obstacles to people getting to the content everyone is talking about. HW, as good as the story may be, is not really any less of a marathon grind as the post-ARR patch contents.

It's the double edged sword with having an MSQ mandatory game. As the expansions pile up, the gap widens between new players and where everyone else is. We're all current players, and I can assume we're all caught up to date on the MSQ. A new patch isn't going to feel like anything, and we welcome it! Now, think of leveling an alt through the entirety of the MSQ from ARR to this current patch. Most people are going to say no. It's kind of brilliant when you think about it, because it's the ultimate sunk cost trap: time. However, it will become increasingly difficult to convince people to carry on.

FFXIV will become a game of dedicated vets and filled with a niche audience who want to play for the story, mostly alone. I think SE would do well to not just start with ARR, but take consideration of all past content when looking to make the MSQ more approachable to a new player. No, story skips aren't an option and are actually insulting to have in a cash shop.

In fact, I can think of a lot of quests that are little more than "Go here to see x person nod, and send you here to see y person nod, to go here and see z person make a surprised face" that could be cut entirely without losing a single story beat.

You're exactly right. I really hope Square Enix has some long-term plan about the MSQ system. God knows how anyone will convince a new player to go through 3 months of story just to get to play with their friend in 9.x....

[Kuroka]

Well we could guess that new players later on might be able to start on 6.1...? I kinda hope for that as its the lesser evil compared to "skip everything till 5.0" lol

[Remish]

Hard Mode needs to be renamed because it isn't hard. It's a revisit. Tam Tera-Deepcroft (Revisit) sounds better than (Hard Mode) at this point.