7.0 onwards hopes and requests

[SargeTheSeagull]

As 7.0 will be the start of the next chapter in the 14 saga what are some of your far-flung hopes for changes or additions they can make to the game? Things like “more inventory” or “different hairstyles” don’t belong here because things like that are fairly likely anyway. This is about things that are unlikely or would be difficult to implement.
Myself, I’d like to see the following:

1. Locations (Thanalan, Coerthas, Gyr Abania etc.) being merged into one zone. In other words, instead of having to go to a zone barrier or gate, seeing a loading screen and being teleported to the new area (moving from Old Gridania to Central Shround for example), I’d like to just be able to seamlessly walk from southern thanalan to central thanalan. Or go straight from Rhalgr’s Reach to the Peaks with no loading screen. This would mean having to add a lot of geometry as areas between a lot of zones simply don’t exist but it would be cool.

1.5. Do the same for the first four cities. Ul’dah, Gridania and Limsa were one zone in 1.0 instead of being split between two. Ishgard could be a bit of a challenge since the Pillars are so far above Foundation but this is a thread about far flung hopes.

2. Letting players start as jobs. I know they can’t do this for lore reasons, but encountering level 52 gladiators because they don’t realize jobs are a thing is grating to say the least. Alternatively, make it mandatory to have a job stone equipped to enter any dungeon or trial or raid above level 30.

3. Viera and Hrothgar helmets. Nobody cares that clipping will occur. There are mods that do this already and I honestly can’t understand why the devs are so picky about what headpieces these races can and cannot wear.

4. Graphics enhancement. 14 is a gorgeous game and I love the art direction but there are a lot of ways it could look better. Better lighting and anti-aliasing would be nice. As would HDR support.

5. WoW like collection system. TLDR: it’s a list of every item (weapon, mount, armor piece, minion) in the game and how to get it.

6. Overhauled glam system. The glamour dresser is nice but it is somewhat unintuitive. Being able to just pick from any piece of gear I’ve ever had in my armory chest or inventory and apply that wherever I am would be amazing.

7. Savage 24 man raids. DRS and BA are incredibly fun and I’d love to see more content like them. Once per expansion isn’t quite enough. Hard, large scale content is something 14 really lacks and adding a savage (or extreme) version would be cool. If each boss were roughly as hard as an extreme trial and if the trash packs had a mechanic or two I think it would be really cool. How this would fit into the loot table is another discussion entirely and one I’m not suited to.

Do you guys think I’m right or wrong? What did I nail and what did I miss? What major changes would you like to see come to the game in the future?

[Illmaeran]

1. I'd love to have an updated glamour system. The transmog system in wow circa BfA was pretty cool and I wouldn't mind having a similar system here.

2. Starting the early classes as Jobs would be cool, but I think it would take way too much time on the back end for little to no actual difference. The Job quests are just an extension of class quests with a different name. After starting a new alt, I can see how easy it could be for a new player to get to 50+ without doing their class/job quests given how we automatically get certain skills now. Perhaps the best/easiest option would be to make a quest requiring the player to do their job quest as part of the MSQ. That way they're forced to be aware of it and have to consciously choose to continue playing with their class from that point on.

3a. Graphics updates would be nice. I understand SE's desire to let people with old machines be able to continue to run the game, but technology's improved a lot since 2013. I can still run the game on the low-end laptop I got in 2011 so even a current-day low-end laptop could run it better than my old Lalafell of a machine. I'm just not sure if this would be the best use of resources if CBU3 doesn't get new staff.

3b. I'd be willing to pay $50 or $60 for a DLC that doesn't provide new content but updates the graphics for everything in the game from 2.0 through to the end of 6.0...provided 7.0 has improved graphics.

[SeverianLyonesse]

1. Remove job stones. They haven't held any functional value since 2.0, are a waste of inventory space, and actually obstruct job changes.

2. Remove off-handed weapons. The only combat job that uses the slot is PLD and these days both the sword and shield drop together in (almost?) everything. It makes no sense that NIN, DNC, and RDM don't use the slot but PLD does, and I don't think people would miss mismatching weapons on one class. I have always thought the offhand weapons for every DoH were ugly, contrived, and a waste of money...they should all be totally eliminated.

3. Just like ranged DPS are sorted into two archetypes, Aiming and Casting, the melee DPS should be split into two groups. Maiming and Striking should remain "pure" Melee, while Scouting should have its stats retooled to be more of a mid-range hybrid melee class. Half of NIN's moves have a distance of 20 y, and I think the job should be designed to lean more into that unique role. Second Scouting class should be added, my vote is for Blitzballer.

4. Remove Embolden and Brotherhood from RDM and MNK. Give those abilities to Scouting Jobs so they can be party buffers. Embolden especially never really felt like RDM.

5. Completely separate SCH from SMN and just make SCH start at level 30 ala the HW jobs. Give SCH Bio and Miasma, make it the new "warlock" with arcane faerie magicks.

6. Make SCH a DoT Mage and make a few more DoT jobs. Design raids and trials around prioritizing placing debuffs instead of erasing them from existence like literally everything else (elemental damage, piercing/slashing/blunt, positionals, etc. etc.).

7. Get rid of the Glamour Dresser, or at least remove the equipment cap. I would say that we should have a "deposit" system where you can permanently add something to the list in exchange for losing it to the aether, but even that system feels 10 years outdated. So even better than a deposit system would be to just automatically allow glams of all past acquired equipment like in GW2 or WoW.

8. Allow players to change glams anywhere. I shouldn't have to teleport just to deuglify the most recent piece of equipment the MSQ gave me.

9. Menu overhaul. There are wayyyyy too many pop-ups and animation delays to do even the simplest of things quickly. Many menus arbitrarily close out or backtrack, and there is no simple way to just "exit." Walking away should be enough to exit any menu. Retainer selling should be drag-and-drop with click-and-type pricing. Materia melding and unmelding should be drag-and-drop.

10. Speed walking in sanctuaries.

11. Mandatory job tutorials at every ten levels. Everyone would benefit from them.

12. Ryne and Gaia to return to prominence in the story, confirmed as a couple. Ryne with a class change to have a better weapon. Maybe a gunblade. Gaia with less emo clothes.

13. Hard confirmation that Siren from Pharos Sirius is a Meteion.

14. Green Mage. Greathammer. Mage Tank. Earth and plant abilities.

[Tsukino]

I probably want a lot of the things you've already listed more than anything else I can think of, so let's go through those first:

1. I would like these changes a lot. It's definitely work, and it doesn't seem likely, but I thought the same thing about flying in 2.0 areas and they managed to do that. The city-states are really noticeably tiny and awkward compared to later city locations like the Crystarium and Old Sharlayan with the new aethernet map.

2. I'd go further with this and ask to have the classes and all their quests be completely removed and replaced with the jobs and new quests that actually make sense for them. None of the 1.0 class lore fits with the way the game works now. Of course this is a ridiculously huge undertaking for no obvious benefit to the game financially, but that's what we're going for here right?

3. This one's still weird to me because they obviously don't care about clipping anywhere else - tails, capes, weapons, mounts, hairstyles, collars, hoods that are down, etc. The fact that it's only ears that seem to bother them about clipping is just supremely weird to me.

4. Better AA and HDR would be nice for the people who can take advantage of it, but we really need the higher resolution textures they've teased once or twice. The game is so serious about its story, it's the main reason many people including myself play, and yet everyone looks horrible in that story's cutscenes because of the low-res textures. This seems like the biggest undertaking of them all, so I hope they're serious about those teases.

5. I stopped playing WoW long before such a thing existed, but I've been complaining for a while now about how much of a mess all the previous and current endgame trade-in NPCs are. I play the game all the time and I still never know which of the like 60 NPCs across 10+ areas have the gear I'm looking for. I want a system of in-game links like all the bad gacha phone games have where you see something and in its description is a button that tells you all the places it comes from right there in the game.

6. Maybe this is even crazier than the textures to the dev team, but I also want a system for glamours that just works like the mount or minion guides. As I understand it that's how WoW and a few other MMOs work now too, just keeps track of everything you've ever acquired so you don't have to keep a copy of it all. My glamour dresser and my retainers are full of a bunch of gear I don't even use for glamours just because I'm worried that if I do want to use it I won't want to reacquire it. This type of system would be a godsend.


For additional crazy requests:

A. This one isn't even crazy, I just want the aesthetician to be able to change anything within a race/sex and leave just those two to fantasia. It would be more fair for hrothgar at the very least, and there'd still be tons of people buying fantasia to change race anyway.

B. Since this is for 7.0, let's see a complete change-up in the expansion/patch content formula! When 3.0 came out we all had no idea what to expect, but since then it's all been the same thing - dungeons every odd level, crafted gear every even level, six new areas with two of them split in half at the start (for no real reason except to adhere to the formula either now, apparently), four aether currents locked behind side quests and one behind the MSQ that has you leave the area behind, full-party raids in even patches and alliance raids in odd patches. I know the devs live in constant fear of producing another Diadem, but knowing exactly what they'll add and when they'll add it is excruciating! Give us 20 dungeons instead of 10, give us eight new areas that are smaller in scale each, give us areas we can fly in from the start and ones we can't until after the MSQ is finished, give us easy full-party content and challenging alliance and light party content, just...give us something, anything that is different.

C. For the completely impossible, I'd really like an overhaul of the housing system. The thing has just been a disaster ever since they put individuals in the exact same system, and it's only getting worse with more people joining all the time who can't use it. We'll never get this one, but I can always dream.

D. This goes along with the OP #2, but changes to several existing jobs and ridiculous justifications they've given over the years for why they are the way they are. Split SMN and SCH from each other. Get rid of BRD and replace it with Ranger/Hunter, possibly alongside a Bard that actually works like one equipping musical instruments and using them to apply debuffs to enemies and buffs to the party. Stop telling us "Rogue is Thief" when classes aren't even relevant to the game and put in an actual Thief. Make Blue Mage a real job and not a minigame. Like the rest, it sounds like it would never happen, but they did give Summoner full sized summons despite saying for years it would never work.

[Lily_Skye]

remove lalafells

[LalafellDown]

I hope for at least one space mission. With a space map and space suit. Maybe some low gravity action or battle ship fights.

[Jirah]

1.) probably not impossible but a hassle to do this to all the zones, and for what? Immersion! I feel it’s not a dealbreaker to have gated zones if we dwell to hard on that we go right back to 1.0

2.)Classes are relics of a bygone era, but to do that they need to remove the guilds or rearrange them which…isn’t worth the shallow price of starting with the job. I’d advice them to lower the starting jobs of 60/70/80 to make it easier to attain then as new players, but nothing more

3.) Agreed nothing to argue

4.) the point of why ff14 looks the way it looks it’s because to make it easy on computers and console players. I fear this will just please graphics whore and nothing more. Disagree

5.) agreed…but Wow-like will clearly attract the wrong opinion

6.) Agreed? At the very least increase the cap 400 isn’t enough

7.) Agreed, I’d love content similar to eureka or some explorative content for hardcore players, or just DR

[Lihtleita]

1) an optional hq texture pack for people who can run it

2) old city states rejoined. I think we can all handle a reunited limsa

3) flip toggle on hairstyles and/or headgear

4) seperate the conjoined twin that is smn/sch its gotten weird

5) changing starting city or letting us replay an alternate city's starting quests

[Penthea]

Savage 24 man raids. DRS and BA are incredibly fun and I’d love to see more content like them. Once per expansion isn’t quite enough. Hard, large scale content is something 14 really lacks and adding a savage (or extreme) version would be cool. If each boss were roughly as hard as an extreme trial and if the trash packs had a mechanic or two I think it would be really cool. How this would fit into the loot table is another discussion entirely and one I’m not suited to.

Hard pass. It sounds like you want WoW's raiding and one of the reasons why I prefer this game is because high-end content doesn't require big groups. WoW decimated 10 man high-end raiding which means one of the things I loved to do most is no longer possible in that game. I don't want high-end raiding for smaller groups to become less relevant or effectively gone in a second game. Once was enough.

I'm fine with large scale savage being in very specific content like Bozja but I would be exceptionally concerned and disappointed if it became more than that because it would put 8-man raiding's status at risk.

[Zordrage]

Better updated textures on most of the stuff.