What would you like to see changed or addressed in the game? (poll)

[MoofiaBossVal]

I voted for improved gameplay. As much as I have gripes with the story, at the end of the day this medium is a game and the gameplay needs to be good, which it isn't. Not very. The extreme amount of cutscenes compared to actual gameplay reminds me of FF9, where the gameplay was really meh and they tried to distract you from it by dazzling you with cutscenes, but once you're out of the cutscene heavy sections you're just confronted by lackluster gameplay. I don't feel like I'm exploring the world. None of the zones feel dangerous. Combat doesn't feel dangerous. Combat feels like a snooze fest. Running down a 15 minute long corridor isn't a very fun dungeon experience. None of the classes feel super fun to play (at best some look a little flashy and some have tolerable gameplay, but I'm never really thinking "Wow I want to have fun doing this class' rotation!"). And so on.

It would be cool if there was engaging non-combat gameplay. In GW2, there are sidequests like helping kids gather up snow and armor and build a small snowman army around the perimeter of a village to scare off beastmen. Or stuff like testing rayguns or mechas and temporarily getting a new hotbar of abilities (WoW also does this a lot, like riding dinosaurs or giant yetis and smashing armies). Or the adventures from the HoT expansion where you can hang glide and ride jet streams trying to catch bugs, or the jumping puzzles (some give you movement abilities that make them more interesting), or the mount racing, etc. Traversing the environment was also a challenge and fun with the bouncing mushrooms to jump on, trying to find jetstreams to glide up on or hidden passages, etc. It would also be cool if the world felt dangerous, like if you're level 16 and you're running through a field and you see a humongous level 80 dinosaur and there is no way you could take him on yet, so you have to run around him and keep aware of your surroundings, and then one day when you're strong enough you and others could come back and fight him in an awesome battle and get loot (you never see a powerful rare mob on accident, and the world bosses are secluded in some location only endgame players can reach). Don't think the boring rotation combat will ever be revamped.

You expect them to add a base expansion's worth of areas over the course of 5 patches, and then release another base expansion with all of that when 7.0 hits? No offense, but you're a fool to expect that. Keep your expectations grounded in reality, as they cannot reasonably pull such a thing off, especially while also updating the systems and old stuff that has been in the game for years.

If GW2 can add in a zone in every patch while doing system overhauls on top of that (the expansion patch content usually has more content than the base expansion), I don't see why FFXIV can't either. And FFXIV requires a monthly subscription fee.

[RyuDragnier]

If GW2 can add in a zone in every patch while doing system overhauls on top of that (the expansion patch content usually has more content than the base expansion), I don't see why FFXIV can't either. And FFXIV requires a monthly subscription fee.

GW2 is also coded and played very differently, with most of the dev time being put into maps (they constantly reuse assets) and skins, with there being pretty much no gear treadmill so they don't have to really adjust balance much (remember how long the condi meta lasted for, or how long zerker ruled over PvE content?). Not to mention they dropped support of dungeons and raids (seriously, they're pushing everybody to Strikes). Dev time is freed up more to do other things due to all of this, since they're only focused on a single new map and the story content within, then there's pretty much nothing but new skins until the next story content releases 4 months later. In the meantime you're running the same maps, the same metas, the same everything, often times just to sell things for money unless you have some long term goal, because your stat spread gear is going to last you for months if not years due to how rarely they actually adjust the meta. Compared to FFXIV where there's a heavier emphasis on story cutscenes, they have unique textures for multiple areas that they seem to rarely reuse, battle effects are a hell of a lot crazier here (as are the fights), there's a constant a gear treadmill, and actual class balance to worry about. Kind of comparing apples to oranges here.

Keep in mind I love GW2 to death, having played since year 1 and still playing it weekly to raid and do strikes with friends. But you can't really compare how the two are developed, the coding alone is completely different, not to mention differences in how the two teams are looking at things. Though if there's one thing that CAN be compared, it's how long it took them to re-release Living Story Season 1 Flame and Frost in the current format, since that had to take a lot longer than releasing normal Living Story chapters. And keep in mind that almost all of LS1 were in the base game maps.