ARR or Heavensward Classic

[OgruMogru]

Yeah, I do agree that the QoL was definitely bad in HW unfortunately. I can see your point in that part having an effect on peoples' views, and for good reason. They at least did fix the no cooldown reset thing for the final tier of Alexander, but it was super grating on all the earlier bosses. A6S made me feel the most insane about it, lol.

However I do sometimes miss some things like actually having to meet up beside the raid entrance to get started--but I know THAT is actually just nostalgia speaking. It just felt more lively in a way, and I still remember the names of people I met outside of the Coil spots, since I could just chill out and talk and suddenly be invited to join, haha. That's just a novelty, though, and I know I was particularly lucky because I've always been on Balmung; an active legacy server. Would still love to have job and encounter design closer to HW but with current QoL...though even I know that's a pipe dream.

haha I'm right there with ya regarding actually having to go to the raid entrance - it might be nostalgia but it was a fun bit of immersion. I always thought it would be cute if we could share raid food when you met up outside like a little raid picnic. I was a baby raider in HW - I'd done coil in the latter patches of ARR but I was absolutely awful until the last tier of alexander - the cooldown reset was a literal godsend at the time XD

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yeah, I do agree that the QoL was definitely bad in HW unfortunately. I can see your point in that part having an effect on peoples' views, and for good reason. They at least did fix the no cooldown reset thing for the final tier of Alexander, but it was super grating on all the earlier bosses. A6S made me feel the most insane about it, lol.

However I do sometimes miss some things like actually having to meet up beside the raid entrance to get started--but I know THAT is actually just nostalgia speaking. It just felt more lively in a way, and I still remember the names of people I met outside of the Coil spots, since I could just chill out and talk and suddenly be invited to join, haha. That's just a novelty, though, and I know I was particularly lucky because I've always been on Balmung; an active legacy server. Would still love to have job and encounter design closer to HW but with current QoL...though even I know that's a pipe dream.

See, requiring going to the entrance is something I can get behind.



Like I said in a previous post, people tend to take aspects of 3.0 in a vacuum, especially combat. The job design by itself would have been fine, if modern QoL was a thing, but it wasn't. The raids would have been fine if modern QoL was a thing, but it wasn't. Now combine the two, and you have a disaster. Stormblood still has the best OVERALL job design for combat in my opinion, but I much preferred 2.x or 3.x PLDs rotational aspects.


Part of the issue with modern combat isn't even the 2 minute meta, its that fights are designed as puzzles rather than fights. If they went back to pre-5.x raid designs we'd be much better off. That's when it started going downhill imo. An Alex style raid with 7.0 combat would honestly probably be fine.

[Nebelheim]

Yeah, I do agree that the QoL was definitely bad in HW unfortunately. I can see your point in that part having an effect on peoples' views, and for good reason. They at least did fix the no cooldown reset thing for the final tier of Alexander, but it was super grating on all the earlier bosses. A6S made me feel the most insane about it, lol.

However I do sometimes miss some things like actually having to meet up beside the raid entrance to get started--but I know THAT is actually just nostalgia speaking. It just felt more lively in a way, and I still remember the names of people I met outside of the Coil spots, since I could just chill out and talk and suddenly be invited to join, haha. That's just a novelty, though, and I know I was particularly lucky because I've always been on Balmung; an active legacy server. Would still love to have job and encounter design closer to HW but with current QoL...though even I know that's a pipe dream.

I miss seeing large groups of people hanging out in front of raid entrances it made those specific zones more lively. It also reminded me of people meeting up with there raid groups in ff11 and other games and just sit there and talking to people while preparing. Now zones are dead shortly after an expansion or patch is released once everyone goes through the story then everyone goes back to limsa to show off there glams or raid weapons and zones feel dead and hardly see anyone other then gatherers.

[Arkdra]

Okay, so... rebalance them. I don't really understand why we're roadblocking at this. Action parameters are a completely different piece to the gameplay than the actual rotational flow of each job, yet your statement implies that Heavensward job design is defined by its imbalance. I think you're severely misunderstanding what is actually being asked here.

What is being asked for are things like tanks having more defined play styles, healers having more attack spells, MP management and aggro management mattering, summoner not being a job with a macro-able rotation... I don't understand why you would think restoring qualities like that can only be accomplished by reverting to the exact state of balance that existed back then.

The context of this thread is for a wow classic server but for ARR or HW. Those experiences are delivered as is (or were, they got weird with it in wotlk but got super yelled at for it). If you are saying they don't have to deliver the baseline experience and can rebalance it then you aren't asking for a classic server, you are asking for a forked development server. And if you already don't think their job balancing is any good I don't know why you would expect this fork to end up any different?

[ty_taurus]

The context of this thread is for a wow classic server but for ARR or HW. Those experiences are delivered as is (or were, they got weird with it in wotlk but got super yelled at for it). If you are saying they don't have to deliver the baseline experience and can rebalance it then you aren't asking for a classic server, you are asking for a forked development server. And if you already don't think their job balancing is any good I don't know why you would expect this fork to end up any different?

Right... And WoW classic also receives regular updates including class changes and balance patches. What, did you think WoW classic was just some archived old patch state that is just kept that way in perpetuity? It's its own thing, and if the context of this thread is indeed a FFXIV classic with WoW classic in mind, then it would also be receiving new content, balance updates, items, glamour, etc.

[Doopliss]

...Part of the issue with modern combat isn't even the 2 minute meta, its that fights are designed as puzzles rather than fights. If they went back to pre-5.x raid designs we'd be much better off. That's when it started going downhill imo. An Alex style raid with 7.0 combat would honestly probably be fine...

I can't fully agree in my heart unfortunately because I did, very genuinely, love both encounter and job design in Heavensward.

However, I still mostly agree with your point on a more objective level because, yeah, encounter design has 100% become simplified and less risky, too. It drives me nuts. I know I'll never get HW again, so I'm perfectly happy to have even just ONE aspect of combat have more heart return to it. Stormblood likely was the perfect middle ground, and there were a bunch of fights and other things I loved in that expansion too.

It wasn't my favorite expansion (mostly because I had personal issues with MNK's design becoming slower, and MCH's opener), but I'd be perfectly satisfied going back to that level of design.

It's just bizarre to me that they keep saying they're going to focus on making encounter design more engaging and then do the opposite for essentially everything that isn't an ultimate fight. Although I will say that my personal theory for the newest Deep Dungeon failing is that that kind of content isn't engaging at all with jobs having basically no identity (unless you're soloing it, but then it becomes an even more niche thing).

Also, I'm glad to see several empathize with my nostalgia for waiting around raid entrances, haha. There's a lot of little things I miss from ARR and HW that made it feel like a lively word--and a proper MMO. There are so many conversations I remember having with other random adventurers during that time, especially within areas like Central Coerthas, Northern Thanalan, Mor Dhona, etc...

The way everyone would group together to make jokes about Naul or announce that Svara was up. The way we'd just sit around the campfire in Mor Dhona and talk for hours...or wait right outside of settlements as a group while searching for Healers and Tanks because special boss fates served as an actual threat. The way roleplaying was done more in the open world than in venues. I could go on forever about those things though, and I might make myself embarrassingly emotional over it if I continue, haha.

All of my fondest memories are from the game during those times. Catch me sitting on the upper bridge of Mor Dhona, looking down at it the same way Emet-Selch looks down at Amaurot, lmao.

[Aidorouge]

Only part of "classic" Final Fantasy 14 I would want to see return are the Path Companions, or really, any of the pre-Calamity NPCs that are still unaccounted for. I was actually kind of hoping the 10 year anniversary would give a little nod to those KIA/MIA, because as a game that puts a lot of focus on story, even the bit actors still manage to stand out.

I still remember after *that* scene in the Waking Sands when someone in my FC mentioned that some of them were survivors from 1.0, and it hit a little different even though I never knew them back then (as I started halfway through Endwalker), or how people have occasionally identified certain ones (like former retainers) having new NPC jobs. There's just something special about knowing these minor characters are still pressing on, and something tragic about how we might never know the fate of others because massive causalities quickly become forgotten statistics after something like that (and from what I've been told, the Path Companion in particular was left in rough shape even *before* Dalamud came crashing down).

[Arkdra]

Right... And WoW classic also receives regular updates including class changes and balance patches. What, did you think WoW classic was just some archived old patch state that is just kept that way in perpetuity? It's its own thing, and if the context of this thread is indeed a FFXIV classic with WoW classic in mind, then it would also be receiving new content, balance updates, items, glamour, etc.

Alright, sure, but then the fixes there are homogenization. If you wanted to balance hw you'd have to remove the assorted weapon damage buffs, pass out ninjas entire utility suite to other jobs and give whm something competitive with chain strat and balance. And then also an assortment of potency fiddling across the board but that's small potato's.

[ty_taurus]

Alright, sure, but then the fixes there are homogenization. If you wanted to balance hw you'd have to remove the assorted weapon damage buffs, pass out ninjas entire utility suite to other jobs and give whm something competitive with chain strat and balance. And then also an assortment of potency fiddling across the board but that's small potato's.

And I think that's entirely feasible while still retaining the qualities that people want from job design. I mean I think the real answer is just to move modern FFXIV away from this simplification crusade that no one is asking for. Asking for FFXIV Classic is more of a cynical jab at the lack of faith anyone seems to have that we ever will. The people asking for it would rather job design just have new life breathed into it but have no faith that SE ever will, so they'd rather just ask for a Heavensward server just to be able to play FFXIV before it turned into this.

I can't tell you how many times I wish I could just dick around with HW or SB Scholar because of how much I miss it.

[AlucaDragonheart]

Why do some people think that HW Classic would be EXACTLY like when HW released? They 100% could release a HW classic with the modern QoL stuff that we have now, while keeping the same gameplay and job design from Heavensward.