DT and other expansions have to improve on this!

[Dante131]

So, DT has been out for a month now, and I can see people unsubscribing from the game weekly and offering harsh critiques about the current expansion. If we look at other MMOs that I play simultaneously with FF14, one thing becomes clear. To clarify, I am talking about WoW and Guild Wars 2. Both of these games will launch their new expansions this month.

Guild Wars 2 ended their trailer with the phrase, "This is not my home anymore, maybe it will be yours," and made a statement about adding instanced housing in this expansion. WoW will conclude their story with the next three expansions and are trying a lot to keep their players with (in my opinion) fresh and fun events. But what both games do really well compared to FF14 is that they are extremely alt-friendly.

Hear me out. I know you don't NEED an alt, but come on, people are playing MMOs, and many like having alts. WoW will improve nearly everything to be account-wide, which Guild Wars 2 has had for years. WoW might even get housing as well in Midnight. The only thing that will separate FF14 from these two is the story, which DT shows us is not always a positive point.

If the game wants to stay successful, in my opinion, they need to change the following points:

Alt-friendliness
Balancing
Fun open-world content
More events besides the stone event for old wolf mounts
Improve Duty Finder (limit expansion/limit level)
Stop forcing people to complete the story to unlock chill content (Island Sanctuary)
Stop punishing people who do hard content on release. I mean that people who do content while it's hard have a much harder time getting loot and mounts than someone who just one-shots it in the next expansion. It seems unfair.

If FF14 ignores points like these, I can't see a reason why people would stay in this game and not switch to others. If you want to prove me wrong, be my guest. If you are one of the "stop whining" people, please post here so the post stays on the top page. Looking forward to your opinions.

[Kaurhz]

I can agree with all of this with the exception of the last point.

The problem I have with the last point is that in order for them to address this, older content would largely be left to the wayside since a lot of people would be focusing on newer content, and in order for them to address this point would require that they add better support for older content to make it have more longstanding value, to actually encourage people to do that older content over the newer content if the difficulty were to remain constant.

Now, what I think they need to do on this last point is to not keep the loot lockouts so extensive. Have it so that you're also to gear multiple jobs or roles simultaneously without needing to wait months on end. This is one of the things the game does so poorly, since it's a contradiction on their whole "You can do everything on a single character" philosophy.

[Dante131]

oh sorry for the missunderstanding. I meant to lift the lockout or make mounts of ex trials buyable early. Because the case now is the Person whos doing the new Ex trials for example over 100+ times will maybe not get the mount until its buyable. after a half year where the most party just nuke the boss everyone will have it. Seems bit masochistic to me tbh

[Serilyn]

Yeah I am someone who has a lot of alts. Because I enjoy making new characters to try out different races and looks and make up different stories for. And I like having an alt in each region in case I want to look around. But it is ridiculous how unfriendly this game is to alts. Cash shop items not being account-wide (not to mention item codes from books and things), not being able to send mail to your alts, having housing limited to 1 per world but NOT letting your alts have access to the one house you have. The whole glamour system is just archaic now compared to something like WoW or GW2. I don't mind having to go through the story again on alts too much but would love some ways to speed it up like having flight already unlocked, even if they made things like mounts and minions account-wide it seems like it would solve the problem of their limits with account-wide stuff? Since you could just pick which character to get the mail on and then once its unlocked its shared on all of them. That way you have no mail clutter too.

But I think? I recall seeing an interview where they outright said they just didn't see a point in people making alts/didn't know why people would need them or something. So I highly doubt anything alt friendly is ever going to happen with that attitude. Also a lot of players seem to have no interest in alts too since the game is designed to have you focus on just the one character.

[Ayalu]

Well the current Class Design is a big problem and source of frustration aswell.

[Dante131]

Thanks to both of you for expanding the list You are both right. The point is, whether the team and a group of people think alts are important or not, the truth is that people will still play alts. Some even have to start new characters for various reasons. My wife and I had trouble with an FC on our old server, which resulted in stalking, harassment, and a closed house. We started over on another server to escape them because SE's response to this issue was that they couldn't do anything. So, we left our completed characters with all mounts and minions behind and had to grind all over again. Why punish a new character?

Another point just came to mind. I have 140 clears on Valigamanda and still no mount in sight. Imagine getting it on run 898 or buying it after waiting 8 months, and then realizing that every one of your alts will need the same grind—that's insane!

I saw a lot of Viper threads lately after the patch, and I 100% understand why people are angry. The same goes for MCH players. I burst out laughing when I saw a half-page written for Viper changes and then one line for MCH, which has been a problem since ShB. Healers have been unhappy for years.

The problem is, if you ignore all of these issues, I can't see how FF14 will ever be superior, even above Guild Wars 2, in the future. Not to mention Yoshi-P's reactions when he gets questions about housing—I think everyone knows this face meme. I thought ignoring feedback from the community was a Blizzard thing, not SE, but I have to admit, lately, the tables have turned...

[Kaurhz]

oh sorry for the missunderstanding. I meant to lift the lockout or make mounts of ex trials buyable early. Because the case now is the Person whos doing the new Ex trials for example over 100+ times will maybe not get the mount until its buyable. after a half year where the most party just nuke the boss everyone will have it. Seems bit masochistic to me tbh

Oh, my bad for the misunderstanding there.

In this case I do completely agree. There's very limited functional reason to delay mounts by such a significant time period. It serves no benefit and just provides artificial rarity.

Personally, I also think either 2 tomes per primal, or reducing it from 99 runs to 50 or even 75 would be good as well.

[Dante131]

Oh, my bad for the misunderstanding there.

In this case I do completely agree. There's very limited functional reason to delay mounts by such a significant time period. It serves no benefit and just provides artificial rarity.

Personally, I also think either 2 tomes per primal, or reducing it from 99 runs to 50 or even 75 would be good as well.

yeah. i know a handfull of lucky peeps who get the thing in their practice clear but dunno alot have like 200 kills and saw the mount like 4 times and rolled below 10 on it.