The Formula won't change

[KillaKilala]

I feel like this game is slowly going on a maintenance mode as it has only 2-3 expansions left to live, so I don't expect devs to change the formula… It’s just unreasonable to change the whole system at this point. Nevertheless I have some suggestions that will improve the game and shouldn’t be much of an effort to implement. The amount of things we get to do for 4 months is a joke, but I believe it is coming not from the actual lack of content, but from a design philosophy that we should not “waste” our time playing this game too much, so a few simple tweaks should help a lot. Maybe devs will implement these suggestions to xiv or maybe to the next ff mmo, idc anymore I’ll just try to enjoy what is left as much as I can and not to forget everything good this game offered to me.

I may be a bit rushy since Yoshi-P did promise us a better MMO experience. But I feel like it’s a good time to post it since a lot of people are talking about the lack of content, and besides that I want midcore content to be harder. This is a game, but more importantly an mmo, and it doesn’t feel like any of it, so the game must change. Devs cater to casuals too much and I think casuals have more casual content to do than an average casual player will ever be able to complete.

The last time I tried making some suggestions people didn't even read the whole post I got shadowbanned on reddit xD So I want to clarify some things. Most things I’ll suggest are completely optional. If you don’t like this type of content just move on. Don’t send me to WoW that I didn’t even play that much. And don’t try to push the “go play other games” narrative, I love THIS game and I wanna play THIS game. And remember, two can play this game. Maybe devs should make all content the ultimate difficulty and then YOU can go play other games and come back when it gets easier?

1. So without further yapping I suggest the role coffers and role tomes. This game is being advertised as the game where you can play every job on one character. But realistically you will never be able to get BiS for every job. Therefore I suggest role rewards. Weekly restrictions will be applied upon clearing the raid as usual, but only to the role you cleared with. By role I mean either tank, healer or dps, or it can be gear sets maiming, striking, scouting etc. To prevent ninja looting or gearing up too fast coffers and tomes will also be tied to the player's current job. This will increase replayability so much. People think that if you are a raider you have something to do in this game, but in reality reclears are done in an hour, a day at worst. And then we have nothing to do for a whole week. This will also help more people get into raiding as there will be more helpers reclearing on the different jobs.

[KillaKilala]

2. Make dungeons fun again. Yeah trusts is a great and necessary addition to the game, but if you think about it, why do the dungeons need to be homogenised for trusts? Bosses? Maybe, but not the dungeons themselves. Just make trusts follow you everywhere and everything will work perfectly. Iirc Yoshi-P said that having multiple routes is pointless since people will figure out an optimal route and will only go that route. But then every time I went to the old Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak it was pure chaos, we were running back and forth trying to find the missing orbs and it was so much fun. Give us multiple routes. For instance make route 1 with less enemies and no loot, and route 2 with more enemies and more loot. Make players have communications other than hi o/ gg tyfp. Do you need that chest or can we skip? Yes I really need that glam, let’s go route 2. Or no I’m in a hurry, let’s skip and clear the dungeon faster. Remove artificial obstacles, let tanks decide how much they can or want to pull depending on their skill and gear. Add some mechanics to do between bosses, so that the runs won’t be as mindless as they are. As for the boss mechanics, make them easier to solve, but more punishing. There is no point in having complex mechanics when you can just ignore them by taking multiple hits and still being able to survive. I don’t want to do dungeons at its current state For what? Glam? Don’t care. Tomes? I’d rather go on a hunt train. But I don’t mind doing them for fun if they’ll be fun again.

3. Add more open world content. I believe the open world must be a sandbox, where you have a system with a lot of elements to interact with and explore. Now we only have fates and hunt marks that are on a big cooldown and smaller ranks give very low rewards. Add power scaling to the S ranks, depending on how many players are there. Hitting it just once and then running away is a joke. Make us do the mechanics and engage in the fight. This will also help people to get there in time, before the boss is insta pulled and killed in seconds. Add C ranks for solo players and make B ranks for 4-8 player parties, increase the spawn rate and add footprints or scent searching mechanic. The increased rewards from hunts may be the pieces of the Legendary weapons which I’ll write about down below.

Add power scaling to FATEs too, so that doing them won’t be as mindless and boring.

[KillaKilala]

Add repeatable quests that are hard that are hard and must be done in a party. Quest with an actual feeling of threat and enemies that can kill you in 2-5 auto hits if you are not paying attention. Same as dungeons, easy to solve but very punishing if not paying attention. Add encounters with multiple packs of mobs to manage, where sometimes even dps players have to tank some of the smaller enemies. Encounters that require active adjusting and decision making. Even though I love ffxiv choreography, I do the ultimate raids on autopilot with minimal thinking. Savage? No thinking at all, because it’s very scripted. I’m not asking to change the raids, but please make all the other content less scripted.

Add random chest drops/spawns with lockpicking like in ffxi.

Make situations where healing and all the other pots, including elemental resistance pots, will be useful again.

The type of content where they may be useful may be mini dungeons in the open world. I had so many situations in WoW such as going deep into the open world dungeon, running out of medications and having to wait for other players to come, cause the enemies respawned and there are so many of them that I can’t get out on my own. These were such fun adventures, this is what a true mmo experience is. Not just playing with other people but actually interacting with them. Honestly I can’t even tell the difference between a player and a bot when playing ffxiv, and I’m not talking about skill, I’m talking about behaviour. Actually there's a difference, bots talk more. And that’s because everything is so homogenised that there is nothing to discuss about the gameplay.

So, these dungeons must have threatening enemies. You can’t just rush through the dungeon, you have to carefully pull each enemy. Dungeons may have mechanics like doors locked behind rare drop keys. This will create interactions where players will have to look for other players who have the keys. Or make bridges that get destroyed over time and tunnels that collapse, and players have to repair them and clear the way, while other players defend them from upcoming enemies.

Open world needs something hidden to explore, to create a feeling of wonder. Like you’re doing something and you see something far away. What’s that? A cave? You go there and the enemies are so strong there, so you call your friends, you make preparations and go on an adventure. Of course over time people will make guides and optimise the farming. But what about players who don’t want to be backseated and don’t read guides? And even if you do read guides, what about the first time experience? It’s not right to completely get rid of any exploration and discovery just because people make guides these days. What’s the point of having an open world when you only travel on the rails?

[KillaKilala]

4. Speaking of exploration. It doesn’t exist in ffxiv. And this game has such beautiful locations, especially in DT. But what you do is teleport to the Aetheryte, fly up, hit auto run and alt+tab… You may think it’s a waste of time to actually travel in this game. But I can’t fully agree. I’m not asking for WoW type of traversion where you can spend half an hour getting from one place to another, but I do believe there must be less Aetherytes and the distance between them must be increased. A waste of time if you think so, but I think it’s better than autopiloting it. Or devs can add mechanics that encourage active traversing. Things like wind currents that increase your speed, or flying enemies that can kick you off the mount if you run into them. Also, maybe flying should be unlocked later, maybe even in x.1 patch… but I’m not sure about that xD

Make maps less detailed and add more landmarks. When I have to navigate in this game my sight is fixed on the map. It shouldn’t be like this. Imagine walking through a beautiful place, but missing all the beauty because you only see the map. You should navigate through the world and maps exist just to help you navigate.

5. Gear longevity. Gear must last longer. You spend MONTHS farming your bis and you have no use for it other than ultimates, assuming you even do them. And even if you do, when the next patch comes out you just throw away your hard earned gear and replace it with crafted gear that you can craft in an hour… That always makes me question myself what for did I farm my bis? Sure raids are fun to do, but I also wanna be rewarded and I don’t care about glam.

I think x.1-3-5 patches should add upgrades for the savage gear that are equivalent to the next patch crafted gear. Crafted gear is a catch up gear. And if you spend your time farming gear you shouldn't have to get crafted gear. Otherwise upgraded gear can be equivalent to the savage gear and the savage gear will have power between the tome/crafted gear and the current savage gear. Cause kill times this tier are a joke, and I have a feeling it will be the same from now on xD

Add synced gear with unique abilities that allow different play styles. Like a staff that allows you to do a few insta casts or a chest piece that increases mit or creates a shield. Don’t be scared to make the game unbalanced. People have been ranting about job balance for the whole EW lifespan, and I don’t remember anyone unsubbing over that. Let’s experiment.

[KillaKilala]

6. Add Legendary gear. We already have huge time sinks for the pteranodon mount or the hunt mounts. Can we have some gear to grind? Not as huge tho xD Maybe about ¼ as big as the pteranodon mount grind. Legendary gear is so cool. Even if you’re not going to farm it yourself it’s always exciting to see other people who got it. Material for this gear can be dropped from any kind of content, savages, extremes, hunts, dungeons, open world. Savage pieces may be sold on the marketboard to allow casual players to participate too.

7. MSQ and progression. I think there must be no content locked behind the msq. Let the raiders go straight to the raids without wasting time on skipping cutscenes, and do the story later. I also think that progression on your first job must take you longer. I've completed the EW msq in a week or two with all the queues and stuff, and I’ve beaten DT in 3 days or so. Again I’m not asking for Chains of Promathia difficulty, where it took some players a whole year to get through the msq, but I think it should take at least a month for an average player. The rest jobs can be levelled as fast as the current system allows. Now I’ve said that I want raiders to go straight to the raids. That’s why we need alternative levelling methods for the skilled players. Maybe mini dungeons I suggested earlier can take this spot.

I want this because the last time I felt a power up was when during ShB as a sprout I got my Ironworks gear. Ever since then my lvl was just a meaningless number. I think hitting max lvl should feel like you achieved something and not like a chore.

8. Tanks and Healers changes. I’m mostly a dps player, but I think it might be fun if tanks and healers had to heal and mitigate more actively. Maybe bosses should do autos more often randomly to all players. Healers will have more to heal, and tanks will have a number of skills that can shield their allies that are telegraphed for an auto attack.

And that’s it for now. Hopefully you’ll find these suggestions good and if you don’t, at least I’ve tried instead of yapping how bad the game is xD

[Kohashi]

There is absolutely no reason for the tome cap even to exist in the first place. So what I want to farm 24/7 and gear all of my roles with BiS that has actually no 'real' value beyond fun and doing the fights using different roles.

How is it different from logging in 1 day/ week vs being active and not logging in after for a time? I would very much like the developer not to treat me like a child who needs their hand constantly being held and told what I am and not allowed to do with my own damn time and money.

[Moqi]

Weekly caps and lockouts are just energy systems that the playerbase has conviced themselves they're acceptable (because we're all babies who can't control themselves apparently) while they turn around and criticize F2P games that have them, even though it is actually possible to get rid of them in those games and it probably costs less than the months it takes to gear a character here.

[Alice_Rivers]

I agree with pretty much everything on this list, save for maybe the gear perks, I do want more variety of stats available and I could see room for set bonuses. I could see some gear that shows up in the X.5 patch and grows with you into X.0 similar to how relics work. On MSQ, there's already this thread that includes some really good ideas and your open world dungeon type thing reminds me a lot of areas in SWTOR but better. I think they should be 'unofficial' dungeons in that you would be able to change jobs while inside so they can add things for crafters and gatherers to do to speed them up.

I mentioned somewhere else it would be really cool if some dungeons had lore appropriate sections to them, like Holminster or Vanaspati could have escort/protection of civilians I'm sure there is somewhere it makes sense to have a pause to heal people somewhere, Stone Vigil maybe - Run across some soldiers who just finished a fight but can't make it out without healing, make it a bonus objective that gives something nice if you do it. Flavour things like that that make dungeons feel more like actual places and events within the world.

[Swordsman]

I feel like this game is slowly going on a maintenance mode as it has only 2-3 expansions left to live, so I don't expect devs to change the formula…

[AmiableApkallu]

I mentioned somewhere else it would be really cool if some dungeons had lore appropriate sections to them

Sastasha has these. No one ever visits them, because they're optional. And also because if you've been there once, then it's not as if a second visit reveals anything new.

Make these lore sections "required," and they're Just Another Thing You Do On Your Way to the Daily Roulette Bonus, much like Haurchefant in Aitiascope.

The problem isn't making something interesting or worthwhile the first time someone runs it. The problem is making something interesting or worthwhile the 100th time they run it.