Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Tbf, the "borrowed powers" complaint is one I never quite understood about WoW... unless one would make the same complaint about any seasonal/expansion ups and downs to gameplay, degree of available customization, etc. At its simplest, the woes of "borrowed powers" were that, for purposes of experimentation, WoW would wipe the slate each expansion to ensure the base kits were working before again allowing further means of customization -- but for that exact reason they were able to go more wild and expansion-thematic with said customization each time. While it felt bad going from much more involved builds with further flavorful powers back to the basics each time, the results were some very fun and varied gameplay experiences expansion by expansion. The repeated changes largely just caught flak for the times in which one's / the largest camp's preferred playstyle wasn't also the most optimal playstyle, just as they would have if the optimal playstyle remained stagnant. Yes, in some cases they over-experimented or pulled an XIV-style infant-yeet in the course of clearing out the waste in ways that they didn't strictly need to, but I suspect many also overestimate the amount of time it took to (re)build different but fundamentally similar systems as compared to retuning whatever was deemed to be functional around whatever else could be added for expansion-tailored thematic effect.

/rant

Anywho, in XIV's case, though, we're largely just looking at forced commitment. The more a lane of content's requirements are progressible only through that particular lane of content, the more isolated it becomes and the more it forces you to play just that. Which is why I never really understood the goal of having Eureka be self-contained in its gearing atop whatever unique gameplay-affecting power-unlocks it may include instead of that gear simply being an alternative means of general progression. It's not as if players would necessarily feel compelled to skip out on early power unlocks just because, already equipped with raid gear, they could feasibly skip ahead to fight the second zone's mobs, etc. Or, one could have gear matter not at all -- only the power unlocks would -- but still at least allow players not going for week one clears to get around the need for crafted gear (or even just the former tier's BiS) before jumping into Savage.

I guess what bugs me most about that is that we end up with content that either feels so piecework that one doesn't feel like they have much per patch of whatever content they like (even if the actual sum of doable content would nonetheless be decently high -- even if inferior to what greater replayability might provide within, say, core content) or we end up sectionalizing things for which gating indirect progression (e.g., gear, rather than the actual clears) serves no real purpose.

If we're meant to be able to enjoy these things together, why is there so little effort put towards making content more accessible without reducing difficulty, say...
  • via built in personal parsers with contextualizable analytics for personal performance information, progressive encounter journals, and tighter checks on progression a la an improved High-End Duty Finder to reduce chance of intentional or unintentional leeching, atop greater rewards for repeat weekly raid clears to decrease queue times, etc., by which to make PuGing raids more time-accessible and far less frustrating without changing the encounters themselves; and even
  • for Exploratory Missions and the like be "real" zones and therefore allow players to queue for other content while within -- if they're not going to have zone-wide events that would actually require all players within the zone anyways -- alongside revamping UI and party-only skill limitations to better support party-less multiplayer play (e.g., automatically resized Party List-like bars, improved nameplate support/functionality, and AoE supportive/healing actions spliting their effectiveness after 4 affected allies, to a max of 8 nearest, prioritizing party members, rather than their effects being limited to only party members).


Like, we both fail to make the open-world or EMs that interesting in themselves, as if they were to be backdrop content, but we also don't go very far to make them (enjoyably) compatible with drop-in multiplayer gameplay. ...Why? You'd think at least one or the other would appeal as an avenue of further improvement.

Sometimes I have nothing to disagree with, or haven't an idea enough to respond, but I do enjoy that I know if you respond to me that it'll be an entire thought lol.

I agree on the borrowed power, the only thing I'd suggest is to leave it alone for that expansion content. Give it some time warp excuse and call it a day. This way people can enjoy the progression mechanics later and weird ideas that were present. Yes you'll still have a drop in power at the next expansion, but as you said this is one of the ways they can change the meta and keep people on their toes (burnout protection).
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Man back when we were talking parsers I was like "what if SE added a personal parser" and people were like NOOOO WE CANT LET THE GAME HAVE IT.. we have to beat it. Now we have whole websites you get parsed whether you like it or not lol, and still no tool in game. Just ignorant players vs those who see everything. I suggested that the game would also catalog people of similar ilvl / job / group / content, and then aggregate that (anonymized) and show it to you. That way SE and you can see how you're doing in the scope of other jobs, your job, and in general. For MSQ content eh, but for savage and such, it would have been nice if the game attempted to gate people to increase success and reduce frustration (like I was all for having a hall of experts that you had to pass to join hard content, yes some people would try hard once and then not afterwards, but it would filter those who 'cannot', PF ignoring this of course).

100% on the exploratory thing, though I think we were clearly in alignment just from the general thought on borrowed power lol. How cool if instead of a funnel set off to the side that locks up other choices, FFXIV added new progression mechanics to the whole expansion, that then also entailed entirely new zones to take those things to? :/