Proposal: Rebalance FFXIV Around Living Zones and Scalable Challenge

[Jeeqbit]

Does endgame content have to be all about challenging content?

The narrative that it's all about that, I think started with Everquest and WoW? So it created a belief system among many people, including developers of many MMORPGs, that challenging raids are the central component.

But the reality is there has always been a massive part of their playerbases that aren't interested in challenge so much as just interesting things to do, such as exploring, carefully navigating strong enemies often daring to do it solo, doing quests, grinding to a goal/achievement, RPing, doing multiplayer content that isn't hard but is fun due to the holy trinity mattering, crafting/gathering type mechanics, pvp and any other ideas they have like hide and seek, searching for clues, defending bases, etc.

[Chasingstars]

The narrative that it's all about that, I think started with Everquest and WoW? So it created a belief system among many people, including developers of many MMORPGs, that challenging raids are the central component.

But the reality is there has always been a massive part of their playerbases that aren't interested in challenge so much as just interesting things to do, such as exploring, carefully navigating strong enemies often daring to do it solo, doing quests, grinding to a goal/achievement, RPing, doing multiplayer content that isn't hard but is fun due to the holy trinity mattering, crafting/gathering type mechanics, pvp and any other ideas they have like hide and seek, searching for clues, defending bases, etc.

Definitely Everquest and some other older ones like Anarchy Online or FF11. Meanwhile WoW just took what others were doing at the time and made it more accessible and easy for the average person to do and got popular off that.

[Altina_Orion]

Oldschool Runescape. The primary endgame is achieving the max cape which means both combat and noncombat related content.

They also have three raids but they are more secondary to skilling and are optional content.

The Chambers of Xeric (mix of combat and noncombat, randomized). The Theather of Blood (Combat but has three difficulties of easy, normal, and hard). And finally, Tombs of Amascut (Has three tiers of combat difficulty, but these tiers are based on what invocations you pick to make it either easier or harder on yourself. Can be soloed.)

Which the raids by the way don't require you to be at max skilling, even ToA for soloing.

I feel like this shows the opposite though.

[Chasingstars]

I feel like this shows the opposite though.

Part of skilling is related to combat. But its also just simple stuff like chopping wood, mining ore, fishing, thieving, slaying the equivalent of A and S-Ranks.

So you know how we have the free trial? Everything up to level 70? Well the endgame of that, similar to runescape isn't just dictated by purely raids or ultimates or savages. Its part of the content, which is true, but its more so like trying to 100% complete a video game.

[AvoSturmfaust]

Oldschool Runescape. The primary endgame is achieving the max cape which means both combat and noncombat related content.

They also have three raids but they are more secondary to skilling and are optional content.

The Chambers of Xeric (mix of combat and noncombat, randomized). The Theather of Blood (Combat but has three difficulties of easy, normal, and hard). And finally, Tombs of Amascut (Has three tiers of combat difficulty, but these tiers are based on what invocations you pick to make it either easier or harder on yourself. Can be soloed.)

Which the raids by the way don't require you to be at max skilling, even ToA for soloing.

Good, fine i accept runescape its ok, but tbh would you really call OSRC a full fledged MMORPG? I would more go in the Direction "sandbox - do what ever you want" like albion online, but ok like i said, i accept it so we got ONE

[AvoSturmfaust]

The narrative that it's all about that, I think started with Everquest and WoW? So it created a belief system among many people, including developers of many MMORPGs, that challenging raids are the central component.

But the reality is there has always been a massive part of their playerbases that aren't interested in challenge so much as just interesting things to do, such as exploring, carefully navigating strong enemies often daring to do it solo, doing quests, grinding to a goal/achievement, RPing, doing multiplayer content that isn't hard but is fun due to the holy trinity mattering, crafting/gathering type mechanics, pvp and any other ideas they have like hide and seek, searching for clues, defending bases, etc.

Its not really about a "belief" system, its what i saw the last 18 Years, just look at the current Games

WoW - Raids, Delves (Higher Delves)
Eso - Raids, Veteran Dungeons & Arenas (No PvP Arenas, more like Challenge Runs etc)

In the past as example i played many many Years Blade & Soul the Endgame was Raids & Hardmode Dungeons
Lost Ark? How is it there? Challenging Content

Aura Kingdom, etc etc etc etc etc so many many more Games, in the End it always was about Raids OR Dungeons (Challenging, no easy going)

I cant Remember one single game in the past 18 Years where no hard content or "challening content" was the main thing for endgame, be it like i said raids or dungeons or some solo stuff or anything


But thats not the topic here, it shouldnt be go in this direction again, i was just curious why people play a MMORPG when they not really participate in 70% of the Content

[Chasingstars]

Good, fine i accept runescape its ok, but tbh would you really call OSRC a full fledged MMORPG? I would more go in the Direction "sandbox - do what ever you want" like albion online, but ok like i said, i accept it so we got ONE

I'd say so. As the main mmorpgs on the market are FFXIV, OSRS, WoW, GW2, and ESO in terms of player engagement. Though main difference is OSRS doesn't do expansions like the others do. Its more like content updates, like the equivalent of adding a new raid or a new field operations or some new minigame at the gold saucer.

[Raikai]

Savage is a long-term prog for many people (sorry week1 clearers, but you don't represent everyone, look at how many weeks people complained about their P8S, P10S or M6S prog) and then there's reclears.

There's one thing that bothers me a lot in the Savage prog - you do it one floor at a time, repeating the same fight over and over until the mechanics stick. As a PF raider (for scheduling issues I couldn't ever get into statics), it is a long term investment yeah, but it also burns me out really fast doing the same thing. I feel that it could be much better if we had the opportunity of joining previous floor's reclear parties without compromising their loot tables, because I could do other fights just for fun as some sort of palate cleanser or just to get better at my job's full potential, which is something that is kinda stressful to do with clear parties that don't care for loot tables.

[MicahZerrshia]

I am all for bringing more content into the open world and I feel they really wasted all of Eorzea by making it just a backdrop for the msq instead of adding meaningful content. And as much as I loathe fates, they could make them actually interesting if they shook things up a bit by making new kinds of fates and have winning or losing them effect the world at large in some way instead of just giving us reskins of the same handful of meaningless fates in every single zone, every single expansion. It's been 15 years, why do they keep adding the same 6 fates ad nauseam?

That being said, I hope they don't take the ESO route and have all zones scale to your level. That was the worst choice they could have made in ESO and it made the overworld and the content therein just insanely boring because it stripped all the danger and fun out of the open world.

[Altina_Orion]

I am all for bringing more content into the open world and I feel they really wasted all of Eorzea by making it just a backdrop for the msq instead of adding meaningful content. And as much as I loathe fates, they could make them actually interesting if they shook things up a bit by making new kinds of fates and have winning or losing them effect the world at large in some way instead of just giving us reskins of the same handful of meaningless fates in every single zone, every single expansion. It's been 15 years, why do they keep adding the same 6 fates ad nauseam?

That being said, I hope they don't take the ESO route and have all zones scale to your level. That was the worst choice they could have made in ESO and it made the overworld and the content therein just insanely boring because it stripped all the danger and fun out of the open world.

Yep! I also hated the ESO world scaling. It feels bad that a maxed level player can do just as much as a level 1 (I know this isn't quite true but it feels like it is)