FFXIV 3.0 : Heavensward - Expansion Information and Discussion

[Sho]

No one will ever be happy at this caliber of MMO -- you should have all known the swap progression would be continuing going into 3.0.

I mean, they set the tone for this in 2.1, well over a year and 3 months ago. They are doing this to allow for hardcore players to be able to take a break from the game and play other shit as well as allow the mid-tier and casuals catch up to then aging content. If you go onto one of the legacy servers, you'll see that most hardcore FCs go hard as fuck during a new raid for 1-2 months, then either temp quit playing or catch up on their casual grind during a CT update, then get back into just a month or a couple of weeks before a new raid expansion. Casuals almost never touch raid content until a few weeks after a CT update, then they join in it too accordingly as well. If you are a true hardcore-bro, you had the best shit about 3-4 months before 90% of the FFXIV community (unless of course, RNG machine hated you).

The system works as intended. It seems the truly angry people about this are still on that FFXI-like "I want to forever be more bossmode over these filthy casuals" type shit. Don't worry, you'll all get your chance in 3.0, since they are splitting raid content into hard and easy mode tiers, lol.

[Niiro]

To be fair, if the content was flipped (CTs before Coils) then elites would be crying that their Coil gear was being outdated by faceroll easy content that is CT.

Which is why CT and the next coil are supposed to come at the same time (CT1 was supposed to be out at launch but they couldn't get it ready in time).

CT gear wouldn't be garbage/welfare gear if it was actually upgrades that people could use to clear coil, but when it comes out long after everyone's had enough weeks of tomes to buy a full set of equal ilvl gear (and/or gotten better gear from coil) it just serves no real purpose.

The only reason I can think of for continuing the backward and stupid release cycle of CT and coil is to simply give the illusion of more content because they were putting out so little.

[Ramset]

To be fair, if the content was flipped (CTs before Coils) then elites would be crying that their Coil gear was being outdated by faceroll easy content that is CT.

Yeah, absolutely. In just disappointed they can't come out at the same time to allow for real progression. Even if order of difficulty was 24 man -> Alex Normal -> Alex HM, then it would be possible for players of lower skill level to still make up the difference needed with gear. As it stands now in currency system, that means we will be able to clear Alexander HM with ilvl 15-20 ilvl below Alex HM ilvl drops, which is no different than current system. Unless they plan to make it so hard that we NEED the 24 man raid gear to meet DPS/HP checks...and if that's the case, what's the point?

We can obviously make points that hardcore players aren't the majority demographic, which is fine; I understand the business needs. I'm simply arguing that it could be better designed for everyone. I don't mean to sound like a whiny both and rain on everyone's parade, because for all I know things could be different and they just haven't released enough info... But from what we know so far it doesn't seem like it.

[Buffy]

The greatest need is for content that isn't linked to 4 or 8 person groups. Something that scales dynamically based on number of people, or allows you to bring 13 or 17 or 7 people. I don't have 7 set friends dammit.

[Kaslo]

See but thinking about it, if they came out at the same time, that a big chunk of content removed from odd numbered patches.

[ronin sparthos]

The greatest need is for content that isn't linked to 4 or 8 person groups. Something that scales dynamically based on number of people, or allows you to bring 13 or 17 or 7 people. I don't have 7 set friends dammit.

Like hunts. Without the cunts.

Craft/farm item -> pop monster -> get loot scaling with #of people. Throw in random vanity skins. Basically another version of maps.

[Lucavi]

The answer is obviously having the fastest chocobo

Almost there. Nearly there.

[Ramset]

See but thinking about it, if they came out at the same time, that a big chunk of content removed from odd numbered patches.

Which could be replaced with other content....? After you've reached max level (which is piss easy), and beat Coil what is there to do in this game? Grind Zodiac, Grind Ponies, cap weekly tomestones, and do beast man dailies.

For those that cannot beat raid right away, they either need to save tomestones for weeks, or wait for 24 man face roll to get gear before attempting. Why not make it more accessible to everyone right away.

On the topic of vertical progression, the means of this is GEAR, I'd be happy with current systems of there were just more gear options. Maybe a Primal Set at max ilvl force you to farm Primals for components to craft armor. Maybe weapons that require killing 5000 enemies, whatever. If there were more than just TWO max ilvl gear sets it would provide much more reason to play and do other things in the game. Let's be honest, this is not a real balancing issue, all they do in this game with two gear sets is balance secondary stats per class. They wasted time creating Odin armor for glamour that has actual stats on it, knowing full well it's useless. Give us meaningful armor sets and I'll fucking fucking level 15 dungeon over and over again if I have to just to get better armor.

[Lucavi]

This whole storage space thing has me thinking that we won't be getting as many different sources of gear as people want, even if SE wanted to go the route of having 5 different ways to hit each ilvl gear cap. Pretty sure they need to figure out where the fuck people are supposed to put all this stuff while being able to reasonably access it before they can start throwing out gobs of gear at us from every content angle like t-shirts fired out into a crowd at a concert.

Remember, this is a unique MMO where each single player can play any job at any time. That means each player, given enough time, pretty much will have sets of gear for any job at any time. Many of those players will have different level ranges of gear for each job to cover a broader amount of circumstances, and we're not even mentioning glamor. Where are people supposed to put all this stuff? This ain't no WoW where we're gearing a single class and crafting really doesn't even have gear. This isn't Rift where we have a few classes we can bounce between. We can literally play -everything- this game offers on a single character. We're running into one of the only flaws of that freedom.

They've said that they can't increase the size of the armory chest for X or Y reason (I'm still going with too much leftover code from the shitpile that was 1.0 and redoing it all would have broken too many other things), so what's the option? Everyone gets a Pip Boy with instant access to retainers on the fly? I mean, there's a lot of stuff that surrounds the design decisions for gear aside from "how else can we rustle the Jimmies of our hardcore players who we just got finished essentially sucking off in interviews by lavishing praise on how quickly the very best of em are able to clear our content?" questions thrown around in developer meetings.

None of what I've said offers any solutions, and isn't designed to, because every solution to one problem potentially opens up another for some other subset of player.

[Eurell]

Which could be replaced with other content....?

Oh shit! Why didn't SE just think about adding more content!?

I mean, come on dude lol. I know what you're trying to say, but just going, Add more content! is ridiculous. And your examples of grinding old shit (which we already did for relics) sounds like 0 fun lol.

[Ramset]

Oh shit! Why didn't SE just think about adding more content!?

I mean, come on dude lol. I know what you're trying to say, but just going, Add more content! is ridiculous. And your examples of grinding old shit (which we already did for relics) sounds like 0 fun lol.

Let me state that I'm in the business of software development, I'm not naive to the amount of time and work it takes. My statement wasn't a simple as "add more content", rather to contend that they should (or should have) spend/t their time during design considering these things. Instead of adding an entire primal battle that only drops glamour gear, or giving us 15 different color swimsuits/yukatas (which is cool stuff, don't get me wrong, I merely aim to highlight that there is too much focus on stupid gingerbread crap than actual meaningful content to an MMO).

Also, no, I agree with you 100% I don't want to have to grind old content, but don't contradict yourself...if we have limitations of software development (cannot add SO much new content), what else are we supposed to do?

[Spider-Dan]

CT gear wouldn't be garbage/welfare gear if it was actually upgrades that people could use to clear coil, but when it comes out long after everyone's had enough weeks of tomes to buy a full set of equal ilvl gear (and/or gotten better gear from coil) it just serves no real purpose.

...except that CT also drops (or questgives) the previously-coil-only mats to upgrade your welfare gear to coil-equivalent ilevel. (And I'm sure we can all agree that WoD or the weekly quest will start dispersing encrypted tomestones in 2.52.) That's the point.

CT (and hunts) are the mechanism for allowing non-coil players to catch up to coil ilevels. With the advent of the new CT weekly quest, CT is now rather blatantly a token-style replacement for coil upgrade mats.

[Rocl]

Which could be replaced with other content....? After you've reached max level (which is piss easy), and beat Coil what is there to do in this game? Grind Zodiac, Grind Ponies, cap weekly tomestones, and do beast man dailies.

Wow you forgot the true fucking endgame: G O L D S A U C E R; or more accurately: CHOCOBO RACING.

[Lucavi]

Let me state that I'm in the business of software development, I'm not naive to the amount of time and work it takes. My statement wasn't a simple as "add more content", rather to contend that they should (or should have) spend/t their time during design considering these things. Instead of adding an entire primal battle that only drops glamour gear, or giving us 15 different color swimsuits/yukatas (which is cool stuff, don't get me wrong, I merely aim to highlight that there is too much focus on stupid gingerbread crap than actual meaningful content to an MMO).

Also, no, I agree with you 100% I don't want to have to grind old content, but don't contradict yourself...if we have limitations of software development (cannot add SO much new content), what else are we supposed to do?

So what content should they be cutting to make room to prioritize the content that YOU want to see? And, if someone else in here comes in and says that they're disappointing that the content that was cut for YOU was fun for THEM, what, then, do you say to them?

This is why making content laser-focused onto a small subset is a silly idea. Is it truly smart to alienate the majority to satisfy a minority? I still believe that separating coils in 2 difficulties with 2 sets of gear is the right direction. I'm more worried about penta melds and the over-reliance on design crutches like AOE HP checks instead of actual punishing mechanics during fights.

[ronin sparthos]

This whole storage space thing has me thinking that we won't be getting as many different sources of gear as people want, even if SE wanted to go the route of having 5 different ways to hit each ilvl gear cap. Pretty sure they need to figure out where the fuck people are supposed to put all this stuff while being able to reasonably access it before they can start throwing out gobs of gear at us from every content angle like t-shirts fired out into a crowd at a concert.

Remember, this is a unique MMO where each single player can play any job at any time. That means each player, given enough time, pretty much will have sets of gear for any job at any time. Many of those players will have different level ranges of gear for each job to cover a broader amount of circumstances, and we're not even mentioning glamor. Where are people supposed to put all this stuff? This ain't no WoW where we're gearing a single class and crafting really doesn't even have gear. This isn't Rift where we have a few classes we can bounce between. We can literally play -everything- this game offers on a single character. We're running into one of the only flaws of that freedom.

They've said that they can't increase the size of the armory chest for X or Y reason (I'm still going with too much leftover code from the shitpile that was 1.0 and redoing it all would have broken too many other things), so what's the option? Everyone gets a Pip Boy with instant access to retainers on the fly? I mean, there's a lot of stuff that surrounds the design decisions for gear aside from "how else can we rustle the Jimmies of our hardcore players who we just got finished essentially sucking off in interviews by lavishing praise on how quickly the very best of em are able to clear our content?" questions thrown around in developer meetings.

None of what I've said offers any solutions, and isn't designed to, because every solution to one problem potentially opens up another for some other subset of player.

I'm thinking the GW2 style of a glamour system where you consume gear to unlock glams for later use. Maybe perhaps even a return to item sets on an NPC in the vein of XI.

[Rocl]

and let's be honest the most offensive and disheartening things Yoshida has said has been expanding hunts. i expected pretty much everything else aside from the 2 week lockout on tomes/alexander and i welcome that.

[Sho]

They've said that they can't increase the size of the armory chest for X or Y reason (I'm still going with too much leftover code from the shitpile that was 1.0 and redoing it all would have broken too many other things), so what's the option?

Why are you saying this? Yoshi-P has time and time again (with the most recent being PAX 2015) stated that the reason why they can't increase the size of the armory/inventory space is because they write data to the backend of the server every 15 seconds so there wouldn't be typical MMO rollbacks when servers inevitably crash or have to undergo emergency maintenance. This is very much unlike FFXI which had a file structure and bad GUI interface to worry about (though the FFXI team too had a problem with data writing as well). He also mentioned that it wasn't impossible, only that research needed to be done to find a means of going about it without inconveniencing players with [more] server lag.

I can bet they'll resolve the problem by the end of the 3.X series.

[Lucavi]

I'm thinking the GW2 style of a glamour system where you consume gear to unlock glams for later use. Maybe perhaps even a return to item sets on an NPC in the vein of XI.

They have to do something, and they know that better than we do. Its just strange to see people ready to get into fights about vertical vs. horizontal when that isn't the real issue.

Also, Chocobo Racing is god. I am a God at Chocobo Racing. Therefore, I am God.

@Sho: I normally don't do this, but that's one area where I'll always proudly rock my tinfoil hat. I'm not disputing what Yoshi has said about it, and I've read up on what he just said at PAX, and that's fine, but I still have my own thoughts about how much scrap metal was carried over from the sinking, festering, bleached and bloated corpse of 1.0 to be re-purposed and retrofitted into 2.0. I salute them for working on the problem and I share your thoughts that they'll have something figured out by the end of 3.0, but my thoughts are my own regarding that issue.

[Niiro]

...except that CT also drops (or questgives) the previously-coil-only mats to upgrade your welfare gear to coil-equivalent ilevel. (And I'm sure we can all agree that WoD or the weekly quest will start dispersing encrypted tomestones in 2.52.) That's the point.

CT (and hunts) are the mechanism for allowing non-coil players to catch up to coil ilevels. With the advent of the new CT weekly quest, CT is now rather blatantly a token-style replacement for coil upgrade mats.

Except it was entirely their choice to add the coil upgrade items to ST.

The items weren't there originally and are not tied to the event in any way.

[Sho]

They have to do something, and they know that better than we do. Its just strange to see people ready to get into fights about vertical vs. horizontal when that isn't the real issue.

Also, Chocobo Racing is god. I am a God at Chocobo Racing. Therefore, I am God.

@Sho: I normally don't do this, but that's one area where I'll always proudly rock my tinfoil hat. I'm not disputing what Yoshi has said about it, and I've read up on what he just said at PAX, and that's fine, but I still have my own thoughts about how much scrap metal was carried over from the sinking, festering, bleached and bloated corpse of 1.0 to be re-purposed and retrofitted into 2.0. I salute them for working on the problem and I share your thoughts that they'll have something figured out by the end of 3.0, but my thoughts are my own regarding that issue.

It's OK, as much as you are a tinfoil hatted man, I am an armchair software dev warrior. Even so, they didn't carry over any of the previous battle system, only the 1.0 assets in the form of move names, art, animations and armor rendering. They built the entire game engine from the ground up between 1.10 and 1.23 (Basically a month or so after Yoshi-P was handed the keys to the project). They've also stated this in the past -- it only takes some minor digging into the 1.0 archive on the OF to see this. There's really no need to guess what's going concerning the issue because they are being so transparent as they have been on other server related issues (start of vanilla, housing fiasco, start of Hunt content, etc).

Keep in mind these people who are working on this are mostly from the old FFXI team that was helmed by Tanaka, so it shows a big difference that one man in the form of the producer & director makes for the team. Even so, it seems that Yoshi-P was just recently given an executive position on the SE Board of Directors for Research & Development at some point in time. Dude will fix the problem, lol.

Personally, all he really can do in my opinion is increase the physical number of machines running the server(s). I couldn't begin to imagine how they set up their server however, lol.