FFXIV Random Complaint Thread II: DPS can't count to potato

[carlweathers]

I haven't posted in ages but feel like bitching about the game during maintenance.

1. Casual content is godawful easy. Dungeons need a touch more difficulty and there needs to be an option like with raid finder to only allow cleared people to join up on your queue. Make it give less rewards it some shit, I don't care.
2. "Extreme" primals are a joke. If we can 7man it within days, get it out of here. I appreciate the Merc money I make off it, but would rather have a challenge.
3. Speaking of a challenge, scripted fights are boring and a joke. You could in most occasions write a program to play your character. Zero thought required after initial clears. One of the reasons why fights in XI were a lot of fun was having to react and deal with the mob's WSes--a lot of resource management and buffs and gear etc.
4. Gear scaling is terrible and creates completely dead content. Making switchable gear and upgrades for stats made so many older activities in XI viable for so, so long. Some are probably even viable to this day.

I definitely feel you on the first 2 points, it feels like a lot of the problems that FFXIV has in as a vertical progression game, is that they release these awkward tiers of content that are done once and then never touched on again, instead of being used as proper stepping stones to harder content.

3. There are definitely a lot of challenging fights in the Savage raid content. Dealing with the mechanics while performing enough output is very challenging. Many FCs are in capable of doing such stuff.

4. I don't think it's necessarily terrible, its just different. It's a vertical progression gane, completely different than FFXI, and yeah older activities in XI are viable for so long, but it also means you're doing old shit, when you could be seeing new stuff. The gear itemization is really boring for a vertical progression MMO anyway, I really hope they do some interesting changes in the expansion to address that, so everything isn't just stat sticks.

[Shenrien]

Maybe they'll take a page out of diablo/wow with the tokens used to enter dungeon at a higher difficulty for greater reward.

[carlweathers]

Maybe they'll take a page out of diablo/wow with the tokens used to enter dungeon at a higher difficulty for greater reward.

I really like that system, especially with the affixes which make the dungeon a bit different. They might want to play with the rewards a bit differently, in either power or how many pieces per week, since 4 man content might step on 8 man raids' toes moreso.

[Seiji Okita]

I definitely feel you on the first 2 points, it feels like a lot of the problems that FFXIV has in as a vertical progression game, is that they release these awkward tiers of content that are done once and then never touched on again, instead of being used as proper stepping stones to harder content.

3. There are definitely a lot of challenging fights in the Savage raid content. Dealing with the mechanics while performing enough output is very challenging. Many FCs are in capable of doing such stuff.

4. I don't think it's necessarily terrible, its just different. It's a vertical progression gane, completely different than FFXI, and yeah older activities in XI are viable for so long, but it also means you're doing old shit, when you could be seeing new stuff. The gear itemization is really boring for a vertical progression MMO anyway, I really hope they do some interesting changes in the expansion to address that, so everything isn't just stat sticks.

It is the streamlined super-balanced nature of this game that is both its weakness and its curse. After having played FFXIV since 1.0 I am actually back to playing FFXI and having a lot of fun.

This development teams unwillingness to take risk, break balance, and just muck shit up at the core of their game is leading, at least in my opinion, to a rather soulless experience. With the extreme balance, and the boiling down of job roles to specifically Tank/DPS/Healer, it feels like Guitar Hero Final Fantasy edition where the job you pick is your instrument and the content you are attempting is the song. Learn the dance, stay within the error threshold, rinse and repeat.

Between the boring stat-stick gear, and humdrum jobs I feel at such a loss because I have devoted so much time to this game and I am just not happy with the current direction.

The icing on the cake is the easy to find comments from Yoshida regarding his stance on itemization, job builds, and the like:

Yoshida: If there were specific items that had that boost or an added ability, we would want a situation where that item needs to be hard to obtain by farming or making the drop rate extremely low and that’s not really productive either. In this game we have people of all skill levels. Different players have the freedom to choose which content they want to play and so the development team wants to make it so that no matter how each player plays the game, they can still end up at the same strength and be on an equal playing field. That’s what we keep in mind when deciding the strength of an item. Adding anything special like stats or abilities on weapons is quite dangerous and so we avoid that kind of situation.

Yoshida: Right. So, if we did something like add mode A and mode B for dragoon, eventually people on the internet would examine them and choose which one was stronger. Then, when we created new content, the content would have to be based on whatever was strongest. There would be a lot of discussion about the job states like “that job is too strong” or “that job is too weak” and people would always choose what they felt was best. That’s not to say a skill system like that would be negative, but the armoury system itself already allows you to play all of the different jobs. Since we already have that system in place, I’m not expecting that we’ll make branches for jobs for the time being."

It is sad because all of this has me thinking back to 1.23 and how much hope I had for the direction of the game.

[Twilight Sky]

Didn't take long for the apartments to be sold out..

[Corrderio]

Didn't take long for the apartments to be sold out..

Wait, weren't apartments supposed to be the answer to housing being sold out constantly?

[Twilight Sky]

Edit: Actually, I just read that there is 2, and 1 in every ward. I only checked 1 ward. So don't go worrying yet..

[Corrderio]

So basically they're trying to put another band-aid on a gunshot wound and letting what happens happen.

Was this guy all SE had to take control of 1.0?

[Twilight Sky]

You missed my edit, but still I don't think it will take long for 90 x #OfWards(plus the extra in the subdivision) to run out.

I will check so more wards today or at least til I can finally buy one.

[Corrderio]

That's still sounds like a pretty limited quantity, which to me is an issue for a game that advertises housing as one of the game's features

[Lokus]

There's something like 6000+ apartments up for grabs. Not everyone will bother getting one either.

[Burningthought]

I haven't posted in ages but feel like bitching about the game during maintenance.

1. Casual content is godawful easy. Dungeons need a touch more difficulty and there needs to be an option like with raid finder to only allow cleared people to join up on your queue. Make it give less rewards it some shit, I don't care.
2. "Extreme" primals are a joke. If we can 7man it within days, get it out of here. I appreciate the Merc money I make off it, but would rather have a challenge.
3. Speaking of a challenge, scripted fights are boring and a joke. You could in most occasions write a program to play your character. Zero thought required after initial clears. One of the reasons why fights in XI were a lot of fun was having to react and deal with the mob's WSes--a lot of resource management and buffs and gear etc.
4. Gear scaling is terrible and creates completely dead content. Making switchable gear and upgrades for stats made so many older activities in XI viable for so, so long. Some are probably even viable to this day.

Damn, I literally came here to post something similar after steamrolling some of the primals I missed and T13. Endgame in XIV right now is completely dead to me. I'm sick of the tunnels or warping straight to the boss. Sure there are some fights that are mechanically fun but after a while the same old dance routine gets boring.

I really miss how XI tackled endgame. XIV's constant instant gratification isn't doing much for me anymore. As much of a hassle and time sink as it was in XI, I wouldn't be against having gated content that required you to overcome some difficult challenges (Like unlocking Sky/Sea). I don't want to instantly zone into the boss room like in Coil and Alexander. I miss having to actually do research or talk to other people to figure out how certain content in XI worked. Unlocking the zone, or figuring out the right path to take (because who had maps for all those dungeons?) or even how to fucking pop bosses. That stuff was half the battle.

The more I think about this stuff the more i'm starting to see behind the smoke and mirrors. The world feeling like a lobby and the most of the endgame content just being single rooms with bosses is killing my immersion. I've been with XIV since the first alpha test and I came to terms with the fact that we're not going to get XI-2, but I kept telling myself that content will get more fleshed out and that we would get something that would satisfy my cravings for XI. I had hope for the Diadem bringing back some of that old school XI endgame but even with that Yoshi managed to completely botch it. I'm worried about what 4.0 is going to mean for me.

Yoshi had a recent GameWatch Interview talking about XI:

I feel like people who are saying there's nothing to do or they are bored, are people who prefer the "FFXI type" game where the game itself is like end content, where there are almost unlimited amount of elements to grow your character and keep building up. I do understand their feelings, but as a game that needs to fight on the global scale and this era makes it very difficult for us to choose that railway as an option.

The same applies to how, having elements like ice and fire on your weapon and equipment is rather meaningless with our game design. If the game system has elements as a huge factor and let's say you face a boss who is weak against a certain element. Those who don't have the actions or weapons that are effective will need to start back from re-learning a certain move or go get that fire weapon that melts the boss. That being said, this is actually really fun if you get into it. You feel like you're getting stronger as you work hard for it and you feel more satisfaction after beating that boss with your new weapon. However, you need to put in a lot of time before you fight this single boss and if the next patch adds a boss with a different weakness, you have to start from scratch and learn another move and go get that weapon that the boss is weak against.

If this continues to go on, there will be a moment where you lose focus and at one point you collapse. That sort of game system is highly addictive with fear and uplift alongside each other with the merit where it's harder to get bored because it forces you to continue spending most of your time. But, people nowadays don't have that time anymore. If FFXIV had that old school type system, with how busy i am now, i wouldn't be able to play the game. I'm not saying it's outdated, and the coming era might prefer those types of games and they still have a potential to succeed by changing the business scheme, but like i said before, it just doesn't fit FFXIV.

That doesn't mean we aren't doing anything. Like the Zodiac weapons and anima weapons, we'd like to implement a "time to win" type route, but that will not be the pillar of the game, not in FFXIV at least. This is just an imagination, but 10 years into the future we might shift into a team consisted of members who all truly love FFXIV and we might take our risk to release an expansion with that kind of character development involved in it, but at the moment it's impossible.

There's other interviews out there where he says it's okay it run out of things to do in XIV, or it's okay to burnout and not want to play. I think this is the completely wrong attitude to have about an MMO. I'm not paying almost $50 (more for people who are non-legacy) every 6 months to only play the game for a 2-4 weeks each time a patch comes out. XIV is in dire need of lasting meaningful content and not just instanced boss fights.

I'm worried about what 4.0 is going to mean for me. Heavensward was 2.0 with a fresh coat of paint. If 4.0 ends up being the same thing and Yoshi doesn't innovate or bring something new to the table i'll just go back to XI until the mobile version comes out.

tl;dr: Denial about XIV not eventually turning into XI.

[Taint]

They already said they were releasing 90 per ward at this time but will be raising that number much higher. They capped it at first so people would spread out amongst the Wards.

[Fiye]

Apartments are only good for FC-less people. They're no different from your FC room and they cost 200k more.

Edit: Also man if you're bitching about lack of content now I can't wait to see what you'll post 6 months from now.

[Burningthought]

Apartments are only good for FC-less people. They're no different from your FC room and they cost 200k more.

Edit: Also man if you're bitching about lack of content now I can't wait to see what you'll post 6 months from now.

I'm below 230 right now so the next tier of Alex is locked for me. I'm doing the tome grind kinda slowly, maybe one roulette a night or seeing if there's something in PF that can distract me or unlock an achievement. I'm not trying to completely burn everything week one. I also have Hildy/Scholasticate/Mog Post stuff to do. I'm weaving in like one hour of XIV a night and spending the rest of my free time playing GTA and Overwatch. If I get an itch to mob grind I just hop on Black Desert and blow shit up on my Witch.

[Yukari]

Apartments are only good for FC-less people. They're no different from your FC room and they cost 200k more.

Edit: Also man if you're bitching about lack of content now I can't wait to see what you'll post 6 months from now.

They're also a teleport into the housing districts if you want to visit a friendly FC that you're not a part of.

Edit: Random complaint. Why are the cash shop items so fucking expensive for goddamn glamour?

[TheDirtyHobo]

I did not realize you couldn't reroll stickers after you place the 9th one down. I was 1 sticker away from completing 2 lines at once with 9 second chances to burn on that shit.

[Yukari]

When you do retry, does it actually move any of your stickers or is it only for redoing one of the duties you can do?

[Purrrfect]

long post

Well it's kind of like he said in the first line you quoted, to be viable in today's world it has to be a short burst style of content. His hands are tied pretty much; today's youngins can't handle XI-style, and the people that can don't have time anymore in a lot of cases.

It would be pretty awesome though if they started a project that was sort of an open source kind of thing, where players/volunteers could rebuild XI on the XIV platform. Would never have a chance even, but that sure would be something.

[Destinye]

Was that the Alex theme from XI?

Yep.