The worst is when the content will be back down to nothing but a single raid tier and 2 extreme primals.
Oh and two dungeons. So looking forward to that.
The worst is when the content will be back down to nothing but a single raid tier and 2 extreme primals.
Oh and two dungeons. So looking forward to that.
One dungeon, so they can focus more efforts on amazing content, and then next expansion will be one dungeon every two patches to ensure we get great content then the expansion after that no dungeons per patch unless the story allows it because budget is starting to get tight.
I can't fathom a repeat of fucking Heavensward. The expectations were so high. The moment they tried to sell "danger of world" and "FLYING!!!!!!!!1" in the same expansion, my expectations hit the ground. Those two things don't co-exist. Every concern I had was true. We have massive zones, and nothing in them. We don't need another expansion. We need updates to the currently stale-as-all-fuck game they're leaving behind for new players to trudge through. 2.0 updates+3.0 needs further fleshed out. 4.0 isn't welcome yet in my head. Maybe I get that feeling because with "200% bigger zones" I feel should've meant "200% more room for content per zone". "Danger of world" = fly over everything and have even LESS danger than 2.0 had. I have such a hard time believing anything they say after that letdown. At least you were on the ground for shit to aggro you.
MOAR FATES!!
Going back to, as others said, the baseline content where there's fucking nothing to do won't really be any different than it is now, it's always been reskin/redesign the same content/formula. But it will be enough is enough for me. I'll probably go smash all the Alexander I sat through with terrible fucking people and insanely stressful raid groups for nothing in a matter of 30 minutes and come back for 5.0 where I'll repeat the aforementioned. I'm playing as Yoshida intended guiz.
Sustainable model. I am really putting all of the eggs into the Stormblood basket. I don't even care if it all goes to shit anymore. I don't have that many eggs left at this point, anyway.
Basically the new strategy I'm employing with XIV is:
1) Unsub for 1-2 years
2) Buy new expansion when it goes on sale for $20 or less within 3 months
3) Wait until the last patch before next expac (in this case, March!)
4) Play thru it all in the 3-5 months leading up to new expac
5) Repeat
Lose out on nothing and save tons of time.
Basically you get 40 hours of gametime for that month. Even more if you try raiding at x.55
I think I might do this. The fanfest presentation is basically telling me that the only bit of actual new content is going to be Eureka and I don't know if I can stand doing the 50-70 grind when I already don't want to do the 50-60 grinds on my other jobs.
On a slightly unrelated note, if I learned anything from the Q&A from the NA Fanfest is that most people seems to be completely fucking complacent with how the game is right now. I can't believe after 2.0 and most of 3.0 more people aren't worried about the expansion and future content patches literally just giving us the same shit over and over. I guess i'm just in a bubble/echo chamber of pessimists or something.
Edit: Another thing that worries me is that Yoshida is completely fine if people take "breaks". Our lord and savior should not be happy with losing subs because people don't want to deal with tedious gear grinds, coin flip roulettes and functionial retards who can't do mechanics in raids.
FFXIV is basically comfort food MMO for me. No other MMO has that status with me right now.
I'm pretty happy with where Sargantanas is now. The raid community is slowly rebuilding itself and I've managed to get in with a raiding circle.
Yeah, I definitely think this is the case with a portion of the playerbase, especially here on BG.
To those paying attention it's clear that the devs continue to tick things off the list that people have been requesting and this patch is no different. There are no signs of this slowing down either - the devs sooner or later get around to addressing the vast majority of things they've proposed and stuff the players have been asking for.
Here are a bunch of things that have been discussed for 4.x that didn't exist when 3.0 launched:
- 24-man trials and difficult content in odd-numbered patches, something beyond Savage mode [Source]
- Eureka, which for all intents and purposes sounds like a Dynamis/Abyssea type of zone: open world; alliance content; tokens and spawn items; NMs, some on 72-hour spawn timers; content dedicated to relic weapons, etc.
- Deep Dungeon and Exploratory Missions continuing in future patches
- The potential for Relic armor [Source]
- Solo missions with GC squadrons
- During the Live Letter they said the Frontlines GC restrictions were dropped in preparation for a new type of PvP content in 4.x, likely the Castle siege PvP they've talked about in the past
Yoshida: The "exploration content" and "deep dungeons" are new content categories that we want to continue in the future. [Source]
Yoshida: So, in order to further widen our range, one of the challenges I am thinking about is horizontally expanding the [raid] content. [Source]
Yoshida: We feel like as it stands now, the amount of time you have to utilize the strongest equipment is too short. There's an increasing number of people clearing savage, but it's like "well we've finally cleared it, but with the next raid coming this equipment isn't going to last very long...." We want it to feel special and exciting for people who clear the raid [Source]
Yoshida: For further development of the game, we are okay with adding totally new attractions such as using a huge area to explore or creating an area where you get one shotted unless you take the enemies out one by one, even if you have the best gear [Source]
Now of course this won't be enough for some people, and it's fine to be skeptical - that's perfectly understandable - no one's saying everyone has to enjoy the game. But it's a special kind of cognitive dissonance to ignore all the requests the devs are fulfilling and the new things they are working only to fit some pessimistic, preconceived notion of the games development trajectory. It's fine not to like it, but there's a pervasive negativity bias that prevents people from even comprehending why so many others do enjoy the game.Yoshida: It is the second expansion pack, and if we were to do the same thing all over again, a lot of people would get tired of it. Like I said earlier, the base design of FFXIV will not change. It’s a game made for this age, but that’s exactly why even if it were to change in the future to fit the future trends, it won’t return to the past. And even if a past trend were to become a modern trend, it still must include a “modern vibe” to it. It is not negating the past, but rather extracting the interesting elements, and inviting players who like them. That’s the product we are aiming for. [Source]
If 24 man trials is anything like the ultima fight at Fan Fest I don't want it.
I mean, it was cool but fuck it was unsatisfying easy.
Yeah, Proto Ultima seems like it will still be pretty easy when added to the game:
But on several occasions they've talked about these new tiers being pretty difficult. Here from the Fan Fest keynote:Yoshida: Yes. I don’t know whether we should keep it at the same difficulty. It was a pretty hard fight during development with a clear rate of about 20% - we made adjustments for the Fan Fest version.
Famitsu: The difficulty was pretty low at Fan Fest
Yoshida: Yeah, we made it easy.
Famitsu: Hearing that, I’d love to see an Extreme version.
Yoshida: The publicly available version might be a bit more difficult.
[Source]
And during the Fan Fest Dev Panel while showing off video footage of new Ozma attacks:Yoshida: ...during the even patches we’ll get the difficult content, but what about having something even more difficult in the odd patches?
From a recent Famitsu interview:Nakagawa: Ok, I think that's a good spot to go off track a little bit and show you something we created especially for this session. When I told the designers about the presentation that I would be giving today here at Fan Fest, they took the time to whip together a new shapeshift and actually make this video for me. If we're really going to make a Savage version, this has gotta go in it.
Yoshida: We're not developing the whole City of Mhach, right?
Nakagawa: No, just Ozma. If it was the whole City no one would be able to clear it (laughs).
Yoshida: It would be an Ozma-specific, 24-person battle. The difficulty level is going to be pretty high, so I don't want you guys complaining 'Oh, it's too hard.'
It's still unclear whether the difficult content "beyond Savage" and their ideas for 24-man trials are the same thing, but from the way they've talked about these things it seems likely."Maybe it's kind of, instead of content that is made for everyone, it's more of a content of superiority". When asked if this is a mode beyond Savage, Yoshida says yes. And to enter that, "A party that has cleared all the requirements beforehand" is his answer. Yoshida did also mention that instead of a difficulty based content, it's more like a "challenge". When asked if the person has to clear Savage 4th floor beforehand, Yoshida says yes. He only hoped that since it's a no holds barred difficulty, Yoshida hopes that no one will complain that it's too hard... [Source]
I mean you can defend and quote them all you want, but as history would show Yoshi is all talk with very little follow through. What happened to primal summons or free company alliances? What happened to addons, continued updates per patch for diadem? So many broken promises I have actually lost count. My point is to never take them for their word as alot of it ends up indefinitely postponed, poorly implemented or implemented not as specified.
That said, anyone who is waiting for anything to change is waiting for nothing. If you aren't excited about the current game model with a few half baked content modes then you should probably just quit. Of all the lies Yoshi did actually spill some truth in an interview a couple of months ago, he blatantly stated nothing is going to change.
I'm sorry, I try really hard to understand this type of perspective but I'm not sure I ever will. I get what people don't like about the game - it makes sense and it's perfectly fine, that doesn't bother me at all. As you say, if you don't like it just quit, no harm, no foul. But when people say the devs never do anything new while arbitrarily discounting anything new the devs do release, claim the devs say nothing is changing when presented with quotes of them laying out in detail what is actually going to change, and criticize the devs for not being responsive to the community or delivering on their promises while requested feature after requested feature is added in each new patch, I really can't hack the mental gymnastics involved.
Don't play the game - not all of it is fun, certainly not for everyone. Don't trust the devs - being skeptical is a good thing and as you say there are a handful of things they haven't yet delivered on, barring them regularly reaffirming their intentions to do so in the near future. Don't put stock in quotes - there's a lot of detail out there and the devs talk about things 2 years in advance of implementation, it can be difficult to keep track of it all. But I don't understand being proud of psychological rigidity. If you don't count change as change and you don't count talk of change as talk of change then what can the devs possibly ever do to change your mind? Heck, you even just revealed that the devs trying to fix the diadem as a direct result of player feedback is something you consider a breaking of a promise. How can they ever win with you? It feels like the game is rigged.
I don't come here often, but whenever I do people consistently find ways to bend definitions and stretch semantics, and disqualify any and all evidence just to keep the FFXIV hate support group rolling. I suppose that's fine - you do you - but it seems to me there are better ways to be critical of the game and its developers that are anchored in reality /shrug.
Spoiler: show
tl;dr: 4.0 is a repeat of 3.0's promises (3.0 meaning Heavensward as a whole) so waiting to see really is believing. We're still waiting on some 2.x promises, actually.
I think the sadder thing is I find this immensely more enjoyable than WoW and any other MMORPG I've gotten into.
Granted, I didn't try to get into FFXI. I couldn't find a linkshell that was willing to teach me the newer systems of gear progression meanwhile dealing with the bullshit of my rotating shiftwork. That'll likely change once my civilian life is on solid foundation and the lul between 3.55 (.57? .58?) and Stormblood really kicks in.
I am not sure what there is to understand. You post at length, quoting several interviews of Yoshi outlining change, I then reference other instances of where Yoshi spoke of changes that never saw the light of the day. My point is until it happens do not count on it.
Mental gymnastics? That's all you, guy.
Diadem failed for one reason - effort. It's failure was nothing more than lazy planning and poor execution, there is no defending that. It has been YoshiCo's go to approach to over promise on content and features only to reveal once it has been implemented that the long awaited features would be coming down the line (with no timeline given). So I do consider it a broken promise. But what about the other 'promises' that never made it into the game that I mentioned? You want to draw this narrative that the dev team is being attacked for simply making a great game when it is not the case. No one hates this game, it's not that deep man. There are several reasons why some of us are vocal in our criticism, most want something to play so they hope it gets better.
Now, what I don't understand is why anyone would ever feel the need to resort to personal attacks. I would think there are better ways to be critical of those who critique the game that are anchored in reality.
stay butthurt because this game sucks
I'm kinda on the fence with how I feel about this game and its future. I still enjoy XIV and I plan on playing Stormblood but at the same time I'm not holding out hope that anything is going to change enough that I can confidently say I'm going to keep playing throughout Stormblood. My main drive when playing MMOs is to see my character get progressively stronger, either through leveling or through getting better gear and raiding in games like XIV and WoW let me work towards that.
But, the issue with XIV that's bothering me the most is the fact that raiding doesn't really feel rewarding compared to a game like WoW. This was easy to overlook in 2.0 due to the game being new and Coil was never really that difficult but this got driven home hard in Heavensward with Gordias and Midas (to an extent). It's important that everyone has a means to catch up their gear in a game like this so they can participate in the latest endgame content without having to jump through tons of old content but FFXIV goes a bit too far with it. When everyone can get the highest item level gear just by doing easy, casual play-oriented content like the 24 man raids, it really detracts from the raid scene in my opinion. Gordias was brutally hard for a lot of raid groups and for all the effort that you could put in to clear A3S and A4S you could only expect to walk away with gear that might be slightly better than what non raiders could get and ultimately amount to vanity pieces. Hell, 3.1 was especially bad due to Diadem giving aetherial gear that could potentially be BiS over everything if you got extremely lucky. Midas was slightly better tuned but a 5 ilvl higher weapon isn't much of a reward if the secondary stats suck for your job.
Since this game has copied a number of things off of WoW, I don't get why they refuse to implement better rewards for raiding. I know Yoshida gave some bullshit excuse about not wanting to have people feel like they need to raid to get the best gear but people rarely do hard content just for the sake of a challenge. If they'd implement gear that was either A) a higher ilvl than other sources or B) had unique effects on player skills from raiding I'd be a lot happier but, I'm not expecting this to change with Stormblood or really ever so the big question on my mind is how long will I enjoy raiding in this game before I get tired of the current model?
So my approach with XIV since Heavensward came out is to show up every patch and do the stuff, enjoy the content, then bounce. I have no time for raiding anyways so it worked well. I stopped playing this last patch after clearing Sophia a million times and doing everything else there was to do, short of actually doing raid content.
I'm starting to feel like others here, where it might be better to just wait like a year and grab the next expansion while it's on sale and closer to the expansion after that, and then catch up on everything.
Square just isn't doing that much to keep players around... at this pace, I don't see how long this game will last.
You're rather unlikely to see raiding of the oldschool variety/reward tiering again. I'm not trying to sound ahead of the curve, mindful of my own past rants on how such systems aren't going to hold up as gamers continue to mature and evolve, but accessibility ultimately is key. When you create cost-heavy content 90% of your customers can't partake in, you've sincerely gotta start asking if it's worth it. Further so if that 90% feels their own content delivery suffers due to that focus. Further pair that with the behaviors of people in PUGs or the persistent demands of statics, and it shouldn't be terribly surprising that alternative sources/catch-up mechanics are employed. It'd be one thing if raids could be a sort of one-and-done deal, but they're not. Most MMOs essentially turn them into 1-2 clears a week if you want to be geared before the next batch rolls around. That's simply not for the majority.
If the resulting argument is the minority deserves greater attention, that they should stand out, are automatically more knowledgeable because they log X hours a week, one just needs to find the right guild, and everyone else just needs to git gud or STFU, well, it's not hard to see how that isn't conducive to either community or financial gain. As noted, people rarely actually want sustained challenge. After a few clears and things going onto farm status, the sooner it all gets done in the name of efficiency, the better. The power, the big numbers is fun. Doing the dances dozens of times, not so much. Such is ultimately that much more obvious precisely because the game(s) outside of raids are held back and underdeveloped. There's no meaningful distraction between raid times, or for those who know it's not for them, an alternative.
XIV has no real ambition to break this cycle, far as I can tell, and nor does any other MMO on the market or immediately pending. Some may find solace in the more PvP-centric titles, but given PvP in MMOs tends to do poorly in the West, it's not surprising that isn't everyone's cup of tea, either. Frankly, I worry the genre has gotten a bit too affixed to numbers and lost its charm of facilitating role-playing and creativity. And no, I don't mean which slot of the trinity you're taking up in the role scheme, but actually being a character. Worlds go stale when we can't change them or there's no real risk from NPC elements. Finding an identity is impossible when that person next to you is geared exactly the same way with the exact same skill set. Sure, it's easy to blame things like LFG tools or the presence of casuals for ruining everything, but it seems more to me that the genre wants to play it safe more than innovate. Thus, it's just the same ol' shit with different skins.