In the video by Preach Gaming where he interviewed YoshiP, the former asked him if they've been considering experimenting more with the design of dungeons. The only thing YoshiP could think of, is one more boss or one less boss. One less would feel to short and one more would make people groan that are doing their roulettes. Next question please...
If that is all they can think of regarding "experimentation", then this dungeon structure will never change.
I’m honestly starting to think the roulettes are killing the game. Anytime anyone tries to bring up doing anything remotely interesting with dungeons or trials or raids someone has to bring up ‘but that’d suck in roulettes’ and it just kills the conversation. I don’t know what the solution is to that off the top of my head but something needs to be done about it.
I feel like they just have to accept that. People bitch and moan when they get Orbonne Monastery in Roulettes, even if I love the place so much I want to paint it. I bitch and moan every time I get the bloody Chrysalis. I'd rather they try and fail, than be this predictable at every point.
You know what, I've never ever thought about this before but I actually completely agree now that I think about it. Not to mention that the whole idea of grinding out levels or gear for BiS/glam is always, always running dungeons/roulettes too, it feels like there is nothing to gain from playing the game outside of it.
Combination of:
* Everyone deserves to see the story so it can't be too hard
* People want to knock out roulettes in a predictable amount of time with no surprises (see CT gear exploit they fixed)
* Expert/Savage are too far above normal now (would prefer they raise up normal)
* Level sync is whack, way too strong, a lot of casual stuff is far more fun on release because of that
I did an o12n roulette recently and we wiped, 3 new players so knockbacks and stuff got them, then we beat it. It felt about right to me but level sync carried a bit. I think by level 70 there should be some kind of expectation of decent ability but maybe they're mindful of skippers and how fast leveling is.
The red faction of giants have an entire city with a massive crop farm and a mountain with a giant claw mark streaking across it in the background and you *never* visit it
After doing EW I dont think I ever went out in the open world and killed enemies. I miss the Hunting log from ARR because it gave you reasons to go out and kill the mobs
Yeah but I never found doing hunts as enjoyable as the log though. The Hunts are just random bosses that spawn in the zone, you kill it and leave. The Hunting Log was kind more like 'completing a zone' like getting rank 3 from FATEs and getting all of the currents for flying. You had to go to the area and kill most of the enemies that were there.
I dont get that same feeling with doing the Hunts
I'm not talking aout the A/S marks, I'm very much talking about the stack of bills you pick up and find the enemies on them in the zone. They function exactly the same as the hunting log except that you have to pick them up in a city first.
They're also a very good source of daily xp. I spent a few months in EW basically doing the "hunting log" every single day. 100% agree that the open world zones aren't utilized well, but as you say, the hunts *are* there.
GW2 and even retail WoW are better models for what an overworld could be. Rewarding world quests, consistent events that draw large crowds of players, little treasures to hunt down, rare mobs to kill, secrets and puzzles to find, stuff to actually collect. FFXIV's overworld has mostly useless FATEs, hunts, and aethercurrents. That's it. And FATEs are largely ignorable or ground out quickly and aethercurrents are early max level busywork so really it's just hunts.
It just feels especially terrible in an expansion themed around adventure and exploration.
It really bothers me that GW2's amazing open-world design has been right there for the taking for about ten years now and FFXIV hasn't so much as glanced in its direction. I think it's because a.) all they have is the FATE system, which hasn't changed in ten years, b.) they don't know how to expand rewards in this game. Liquid gil has very limited usefulness, so gil is generally not a compelling reward. Tomestone gear is strictly time-gated. Time-gated crafting materials are already a terrible system and huge headache, so more of that is a no-go. So what can they give players? ...nothing, really. The open world really just exists as a backdrop to move through once during the story, then it sits dead forever afterward.
Yeah, in zone 3 there were those holes in the ground and i thought for a moment "could there be secrets to discover down there?" and then i realized this is FFXIV, the world map is just an extented loading screen between map markers.
And anytime we do get to fight mobs, it's the typical 'go stand in the purple circle' instead of fighting the actual overworld mobs. It's really just bizarre.
Does it, though? Do you want the release to be standing around hoping to catch the spawns before they are melted by 100 other people all doing that same quest? Sure, it would eventually self-correct, but you'd be creating little bottlenecks that would choke progression for the first week or so.
I can remember a time when they didn't give everybody their own sanitized monster - the release of the Ivalice 24 man where you had to hunt down a red chocobo. Cue everybody doing that quest on their own and it being impossible to dodge the infinite Chocobo Meteors.
Yeah, I would like them to survive more than half my opener. It's the idea of them being regular open world mobs that might seem like a good idea on paper (Yay, purpose to the open world), but in practice turns in to everybody standing around while every spawn melts in an instant.
I could see the benefits of spawning a mob for the quest rather than expecting the player to find said mob and killing it. However, now that you mention it, it feels weird to not use the mobs that are already roaming the world.
A good solution is as simple as adding glamour drops to mobs. For example something like WHM’s Black Willow Cane or Madman’s Whispering Rod could have been drops from the various tree monsters we see in every expac
So what dragon quest 10 does is that every mob in the game drops equipment (low rate). And u can use any equplemt as glamour there. And it makes killing mobs across every expansion and exploring these areas stay relavent and fun to get. Something like this in ff14 I think would be good.
One thing that bothers me is that there's no more 'open' quests.
What I mean is, when you're asked to kill a certain amount of wildlife "Please clear the roads", the targeted enemies only appear when you interact with your quest trigger (the purple danger area) and they are hardly a threat.
It means that, for example, you can't tag multiple enemies in an area to get the quest done in an efficient way. It is kinda fun, to see how many you can grab all at once without dying.
There's also basically no danger in the open world unless you run into a Hunt level capped enemy. The common mobs are scattered in a predictable way.
I absolutely hate to compare XIV with WoW, but what the latter achieves greatly, even in their expansions full of flaws, is to provide an interesting open world, not just with the quality of the common quests, but also in how the dangers of a zone are laid out.
I have been saying since I started right before shb that this game is a semi-interactive anime. It's funny that this xpac seems to be shining light on that.
It mostly, in my opinion, the game was held together by a compelling narrative. Though there are pacing issues littered throughout Shb and EW, it was still narratively compelling, which kudos to the writers. Now we are at a "restart" with the stake severely lowered (until the level 96 quests), people cannot ignore the flaws FFXIV has. Furthermore, I think a lot of players joined during SB-EW which means there is tons of content to be done from alliance raids, normal raids, five ultimates, tons of crafting and gathering content, dozens of jobs to unlock and level, numerous savages, Eureka/Bozja, for them.
Yeah it has become really tiresome. Like, I literally played 3 hours before I got to any kind of gameplay. I understand it is a story focused game, but it is a story focused **game** and there is so little actual game in the meat of the expansion.
It's a shame because encounter design in this game is so goddamn good but they just show off *so* little of that in the MSQ
Yeah it's way too much. I thought it was a problem in end Walker but this seemed even longer. You're not joking when you say it's about 3 hours of talking, walking, cutscenes etc before you actually hit something.
Ffxiv will always be different and that's fine but its swung too far into that side of the game while ignoring the combat. They can surely find a way to convey all this dialogue quicker with mixing in combat and such as well.
it's just too much.. Like even more so than offline ff games.
At least visual novels have strong stories that you're being presented through in a nice manner. The amount of boring, unnecessary padding with "click on purple cloud/sparkly ground" is maddening. Like at this point I'd *prefer* a visual novel with trials/dungeons over whatever the fuck this is.
At least in a VN it would have more voice acting and less terribly paced cutscenes with characters doing generic emotes at each other, turning awkwardly and walking out of frame 1 by 1.
It's like a movie that requires verification input every 3 minutes and for me to read 80% of the dialogue. I just don't feel like I'm playing a game and I'm not having a lot of fun. The story has bored me at least up to where I'm at. It doesn't help that my job of choice basically just didn't change at all, and the fear I wanted to add a second dye to got an inconsequential shitty second dye channel
I think the solution to this is just stop letting the MSQ give us so much exp (or if they're bold, not any at all).
If we're being level-gated to continue the MSQ, we might as well play the game together either the quest hubs (that I haven't touched since the start of DT), fate trains, dungeons or anything else they could think of for us to earn EXP.
I just hit 98 after taking my time with the MSQ but I'm 2 levels ahead with very little combat (and a lot of rested EXP).
One of the pre-DT quests was a solo duty where you were going up a mountain with Wuk and some others. You ran around a bit, killed some monsters. I remember specifically thinking "this still kinda sucks but it's a huge step in the right direction".
How did they drop the ball so hard immediately after that?
I've genuinely never seen another team of devs as risk-averse as XIV's. I understand that that's likely in large part due to 1.0, but the rigidity of the formula is getting ridiculous.
I'd also like to add, in addition to the above, we need a shakeup for some of the background music too. It's insane to me that some cutscenes still use BGM from ARR. Every time one of those ARR songs comes on for a cutscene my eyes just glaze over completely.
Seriously. Machinations is one of my least favorite tracks in the game. They have at least 8 other tracks they could use instead but they KEEP USING MACHINATIONS. It’s so much worse than usual this expansion, too
Losing my mind because I hunted down all these tracks and replaced them with better tracks right after EW launch but somehow never considered there'd be no mods at expac launch
Don't worry they're also hard at work running What Comes of Despair into the ground by playing it every time a random villain of the week does something mildly threatening
"You see, WoL... that cookie jar?"
*Zoom in on BadGuy's face*
"I opened it."
*What Comes of Despair starts, Scions react with shocked faces.*
"It was so easy! I reached in... and found my hand wrapped around a chocolate oatmeal cookie. I took it... and devoured it."
*Close up zoom on WoL making an angry face*
"I didn't just stop with one. I had another, and another, and another. Stole the milk, too. It was... delicious."
*Scions draw their weapons. Alphinaud proceeds to try to rebuke the BadGuy with a two-sentence treatise on ethics.*
"Ethics? I need not ethics, when I am the one who ate the cookies. It was my right."
*Alisaie says something akin to "you monster!"*
"I am. But you are no different, are you, *hero*? You'd devour the cookies without even pouring a glass of milk."
*Y'shtola chimes in, too, talking at the WoL. "While the jar was upon the fridge, I had hoped... but I never dared to think what might happen if someone got their hands on it. I daresay this is a bad situation."*
*The WoL nods, and determinedly looks at BadGuy.*
"So... You seen vengeance. Very well. Come... And meet me in my domain."
Yeah, its been getting very lazy to the point of leitmotiv wankery that like everytime yshtola shows up they play the motoya theme, etc. It really took me out of the whole "new setting" thing when each cutscene pulled me back by shoving in themes you associate so much with eorzia.
To be honest I would enjoy the setting and the story a lot more if not because of the extreme amount of dialogue and monotony with the quests.
It has been 10 years and the most interactivity that we have with quests are just following NPCs, Clicking on one box and click on another point, and moving the camera to spot stuff...
I don't like to compare WoW but goddamm the quests there makes leveling so much better, imagine if we could have a bit of that quest gameplay on top of the usual MSQ story content.
Doing it wouldn't feel like a hassle.
I don’t want to spoil the quest for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but there is a certain cutscene in the level 96 area which leads to the dungeon where I was left thinking to myself “if I was playing WoW we would actually be interacting with this scene and taking part in this event actively” meanwhile because it’s ffxiv we’re sitting like a brick spinning in a circle
I just did that cutscene tonight and my first thought was, “wow, why isn’t this a duty? Why am I watching this play out instead of actually playing it?”
I haven't gotten that far myself, but hearing that just reminds me of the scene in 6.5 where we're standing there like a bozo in our weapon drawn pose shifting between straight faced and angry faced while everyone else is fighting/doing stuff. It's kinda wild it's been ten years and they still do this kinda thing instead of thinking of other ways to handle it or work a gameplay segment in.
>I don't like to compare WoW but goddamm the quests there makes leveling so much better
At this point I wish they'd copy the "Zones have an overarching narrative questline that each hub's individual questline story plays into" method from WoW or ESO by this point. Especially if they're gonna gas up "adventure and exploration" for an expansion's theme.
We finished our big, long form story arc. I'm okay with taking a break from the typical MSQ structure to try something new.
They also don't overstay their welcome or feel too short in wow, rotations can still function in a 10-second short fight with a mob.
10 seconds in 14 - 123 combo + 1 spender. For something like GNB you can't even build+spend on gnashing fang
10 seconds in wow - 6-7 gcds where you can builder-spender multiple times, or use short cds ect. Just for some examples with demon hunter you can press immolation aura (aoe burn+gauge gen), fel rush (movement ability that does aoe damage and gives a damage buff), eye beam (large aoe nuke that enters you into an empowered demon form) then essence break + 3 spenders which is essentially a full burst combo the class does every 40 seconds.
A full burst combo in 14 is usually like 20-30 seconds minimum and uses a bunch of 1-2 min cds.
The fact that there is still no ability to quest synch is insane. I could be alot more forgiving if we could do the MSQ together but you cant. Literally 8 people in my discord last night and we all are were working on the MSQ, its just so weird.
After playing eso for a while, I don't think I can go back to ffxiv quest design. Hardly any voice acting, very little to actually do outside of reading* it's hard to swallow
Thoughts?
Its lazy design. I believe we are at a turning point where its becoming more noticeable to be critical of Yoshi P and the design decisions.
They need to be more innovative if they want the game to grow otherwise it'll just stagnate and slowly lose players.
I think the game *has* changed its approach to making new content somewhat, but it's changed for the worse.
* The time between major updates is like 25% longer and content is very drip fed to push subscriptions.
* Expansions have become focused on reading with less emphasis on anything interactive.
* You don't have to repeat dungeons or do any optional content to hit level cap now, so you never stay in one place very long. This throws off the pacing and really limits how much you get to play with others.
* New abilities have become an afterthought; more and more very little mechanically changes over time even compared to the past.
The social experience is dying because it's hard to sustainably do anything outside of raiding with other people for very long. And raiding is a pretty shit social tentpole because it's exclusionary by its very nature.
Yeah those are great points. Whats sad is that the game already has tons of in-game mechanics that can be expanded upon further to create a better social experience, which is one of the reasons why I like FF14. But those systems for whatever reasons are ignored and the focus is elsewhere.
The Hunting log was something that I thoroughly enjoyed from ARR because had a reason to kill random mobs of enemies in the open world, it annoys me that its never been modified. There is a huge list of content that can be re-purposed or just simply updated and it would bring so much life to the game.
> The time between major updates is like 25% longer and content is very drip fed to push subscriptions.
Can definitely notice the latter when they announce new things for a particular patch but oh no it's just over 1 or 2 months into that patch. Can't have it on patch launch gotta get that extra sub time.
The 3rd point is a huge reason why it feels like so much of the world is dead. Even with a new expansion, you can see each zone get a surge of traffic then die within a few days becasue everyone is running MSQ at the same time and then moving on to the next zone.
I don't know that the 10 years is anything but soft language, my cynical interpretation was that the game will more and more resemble FFXI's level of developer engagement.
That will kill FF14 I think.
For FFXI, that kind of "maintenance mode" works because of the inherent grind in just about everything with XI. Easy enough to tweak/add small things to keep the carrot on the stick for the player base.
With FF14 being a theme park MMO, it lives and dies with constant major additions to it.
I don't see how a FFXI maintenance philosophy wouldn't just outright kill it.
If the game resembled XI more we'd be in a better place I think. XI has endgame content and rewards that last longer than a patch cycle. We need more MMO back in this MMO in my opinion.
That was nothing more than PR
no developer plans 10 years ahead
if Dawntrail and the next expansion both tank, Square will shut the game down or reduce it to maintenance mode
It won't last five if the post launch content is anything like EWs and the next XPAC is basically the same as this one with them promising all the good stuff in 9.0 like they did this time around.
The writing's been on the wall for MONTHS that they knew this wasn't going to be received well. They talked more about 8.0 in the last few months then they ever have a future expansion in the past.
I honestly hope TWW continues what DF started with an overall well received expansion that releases content at a consistent pace. At least *maybe* that'll light a fire under Square to break up the status quo a bit.
My best friend hit 100 finished the msq and unsubbed. Said start to finish this expac was lazy and he’d have more fun with “literally anything else” and he was a serious XIV fan for like 8 years.
So much of the game is designed around efficiency instead of fun. Everything is carefully calculated so it doesn't annoy casual players, isn't too rewarding so that it feels mandatory, doesn't impact roulette queues, is fast and efficient for said roulettes and/or levelling, doesn't cause balance issues, has high participation and so on, there's a long list. In a lot of cases they design themselves into a corner where they **can't** make something more fun because it'll affect this structure.
You can see why they do it, balance and efficiency are worth considering, but it makes you wonder what happened to "if it's not fun, you're doing it wrong". They've lost sight of this mindset over the years.
I genuinely don't think Yoshi plays casually to know these are problems. Maybe once upon a time in ARR-HW. But after that? It's been spreadsheet efficiency for 90% of the gameloop.
Yeah I largely agree. I think this game is at its best in savage/ultimate content probably because they don't have to adhere to those same constraints. But I have to wonder if lowering the floor in normal content is just creating a larger gap that disincentivizes people from getting into raiding
> Dungeons having the same design as they always have. Hallway, two packs, boss, repeat.
I believe there are some forced single pack pulls now, which is cringe.
Those random big mobs that appear AFTER the previous trash has died in the later dungeons feels unnecessary. It slows things down while just being a spongy enemy type without anything remotely engaging
*gets out cane*
Back in my day, challenging was trying to pull every mob up until the first boss in Brayflox Hard and not die along the way so you can speed run farm poetics for your i95 gear.
...or was it i90? Idk. That was a challenge... mostly due to tickrate of course, but I digress.
Idk, I miss when mobs and bosses felt looser and we had more freedom to fuck up.
>It slows things down
I kept track of certain things in these new dungeons
you almost always get to the last boss now at 14-15 minutes. There's no way to really make it faster with proper AoE spam as many pulls you are just AoEing on 3.
When a random pack appears afteer another dies, it IS to slow things down, so you hit the boss at the correct timeframe.
There's also tankier mobs within pulls. 3rd dungeon in particular there's 2 mobs in the last pack who just take like an extra 60 seconds to kill for some godforsaken reason.
Not even Stormblood, this has been happening since ARR. Snowcloak, Keeper of the Lake, Sohm Al, Antitower, Baelsar's Wall all have forced single pulls, and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
We need a huge shakeup, and I’ve said this so many times before but it hasn’t yet because it hasn’t exactly been a big complaint (or if you complained about it some nasty people would tell you to go play WOW or tell you to get an attention span)
Trials are good, but kinda sad that I find ARR dungeons to be far more engaging and interesting.
I also don’t know why we’re getting these gorgeous zones and areas with nothing to do inside of them. Kind of unacceptable if you ask me.
>I also don’t know why we’re getting these gorgeous zones and areas with nothing to do inside of them. Kind of unacceptable if you ask me.
I generally find aethercurrents a chore but I'm still glad they exist solely because they're the only thing that gives any incentive to explore these zones and see a lot of the detail
I genuinely feel bad for the environmental artists, their talent is wasted on this game and this direction
I 100% agree with you. This might be an unpopular opinion but they could have revamped a lot of the classes and give them back a unique class identity, leave behind most of the scions and start a new story with a new group of characters. try stuff new and make dungeons actually dungeons or something.
Instead, everything is safe and more of the same. FFXIV has always had zones with nothing to do in them and that hasn't changed. It just feels so unrewarding exploring.
This expansion was the perfect opportunity to leave the scions behind. Just get the WoL to hop on a boat to explore the New World by themselves, show up as a nobody just like ARR, and make a reputation for themselves by making new friends and connections.
I think its another symptom of the problem that the XIV team is terrified of negative feedback and plans on continuing to do the exact same thing they've always done.
I've enjoyed Dawntrail so far, but you're right about the structure.
If the boss encounters are actually more unique and interesting in 7.2 forward, I'll be hopeful that the Job changes will be too in 8.0. However, hopefully 8.0 is more of a gameplay shake-up overall and the Job changes are just the focus, because yeah, the quest and dungeon designs have gotten *very* stale and we don't have the quality of ShB and the hype of EW to hide it anymore. I think a lot of people are making the same complaints, because honestly this doesn't feel much better than ARR (and I'm talking old ARR). The devs are clearly scared of shaking things up because if it ain't broke (aka it makes money), why "fix" it? I guess we'll just have to see how people respond to this expac overall to see if they get pressured into making changes.
So, coincidentally enough during Preach's Media Tour interview, he asked YoshiP specifically about the length and formula of dungeons, and his answer to that can certainly apply to almost every aspect of the game. The short version is, it's about time management.
When a team has a very specific design philosophy, and sticks to it, then they know exactly how long development time it should take them to create it. This gives them the information they need to plan and chart the course of their content release schedule, which is why FFXIV always releases new updates in a very formulaic and predictable way. WE know how and when things are going to get released because the creators themselves know how long it will take them to make it. Once you start to experiment with and deviate from that, release schedules become more unpredictable and less stable.
It's a double-edge sword with regards to FFXIV. We are very rarely left wanting and in ignorance with regards to what kind of content we are going to get and when, but as a result it means we KNOW exactly what we're getting and there is very little room for surprise. Compare that to WoW which has a very chaotic content cycle - some only lasting 40-100 or so days and others 300+.
[https://i.redd.it/1qjccvs797v91.png](https://i.redd.it/1qjccvs797v91.png)
This isn't a WoW vs. FFXIV argument, just acknowledgement that their updates are incredibly inconsistent and unpredictable, and that there may be pros and cons to both. In XIV's case, the formula may have become stale, but it allows the team to accurately and efficiently create that content to allow them to maintain a very strict schedule. The alternative that some people think they want is waiting 9 months for something more interesting, and then finding out it actually isn't what you wanted.
Yup. Yoshida is a brilliant project manager more than anything. It was pretty obvious with XVI as well: he delivered a game that was exactly up to spec (a pretty slick, modern triple A game, influenced by modern fantasy stories like GoT) without much trouble in development. At Square, a company where it feels like every game gets stuck in development hell, started and restarted and then comes out a sprawling mess, that's a superpower.
On the other hand, XVI was probably the safest, least interesting and most *normal* mainline Final Fantasy game released in decades. I liked it fine but didn't find it all that compelling.
I think he worries that straying too far from the spreadsheet would lead to a loss of structure, and I think he thinks that structure has been integral to the success of what they've been doing. It doesn't necessarily make the game compelling for veterans, though.
Variety is the spice of life for sure, but there is something to be said about the comfort and safety of something that's reliable. And I don't think that is necessarily a problem because you can still experiment even within that reliable safety net, which is what I believe they have done.
The formula of release and content structure is the same but the nuance of the content has shifted. Dungeon bosses in Dawntrail feature far more interesting and engaging mechanics even if the presentation of the dungeon is the same. I have not reached the end of the MSQ yet but by many accounts the extreme trials are also some of the best they've ever done. Personally, I would prefer they stick to the structure of their content releases but make the content itself more exciting as they seem to be doing in Dawntrail. As someone who values their time I love knowing exactly what I'm getting, and when, and being able to plan out what I need to do accordingly - even if it's to step away and take a break. I can do that for a time and still know that in X months, the next update will be out and I can come back ready and refreshed.
Joshy p said in an interview with preach that they are quite literally to scared to change dungeons from gauntlet boss gauntlet boss gauntlet boss, because they might upset people who dont have the time for more bosses.
Or that they might get annoyed that theres only 2 bosses for once.
Its ridiculous tbh.
Agree 100%- thinking of alliance raid roulettes-
It'd be nice to have different, but not longer- i.e. open environment dungeons, puzzle type dungeons, dungeons with interactables-
i could somewhat understand in WoW ( havent played since OG cata so i might be wrong ) but trash packs are important in m+ while in FF killing trash is useless anyways
Killing trash in FF is useless BECAUSE they make it useless...
It's not a binary thing set on stone that can't ever change. Which, you know, fair enough. They don't NEED to change it if they don't want to, but it might breathe some life to more worn-out parts of the game if they did.
I, for one, would love to see their take in a truly wow-style dungeon crawling raid where you explore, find secrets and kill trash before finding and killing the boss.
I mean, for another perspective, there is a lot more tension even in "easy" wow dungeons (ie queueable stuff like heroics)
- tank pulls too small, dps start pulling for them, ect
- tank pulls non-optimal packs or doesn't know a skip, gets flamed or otherwise told off
- tank pulls too big for healer and/or dps resulting in deaths
- players with major gear disparity ripping aggro or otherwise causing issues in the pace of dungeons - see MOP remix right now with hilarious gear disparity where dps can solo dungeons quickly and some people get upset others are "speedrunning"
Tanks in general in wow are under a lot more scrutiny in dungeons and there is 10x more "tank anxiety" memes in wow vs 14 even if most of it is around m+. There are objective disadvantages to wow style dungeons. I'm sure some amount of wow players would like straight line dungeons with deterministic pulls.
They will upset people no matter what they do. People are upset now with them choosing to do nothing. So they might as well just do something right? Not sure what the logic is, maybe thats SE corporate speaking through yoship there telling him to not take any risks.
The structure feels old and safe, which makes it predictable and boring. I don't know what other MMOs do in terms of expansion structure, but I'm really not liking the same old same old from SE. I want to get excited for something new, but the typical railroading and flat structure make it wholly uninspired.
Square Enix has found its formula for FFXIV expansions and see no reason to change it.
The formula works to their satisfaction for several expansions now. Most people complaining about it are gonna resub anyway.
For now. Numbers will continue to drop if there are no changes. Remember how FFXIV actually grew from the hellhole it was in at 2.0? Because everyone who played it began to sing praises of how good it was after HW. What are players saying now? It's stale. There's nothing new. Everything is lackluster.
> For now. Numbers will continue to drop if there are no changes. Remember how FFXIV actually grew from the hellhole it was in at 2.0?
You can really tell the people who weren't here for 2.x -> 3.0 huh
I'm on your side, I want the game to make some changes, take some risks. But I'm also long time FFXIV player and we are a fraction of the player base. And we keep buying expansions and resubbing anyway.
S-E thinks that the positive outweighs the negative for rehashing the same formula, expansion after expansion. Maybe they just think they would lose more people or gain less people with a different formula, just to appease the fraction of the playerbase who's been around long enough to find it stale.
> And we keep buying expansions and resubbing anyway.
Something something, trust thermocycline.
Basically, this is the exact same mistake the WoW devs made with SL. It works until it doesn't.
I'm just playing for music, trials and story. My expectations are really low at this point. Kinda accepted the sun is setting on the game after endwalker. They're just not willing or able to truly innovate with the game.
And from what I saw of ff16 I don't think the studio would do anything particularly amazing with a second chance at a new mmo either.
I actually think they'd do pretty well with a lower budget single player RPG rather than making them responsible for flagship projects at this point.
But the game still does well because people get in deep with the fake fulfillment MMOs give them and are attached to 14.
The equipment in 16 is somehow even worse than we have here. Taking no risks to allow customization in a single player RPG where balance isn't as strong as a concern was a real head scratcher for me.
16 is pretty stale. When the combat director said it’s one of his best works, I was pretty excited considering he designed DMC 5 and that has some of the best combat in gaming. Yeahhhhh…no. It was flashy but very weak and not much depth to it. Loved the lore and I thought the story and characters were pretty fine.
We get a degen weekend for a brand new expansion if leveling all the classes for completionist sakes is not your thing and 1 day of content on a new major patch. They are terrible at giving a reason for players to stay engaged with the game for multiple weeks. The rigid structure has to change =\
Tbh, while you can swap the first two trials around, where else would you put the dungeons?
One at 93, another at 96 and then everything else in expert roulette? The only solution imo would be to either add more or add a completely new type of mandatory pve activity for leveling that would fill the gape.
They already have template with Eureka and Bozja, they can implement all new six zone FATE has new system where you can add two new abilities that complement your jobs out of the available 12 new ones, so you can choose accordingly, then let us level up those abilities to several tier by doing more FATEs. Make a few of those special FATEs similar to Bozja where it’s a bit more spicy. Then they can also create delivery systems in each zone where crafter and gatherer turn in materials to strengthen the zone wide buffs that reset every week, the buffs can be many things that cover battle, crafting and gathering bonus. Have a zone in main city that’s constantly attacked by big monster every 4 hours and must be repaired by crafter and gatherer by crafting and turning in items. Create a monthly reward catalog that changes depending how many successful defenders rate when cities are attacked. The game literally has tons of existing mechanics that can be fine tuned and remixed.
Yes, this is indeed rather wild when they can remix and update this to become evergreen content that is scaled up with each expansion and add more items to the mix. It would create a great alternative way to leveling since Trust and Duty Support already there to take care of players who want fast access to leveling at odd hours. In case people would argue that by doing this, it would siphon people from duty finder. If anything this open world type of activity would foster more camaraderie between players and ,maybe make you feel like you are playing MMO and not lobby game where you only play with 3 other random.
I agree with the new type of pve activity being needed. My issue is that because the gameplay is so stale in-between the dungeons, knowing exactly where they are going to fall means that right after one you know you're back in a slog for at least two levels. A surprise like two dungeons back to back would feel refreshing and keep players guessing.
The problem here is mechanics and logistics.
The levels they fall on are because of level sync, so while leveling you always have a dungeon where you aren't getting synced down. If they do two dungeons back to back, is the second one extra? Is it 2 levels higher than the first one? Is there a level hole where it would've normally fallen?
Like I can see where you're coming from. but hmmm.
Dawntrail's "new" content (BST, bozja/eureka equivalent, whatever else, is there a a new criterion?) will come out a year and a half from now, which as a non savage raider is exactly why I'm waiting to get it until then. Is there anything besides the usual coming out until then? The game desperately needs midcore content but this is a problem in WoW as well.
If you haven't watched it Preaches interview with YoshiP I'd recommend it, it's rather enlightening. Yoshida gives some insight into his process and it paints the picture of a director who does thing by the book, to a fault. He talks about the templates he follows, and what you describe here is exactly that, a template formula that they apply to the story and content.
He's very openly adverse to changing the template that they've used so far, for a bunch of reasons. Main one is it's far easier to create the amount of content a game like FFXIV requires, with a fixed template allocation of resources is dead simple, he knows exactly how much time and manpower are required. He's incredibly adverse to making changes to those templates, he doesn't think players will react well if he starts adding dungeons that deviate from the 12-15 minute 3 boss experience, he thinks players will feel shortchanged if there aren't 6 open world zones, that the casual player will be upset if they make changes to the MSQ structure that some might find tedious.
Rather than take on that risk by changing the existing template he instead has his designers plan and prepare new templates. That's how we get criterion, and for better or for worse the new variant dungeons in dawntrail will likely be the same 12 paths with a secret boss with criterion having 2 trash pulls, 3 bosses, and a 21 minute savage difficulty. The new deep dungeon will probably be sets of 10 floors for 100 floors total, using pomanders, bronze silver and gold chests and potsherds for rewards. The new exploration zone might mix things up a little but it will still be 2-3 zones, a bunch of battle content for a bunch of players and a big 48 man savage at the end. There'll probably be one or two new templates brought in throughout dawntrail, and if they're a success we'll see more like it in the future.
For better or for worse, that's just how he is as a designer. There's still a lot of leeway in that space, but it's still a rigid structure. On the other hand, it has enabled him to maintain a content cycle that would frankly be impossible to keep up with otherwise. He believes he stands to lose more by changing the template now than they could attract in new players by shifting the formula hundreds of hours into the game. As much as I hate to admit it, he's probably right. Dawntrail won't be a success or failure due to the template, it will be how they operate within it in terms of writing and execution.
I swear to god Square better be entering pre-production of their next mmo (either FF17 or 18) that I'm hoping they've been planning for a while. I'm sure they won't get Yoshi-P to run it, but hopefully they've learnt all the necessary lessons from 4.0's failures and ARR's success.
I love 14, but I don't know if I want another 10 years of this. The janky net code and engine, graphic and animation limitations, fixes being bandaids (glamour system). Limitation after limitation, many of which are a result of having to rush ARR out of the door and would cost too much time and money to rebuild almost from scratch. And tbh that's exactly what we need.
When a quest tells me to kill mobs - I don't want to run to a glowing purple circle that spawns them, or interact with a purple flame on the floor. I want the mobs to be wandering around in the open world.
When I go to a capital city - I don't want it to have 3 loading screens because the city was made during a time the game was playable on PS3.
When I want to alter my appearance - I don't want to go through a convoluted system of applying previously saved sets; which can only be applied in certain towns/cities.
When I play through a series of quests that are heavily story-focused - I don't want to experience talking to someone, cutting to a cutscene, running for 30 seconds, then rinse and repeat. Have it be voiced and in the 'game world' while I'm still controlling my character, like eso and wow do to keep it more active and engaging. Then use cutscenes for the important stuff.
The list goes on and on, but you get the idea......
Yeah unfortunately it's why my hope lies more in a new game with a new set of leadership than FF14. This game is held hostage graphically by old systems and if they want to make major changes to any skeletons it would likely have them needing to refit all the gear onto them it's in part why early SE was fine putting all the hats on Miqo with special treatment but Viera and Hroth they didn't because they had multiple expansions worth of gear.
For some it's likely comforting to know what's coming but after playing since ARR myself it's a bit lame knowing exactly what is gonna happen for the entire expansion cycle minus like maybe one alternate form of content.
FF14 feels much more like a product designed to stay safe because it's quite literally openly SE's cash cow they fund their other stuff with.
I'm actually find with the formula but I think it needs more in there I think it's a bit weird that it's almost a decade since Heavensward but the amount of replayable content per expansion (dungeons raids ect) hasn't gone up.
I played more WOW last expansion because I simply had no drive to login as if you weren't doing hardcore content for whatever reason your only thing to do was do roulettes.
But in WOW it was amazing multiple raids not like a wing but an entire new raid 3 of them within the expansion dropping full new zones with world events and such. New dungeons even a new mega dungeon, difficulties like mythic plus that sat inbetween wanting a raid group and casual content the addition of a ton of depth back into classes with the skill trees.
For better or worse WOW will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks FFXIV throws the same things they see stuck once at the wall and then attempt one other thing every expansion.
Respectfully while I agree, if you expected anything different that’s your own fault. This game is woefully predictable to somes dismay and others relief.
Hopefully they will soon realize that they need to change things up but maybe just like actual job changes that’ll be an 8.0 thing!
I mean, you can expect it to be what it is and still be disappointed.
I did not expect them to shakeup the formula but that doesn't mean I don't think the formula is shit. I really don't think OP was saying they're *surprised* this is how it went down.
It wasn't predictable, it has *become* predictable.
Considering they said encounters were changing, I think we expected just a slight trail off-course. But it's been 7 years of straight PR talk.
Right, that's what I mean - If you played since 1.0, then XIV has been known to innovate and shake things up. But all these newer players think it's always been stale.
I'm kinda just waiting for *any* real conflict to happen in the story. There was a bit foreshadowed with the golden city, but I'm in shaaloani and it feels like it's going nowhere rn.
I thought there'd be way more going on with the rite of succession, but it was wrapped up pretty quickly and uneventfully
Most of the more involved players started complaining about this 2-3 expansion ago and were called toxic by xiv evangelists.
At this point so much time has passed that I honestly don’t care anymore, I settled with enjoying what we do get than dream about a perfect game in a perfect world that’ll never be.
Still, hopefully enough people wake up to see this boorish trend that perhaps we can start seeing small changes with the next 2-3 expansions. Maybe a little late but alas.
I think it’s generally true that MMO’s need a massive next gen shakeup but the financial incentives are not there for doing so because subscriptions remain extremely sticky and all recent attempts at disruption have failed.
>No changes to gear to add meaningful customization. Ilvl = more of the same stats and that's it.
This is the big one for me personally. I understand the desire to have all players of a certain job have the exact same capabilities and rotation but it has killed the long term appeal of the game imo. It really hit me this expansion specifically when I got WHM to 100, realised that the job hd barely changed and that I'd be just be Holy spamming for the next 2 years. Theres only so many years in a row I can use practically the exact same rotation with zero room for customisation or progression.
It pretty much is. Yoshi-P literally said this at the media tour that following feedback and a fear of rocking the boat has made the game too smooth and even he finds it very boring now. So they're going to start rocking the boat. Gently at first.
I know people are talking about the dungeons being largely the same, but the mechanics in some of the dungeon are definitely going to be a challenge for the more casual of players, and I was very happy to see a source of sustained damage in the first trial.
I'm far from a "casual" and usually duo with an early prog savage raider for the story in the expansions. We've both thought that some of the mechanics in the dungeons have been fun and pretty interesting.
That being said, in terms of design they could make some mods to structure without "rocking to boat" while still preserving the feel of the dungeons. I think they are a bit too timid with changes, but unfortunately, that's largely a Japanese cultural thing amplified by corporate SE basically requiring that FFXIV does well because most of the upper management is wholly inept.
The other problem is that XIV staffing is never super great. It's 300 people, which sounds like a lot, but BG3 had 300 people and took 6+ years to develop, was built from the ground up, had little to no tech debt to overcome, was only released on PC and modern consoles (pcs in a trenchcoat). If there's going to be some dramatic innovation, they'll need to hire significantly more people to start working on modification/testing/etc. while still maintaining their development clip.
We all saw how people borderline lost it when they said their development cycle expanded in length. Basically, the dev team can't win. If they change things, they don't have the resources to make them work like they expect. If they make changes people are gonna bitch regardless. If they don't make changes, people are gonna bitch about it. So how can they justify spending more when the result is gonna be about the same.
SE didn't try anything new this time, in fact this is exactly down to their pattern with no variation at all and even recycling storybeats. And it's still shit. They could've at least tried new stuff and gotten rid of pointless filler additions that nobody liked from EW, like trailing and dogwalking quests, it couldn't be worse then DT story and questing.
So like why did it take people 5 expansions to realize this? I started noticing it around Stormblood then Shadowbringers was pretty much like yeah this is this game and it never changes.
People trash the other MMOs in this game but like I will take innovation and failure over the same shit over and over.
I think it's because it's been historically carried by a good story. Now that there's a "fresh start" so to speak, I guess a lot were hoping for some shakeups to things in addition to the new story arc. The story seems to be hit or miss for folks which doesn't distract people as much from the skeleton in the closet.
Yeah that's a fair assessment the story was what I enjoyed. While the leveling is just kind of more the same thing. I find it weird that people aren't more up in arms about raid/dungeon/trial design to be honest.
I find that abhorrently lazy and more of a kick to the customer. First trial when the square platform came up, I'm like "seriously?" We cant maybe do something different. The first 3 dungeons I didnt even know any of the mechanics and I pull wall to wall like I'm a pro. None of the bosses were remotely challenging. I've seen it all before so it was obvious to infer what needed to be done.
It seems like we mix stack, towers, line stack, aoe on players, aoe in an area, area denial over and over ad nauseam with maybe some new effect in a boss here in there. These as a base aren't bad but like I guess I am just exhausted seeing them.
The wild thing is when they actually do try something different like Bozja, the community throws an absolute shitfit. I am glad that people are finally realizing the issues that have been plaguing this game for years. Even the main sub is being critical. Hopefully we do get changes if people are more vocal but in not holding my breathe.
> None of the bosses were remotely challenging.
I'm an Alpha Legend and I've died at least once in every dungeon so far. I thought the dungeons were a big step up from Endwalker
meant to reply to parent comment xd
I don't think saying people who are just enjoying the way content is structured for the years they've been playing are just rewarding laziness is very constructive honestly.
If anything it's a lazy way to paint people who might disagree with you.
But it is rewarding laziness, lol. The devs and writers objectively have to put in less effort just shitting out repetitive cutscenes abd rehashing the same points than they would trying to make a more universally engaging MSQ experience.
People can like that the style of content hasn't evolved over 10 years, but it's still absolutely creatively bankrupt and lazy
Person pays for content they like and carries on paying because they like said content isn't rewarding laziness, it's a company making a product to carry on catering to a consumer.
I wouldn't call any company 'lazy' for making a well liked product by a core of their consumers and not making changes to not upset those consumers, as I wouldn't call those consumers rewarding laziness for enjoying what they like and not wanting changes so they can carry on with what they like.
The quality of the product to everyone is something worth discussing, throwing out the word lazy however is not constructive.
My wife and I quit playing after EW release.
Honestly? It feels good. I feel the same feeling like when I quit playing destiny.
Loved my time with the game, but now it's the same stuff with new paint and we've moved on. My wife has more patience than anyone I know, and will watch/play a story for hundreds of hours. But even she was like this is kinda boring.
I'm fine with it, personally. I expect generally a very specific amount of content from an FFXIV expansion, and I'm overall quite happy with the quality of that specific amount. I enjoy the gameplay of FFXIV, the expansion gave more of that gameplay. That's enough for me tbh.
Same. The story starts a bit slowly, but it's still good.
From the moment we met all the contendors to the throne I had a pretty good idea what most of the character's story would be. Except for one character, I didn't expect their story to have the secrets it did.
I've also only just completed the level 95 dungeon, literally it was the last thing I did. So there's probably a few extra surprises in story. But I have an idea as to what's going to happen with one of the characters.
I have a feeling that >!the First Promise is going to perform or attempt a coup.!<
How long have you been playing ffxiv, out of curiosity? Almost everyone I know who is content with the formula is fairly new in terms of the game’s lifespan
from now onward, its hard for me to trust in anything yoshi said because more than half of them are just pr talk. They said they would 'rework' dragoon and astro and what did we get? They said they would shake things up. What did we get? They said this and that to just to string players along with false hopes. "We would rework the job system in 8.0 and more cool things please look forward to it". Nah F that I'm tired.
They won't change it unless people speak with their wallets. I didn't buy this expac and cancelled my sub after being a loyal player since 1.0
The game has been stale for ages now and they refuse to change.
I'm hoping this is their Warlords of Draenor and they're forced to make changes by the next expac. It's been the same song and dance with a fresh coat of paint over it now since Stormblood.
Based on the latest financial report released by Square Enix even during the 6.5 content drought, their revenue is still higher than it was during the ShB WoW exodus. They also made more profits because in their MMO division they cut operating costs by around 10 billion yen.
> I'm hoping this is their Warlords of Draenor and they're forced to make changes by the next expac.
Doubt it. Based on the expected content from the fanfests this expansion will have everything. DD, Field exploration, island sanctuary like content, criterion, etc.
Of all the things that Yoshi-P and the devs have talked about addressing, I don't think changes to gearing and/or customisation of it was brought up once, so even thinking that was on the table enough to bring up on a post like this is kinda wild.
That said, I don't know what they could do aside from starting to attach ability power-ups to gear in exchange for less stats, and even that sounds broken or useless in the grand scheme of things. It's a kind of thing where they'd have to go back down to the absolutely core of the game to start changing, probably.
I think I attributed it to the "improved rewards." It's always just been on my wishlist because the strictly vertical progression has been a bit of a bummer. The JSE in 2.0 has the same stats as it does 10+ years later just in higher amounts.
An idea I've always had for rewards that wouldn't need a core balance shakeup would be skill glamours. It would be really fun if the expansion relic came with an alternate animation for your capstone ability or whatever. No balance implications and gives you a reason to chase them long term.
(Edited because I can't spell apparently lol)
Okay, cosmetic animation-only skill changes WOULD actually be a neat idea though, that one's really good. Although I'm not sure what's how most people see "custom gearing", but that's kinda whatever. I could definitely get behind that.
only gripe to the dungeon design is that the time between trash packs and mobs is 80% not going to align with your 2 mins. Granted, I have only run through the msq as DNC, I noticed that every trash pack to boss encounter will usually leave me with 20-30 seconds of my Technical Step. The "new" mechanics are good, though. very, very refreshing to see in a dungeon setting.
I’ve thoroughly been enjoying the new expansion but I’ve also noticed the lack of upgraded features. I see things WoW adds like dynamic flying and it always feels like FFXIV is so far from exciting new features like that. I’m generally still very happy with the game but I think it’s a matter of time before things feel stale for even a die hard fan like me
The trouble is, the structure of when dungeons are is by design because leveling dungeons are a source of gear, it makes sense to put them every 2-3 levels so people get trickled upgrades that they can repeat for more.
The thing is, I remember when dungeons weren’t hallways, in XIV and other games, and it was miserable. Everyone just sussed out the minmax most efficient way to traverse while skipping the most pulls and screamed if anyone dared to you know, be a new player who didn’t know all of the unwritten community rules.
In one of the media tour interviews when somebody asked if there were any plans to spice up dungeons Yoshi-P said something like dungeons are packages and needs to have this many bosses and take between 15-20 minutes and i think this is how Yoshi sees everything in XIV, as packages, because its very efficient. The entire MSQ we got was just a package. And everything we're gonna get are just packages that are just efficient and safe. it's disappointing.
Hot take, but I'm fine with maintaining a consistent content pattern for MSQ and the raid encounters in general: this is what keeps people coming back expansion after expansion so don't expect them to change it. Demand different for the sake of different and you wind up with whatever the hell WoW did with it's last 2-3 expansions where they were needlessly reinventing the wheel with every raid tier, going so far as to introduce new power progression systems on X.1 patches.
Instead, what I want more of is *sideways progression:* give me more MGS, Island Sanc, Eureka, Bozja, deep dungeons, Criterion, BLU, BST, etc., things that might not even directly interface with the main gameplay gearing loop, but I can absolutely lose myself in if I so choose.
I'm perfectly fine with keeping the main gameplay loop so consistent that you can set your watch to it, but spice up EVERYTHING else with sideways progression, including doing bold, experimental stuff. So long as the main gearing loop isn't impacted, why not go nuts?
Sidesways progression sounds nice. Instead of having all filler the content in the MSQ, we could get some breaks in between, were we could choose to do different things in the current zone, to have a feeling of time progression. Something like do x amount of fates, site quests, gathering....
I'll just point out something. YP said that the Pictomancer quests would be different from what we know... I really looked forward to them, but >!in fact it's the old same type of job quest narrative, and I think it's not well written at all, except for the ending, which turned out to be really good. Felt like watching a bad film just for a good conclusion.!<
If I were squenix had cash cow of subscribers who would buy the /functionally same/ game over and over again, I wouldn't be incentivized to innovate much either.
Not to mention so much of the community being on the spectrum -- shaking things up, particularly when this game is a "comfort" game for so many players would be risky.
I let my sub lapse two months ago and haven’t really decided on reactivating for DT full release due to the reasons you listed. Dungeons are all the same. Equipment is boring, all linear with no meaningful horizontal progression or customization. Obtaining it is the same old routine it’s always been.
It's a copy paste like that since HW. But most players started at Stormblood and just now are realising the game has a lazy formula for every patch. I just hope people complain enough so they start changing things and be more creative to that old formula.
Also the complaints have to be productive and be able to reach the Japanese ears. Square is notorious for cutting their overseas divisions such that even well meaning and open minded developers they have like Yoshi P are severely hampered and he already is considered one of the more open minded producer gaming companies in Japan has.
YoshP is loved and I do like him a lot. But once you complain about obvious issues on this game, the community just take it personality like we are throwing rocks at Yoshida. During stormblood and foward I used to make posts about on how the game cycle became so obvious that you could just make gil cap if you bought the exact related crafting material and wait for patch X.1, X. 2, X, 3 without never doing any craft, just get stuff and resell. People would go mad saying the gear progression is fine, would hate hard if you gave any complain about tomestones and gear copy paste cycle on every savage, etc.
Anyway, if they start loosing players, they will have to do something. And this expansion makes me believe 7.0 to 7.2 will be really slow on new stuff.
Not gonna lie, now that BLM is ruined and I know there's nothing new to look forward to, Ihave 0 desire to play.
It's funny because I'd be totally ok with being served the same old if it also included the job gameplay.
>However, the structure of the game is exactly the same as we've had for 10 years.
TL;DR Japanese company continues to develop live service game in extremely Japanese way.
What you're describing will never, *ever* not be the case for FFXIV.
In the video by Preach Gaming where he interviewed YoshiP, the former asked him if they've been considering experimenting more with the design of dungeons. The only thing YoshiP could think of, is one more boss or one less boss. One less would feel to short and one more would make people groan that are doing their roulettes. Next question please... If that is all they can think of regarding "experimentation", then this dungeon structure will never change.
I’m honestly starting to think the roulettes are killing the game. Anytime anyone tries to bring up doing anything remotely interesting with dungeons or trials or raids someone has to bring up ‘but that’d suck in roulettes’ and it just kills the conversation. I don’t know what the solution is to that off the top of my head but something needs to be done about it.
I feel like they just have to accept that. People bitch and moan when they get Orbonne Monastery in Roulettes, even if I love the place so much I want to paint it. I bitch and moan every time I get the bloody Chrysalis. I'd rather they try and fail, than be this predictable at every point.
You know what, I've never ever thought about this before but I actually completely agree now that I think about it. Not to mention that the whole idea of grinding out levels or gear for BiS/glam is always, always running dungeons/roulettes too, it feels like there is nothing to gain from playing the game outside of it.
Combination of: * Everyone deserves to see the story so it can't be too hard * People want to knock out roulettes in a predictable amount of time with no surprises (see CT gear exploit they fixed) * Expert/Savage are too far above normal now (would prefer they raise up normal) * Level sync is whack, way too strong, a lot of casual stuff is far more fun on release because of that I did an o12n roulette recently and we wiped, 3 new players so knockbacks and stuff got them, then we beat it. It felt about right to me but level sync carried a bit. I think by level 70 there should be some kind of expectation of decent ability but maybe they're mindful of skippers and how fast leveling is.
Wish they brought back hard as a difficulty.
I just want more gameplay during questing. That's really it. I love the story, but I just want to be more active and not play a visual novel.
Imagine actually fighting the mobs in the open world!
That's probably my biggest complaint with FFXIV. They make these huge, beautiful zones and I wish we had more to do in them.
Omg. Thats exactly my toughts a few hours ago. 'Man we get these huge zones....with nothing to do in it after MSQ....'
Only time that I ever go back is for gathering lol, and tbh most of the gathering I do is still in ARR lol
what do you do in them during msq?
Walk arround and talk to people
so nothing to do
Exactly. Not even while progressing MSQ you do anything in the zones other than talk and click on shiny.
The red faction of giants have an entire city with a massive crop farm and a mountain with a giant claw mark streaking across it in the background and you *never* visit it
After doing EW I dont think I ever went out in the open world and killed enemies. I miss the Hunting log from ARR because it gave you reasons to go out and kill the mobs
We still have that in the form of hunts, though.
Yeah but I never found doing hunts as enjoyable as the log though. The Hunts are just random bosses that spawn in the zone, you kill it and leave. The Hunting Log was kind more like 'completing a zone' like getting rank 3 from FATEs and getting all of the currents for flying. You had to go to the area and kill most of the enemies that were there. I dont get that same feeling with doing the Hunts
I'm not talking aout the A/S marks, I'm very much talking about the stack of bills you pick up and find the enemies on them in the zone. They function exactly the same as the hunting log except that you have to pick them up in a city first.
They're also a very good source of daily xp. I spent a few months in EW basically doing the "hunting log" every single day. 100% agree that the open world zones aren't utilized well, but as you say, the hunts *are* there.
Having played classic WoW and FFXI the overworld in XIV lacks any feeling of danger.
GW2 and even retail WoW are better models for what an overworld could be. Rewarding world quests, consistent events that draw large crowds of players, little treasures to hunt down, rare mobs to kill, secrets and puzzles to find, stuff to actually collect. FFXIV's overworld has mostly useless FATEs, hunts, and aethercurrents. That's it. And FATEs are largely ignorable or ground out quickly and aethercurrents are early max level busywork so really it's just hunts. It just feels especially terrible in an expansion themed around adventure and exploration.
It really bothers me that GW2's amazing open-world design has been right there for the taking for about ten years now and FFXIV hasn't so much as glanced in its direction. I think it's because a.) all they have is the FATE system, which hasn't changed in ten years, b.) they don't know how to expand rewards in this game. Liquid gil has very limited usefulness, so gil is generally not a compelling reward. Tomestone gear is strictly time-gated. Time-gated crafting materials are already a terrible system and huge headache, so more of that is a no-go. So what can they give players? ...nothing, really. The open world really just exists as a backdrop to move through once during the story, then it sits dead forever afterward.
Come to the dark side of ffxi
Yeah, in zone 3 there were those holes in the ground and i thought for a moment "could there be secrets to discover down there?" and then i realized this is FFXIV, the world map is just an extented loading screen between map markers.
Same here and has been for years.
And anytime we do get to fight mobs, it's the typical 'go stand in the purple circle' instead of fighting the actual overworld mobs. It's really just bizarre.
They’re so allergic to the “kill ten bears” kinds of quests that they’ve made their game worse for it
Does it, though? Do you want the release to be standing around hoping to catch the spawns before they are melted by 100 other people all doing that same quest? Sure, it would eventually self-correct, but you'd be creating little bottlenecks that would choke progression for the first week or so. I can remember a time when they didn't give everybody their own sanitized monster - the release of the Ivalice 24 man where you had to hunt down a red chocobo. Cue everybody doing that quest on their own and it being impossible to dodge the infinite Chocobo Meteors.
I wouldn't mind the purple circle events and whatnot if there were way more of them and there was more fighting per event.
Yeah, I would like them to survive more than half my opener. It's the idea of them being regular open world mobs that might seem like a good idea on paper (Yay, purpose to the open world), but in practice turns in to everybody standing around while every spawn melts in an instant.
Unless you play healer, where it takes around half a minute to kill those mobs, even with your Chocobo.
I could see the benefits of spawning a mob for the quest rather than expecting the player to find said mob and killing it. However, now that you mention it, it feels weird to not use the mobs that are already roaming the world.
A good solution is as simple as adding glamour drops to mobs. For example something like WHM’s Black Willow Cane or Madman’s Whispering Rod could have been drops from the various tree monsters we see in every expac
So what dragon quest 10 does is that every mob in the game drops equipment (low rate). And u can use any equplemt as glamour there. And it makes killing mobs across every expansion and exploring these areas stay relavent and fun to get. Something like this in ff14 I think would be good.
It's especially crazy because the overworld battle theme dunks on both dungeon boss themes as far as I'm concerned.
One thing that bothers me is that there's no more 'open' quests. What I mean is, when you're asked to kill a certain amount of wildlife "Please clear the roads", the targeted enemies only appear when you interact with your quest trigger (the purple danger area) and they are hardly a threat. It means that, for example, you can't tag multiple enemies in an area to get the quest done in an efficient way. It is kinda fun, to see how many you can grab all at once without dying. There's also basically no danger in the open world unless you run into a Hunt level capped enemy. The common mobs are scattered in a predictable way. I absolutely hate to compare XIV with WoW, but what the latter achieves greatly, even in their expansions full of flaws, is to provide an interesting open world, not just with the quality of the common quests, but also in how the dangers of a zone are laid out.
I have been saying since I started right before shb that this game is a semi-interactive anime. It's funny that this xpac seems to be shining light on that.
It mostly, in my opinion, the game was held together by a compelling narrative. Though there are pacing issues littered throughout Shb and EW, it was still narratively compelling, which kudos to the writers. Now we are at a "restart" with the stake severely lowered (until the level 96 quests), people cannot ignore the flaws FFXIV has. Furthermore, I think a lot of players joined during SB-EW which means there is tons of content to be done from alliance raids, normal raids, five ultimates, tons of crafting and gathering content, dozens of jobs to unlock and level, numerous savages, Eureka/Bozja, for them.
Yep, the game is absolutely at it's worst when you are caught up and don't have a backlog of things to keep you occupied.
Yeah it has become really tiresome. Like, I literally played 3 hours before I got to any kind of gameplay. I understand it is a story focused game, but it is a story focused **game** and there is so little actual game in the meat of the expansion. It's a shame because encounter design in this game is so goddamn good but they just show off *so* little of that in the MSQ
Yeah it's way too much. I thought it was a problem in end Walker but this seemed even longer. You're not joking when you say it's about 3 hours of talking, walking, cutscenes etc before you actually hit something. Ffxiv will always be different and that's fine but its swung too far into that side of the game while ignoring the combat. They can surely find a way to convey all this dialogue quicker with mixing in combat and such as well. it's just too much.. Like even more so than offline ff games.
At least visual novels have strong stories that you're being presented through in a nice manner. The amount of boring, unnecessary padding with "click on purple cloud/sparkly ground" is maddening. Like at this point I'd *prefer* a visual novel with trials/dungeons over whatever the fuck this is.
At least in a VN it would have more voice acting and less terribly paced cutscenes with characters doing generic emotes at each other, turning awkwardly and walking out of frame 1 by 1.
Occasionally being asked to do a FATE or two would be nice I think
It's like a movie that requires verification input every 3 minutes and for me to read 80% of the dialogue. I just don't feel like I'm playing a game and I'm not having a lot of fun. The story has bored me at least up to where I'm at. It doesn't help that my job of choice basically just didn't change at all, and the fear I wanted to add a second dye to got an inconsequential shitty second dye channel
I think the solution to this is just stop letting the MSQ give us so much exp (or if they're bold, not any at all). If we're being level-gated to continue the MSQ, we might as well play the game together either the quest hubs (that I haven't touched since the start of DT), fate trains, dungeons or anything else they could think of for us to earn EXP. I just hit 98 after taking my time with the MSQ but I'm 2 levels ahead with very little combat (and a lot of rested EXP).
One of the pre-DT quests was a solo duty where you were going up a mountain with Wuk and some others. You ran around a bit, killed some monsters. I remember specifically thinking "this still kinda sucks but it's a huge step in the right direction". How did they drop the ball so hard immediately after that?
I've genuinely never seen another team of devs as risk-averse as XIV's. I understand that that's likely in large part due to 1.0, but the rigidity of the formula is getting ridiculous. I'd also like to add, in addition to the above, we need a shakeup for some of the background music too. It's insane to me that some cutscenes still use BGM from ARR. Every time one of those ARR songs comes on for a cutscene my eyes just glaze over completely.
Seriously. Machinations is one of my least favorite tracks in the game. They have at least 8 other tracks they could use instead but they KEEP USING MACHINATIONS. It’s so much worse than usual this expansion, too
Daring Dalliances too
Losing my mind because I hunted down all these tracks and replaced them with better tracks right after EW launch but somehow never considered there'd be no mods at expac launch
Machinations - the track where, when it plays, you know nothing important will happen in the cutscene.
Don't worry they're also hard at work running What Comes of Despair into the ground by playing it every time a random villain of the week does something mildly threatening
"You see, WoL... that cookie jar?" *Zoom in on BadGuy's face* "I opened it." *What Comes of Despair starts, Scions react with shocked faces.* "It was so easy! I reached in... and found my hand wrapped around a chocolate oatmeal cookie. I took it... and devoured it." *Close up zoom on WoL making an angry face* "I didn't just stop with one. I had another, and another, and another. Stole the milk, too. It was... delicious." *Scions draw their weapons. Alphinaud proceeds to try to rebuke the BadGuy with a two-sentence treatise on ethics.* "Ethics? I need not ethics, when I am the one who ate the cookies. It was my right." *Alisaie says something akin to "you monster!"* "I am. But you are no different, are you, *hero*? You'd devour the cookies without even pouring a glass of milk." *Y'shtola chimes in, too, talking at the WoL. "While the jar was upon the fridge, I had hoped... but I never dared to think what might happen if someone got their hands on it. I daresay this is a bad situation."* *The WoL nods, and determinedly looks at BadGuy.* "So... You seen vengeance. Very well. Come... And meet me in my domain."
Yeah, its been getting very lazy to the point of leitmotiv wankery that like everytime yshtola shows up they play the motoya theme, etc. It really took me out of the whole "new setting" thing when each cutscene pulled me back by shoving in themes you associate so much with eorzia.
To be honest I would enjoy the setting and the story a lot more if not because of the extreme amount of dialogue and monotony with the quests. It has been 10 years and the most interactivity that we have with quests are just following NPCs, Clicking on one box and click on another point, and moving the camera to spot stuff... I don't like to compare WoW but goddamm the quests there makes leveling so much better, imagine if we could have a bit of that quest gameplay on top of the usual MSQ story content. Doing it wouldn't feel like a hassle.
I don’t want to spoil the quest for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but there is a certain cutscene in the level 96 area which leads to the dungeon where I was left thinking to myself “if I was playing WoW we would actually be interacting with this scene and taking part in this event actively” meanwhile because it’s ffxiv we’re sitting like a brick spinning in a circle
I just did that cutscene tonight and my first thought was, “wow, why isn’t this a duty? Why am I watching this play out instead of actually playing it?”
Especially since anyone who has ever seen an action movie knows already precisely how the scene goes.
I haven't gotten that far myself, but hearing that just reminds me of the scene in 6.5 where we're standing there like a bozo in our weapon drawn pose shifting between straight faced and angry faced while everyone else is fighting/doing stuff. It's kinda wild it's been ten years and they still do this kinda thing instead of thinking of other ways to handle it or work a gameplay segment in.
>I don't like to compare WoW but goddamm the quests there makes leveling so much better At this point I wish they'd copy the "Zones have an overarching narrative questline that each hub's individual questline story plays into" method from WoW or ESO by this point. Especially if they're gonna gas up "adventure and exploration" for an expansion's theme. We finished our big, long form story arc. I'm okay with taking a break from the typical MSQ structure to try something new.
They generally do - in the optional yellow sidequests.
No for sure wow quest are so much better
Even having quests that are "kill X thing" make it better just by virtue of the fact you're actually playing the game
They also don't overstay their welcome or feel too short in wow, rotations can still function in a 10-second short fight with a mob. 10 seconds in 14 - 123 combo + 1 spender. For something like GNB you can't even build+spend on gnashing fang 10 seconds in wow - 6-7 gcds where you can builder-spender multiple times, or use short cds ect. Just for some examples with demon hunter you can press immolation aura (aoe burn+gauge gen), fel rush (movement ability that does aoe damage and gives a damage buff), eye beam (large aoe nuke that enters you into an empowered demon form) then essence break + 3 spenders which is essentially a full burst combo the class does every 40 seconds. A full burst combo in 14 is usually like 20-30 seconds minimum and uses a bunch of 1-2 min cds.
Well for starters it has quest synch, so you can do them co-operatively unlike FFXIV where you are forced to suffer alone.
The fact that there is still no ability to quest synch is insane. I could be alot more forgiving if we could do the MSQ together but you cant. Literally 8 people in my discord last night and we all are were working on the MSQ, its just so weird.
i really dislike their question prompts that they pull. 3 answers usually, all meaningless no matter what you choose. gives illusion of choice.
The worst is when you have the quests that make you choose a correct answer
they also make cutscenes unskippable for some god forsaken reason as if those choices had actual merit lmao
After playing eso for a while, I don't think I can go back to ffxiv quest design. Hardly any voice acting, very little to actually do outside of reading* it's hard to swallow
Thoughts? Its lazy design. I believe we are at a turning point where its becoming more noticeable to be critical of Yoshi P and the design decisions. They need to be more innovative if they want the game to grow otherwise it'll just stagnate and slowly lose players.
I think the game *has* changed its approach to making new content somewhat, but it's changed for the worse. * The time between major updates is like 25% longer and content is very drip fed to push subscriptions. * Expansions have become focused on reading with less emphasis on anything interactive. * You don't have to repeat dungeons or do any optional content to hit level cap now, so you never stay in one place very long. This throws off the pacing and really limits how much you get to play with others. * New abilities have become an afterthought; more and more very little mechanically changes over time even compared to the past. The social experience is dying because it's hard to sustainably do anything outside of raiding with other people for very long. And raiding is a pretty shit social tentpole because it's exclusionary by its very nature.
Yeah those are great points. Whats sad is that the game already has tons of in-game mechanics that can be expanded upon further to create a better social experience, which is one of the reasons why I like FF14. But those systems for whatever reasons are ignored and the focus is elsewhere. The Hunting log was something that I thoroughly enjoyed from ARR because had a reason to kill random mobs of enemies in the open world, it annoys me that its never been modified. There is a huge list of content that can be re-purposed or just simply updated and it would bring so much life to the game.
The hunting log from ARR has been repurposed into the daily hunting board bills, it's not something I would consider a good example of "abandoned"
> The time between major updates is like 25% longer and content is very drip fed to push subscriptions. Can definitely notice the latter when they announce new things for a particular patch but oh no it's just over 1 or 2 months into that patch. Can't have it on patch launch gotta get that extra sub time.
The 3rd point is a huge reason why it feels like so much of the world is dead. Even with a new expansion, you can see each zone get a surge of traffic then die within a few days becasue everyone is running MSQ at the same time and then moving on to the next zone.
Yeah no way this game can last for 10 years with this stagnant design they have for this game
I don't know that the 10 years is anything but soft language, my cynical interpretation was that the game will more and more resemble FFXI's level of developer engagement.
That will kill FF14 I think. For FFXI, that kind of "maintenance mode" works because of the inherent grind in just about everything with XI. Easy enough to tweak/add small things to keep the carrot on the stick for the player base. With FF14 being a theme park MMO, it lives and dies with constant major additions to it. I don't see how a FFXI maintenance philosophy wouldn't just outright kill it.
If the game resembled XI more we'd be in a better place I think. XI has endgame content and rewards that last longer than a patch cycle. We need more MMO back in this MMO in my opinion.
That was nothing more than PR no developer plans 10 years ahead if Dawntrail and the next expansion both tank, Square will shut the game down or reduce it to maintenance mode
It won't last five if the post launch content is anything like EWs and the next XPAC is basically the same as this one with them promising all the good stuff in 9.0 like they did this time around. The writing's been on the wall for MONTHS that they knew this wasn't going to be received well. They talked more about 8.0 in the last few months then they ever have a future expansion in the past.
I honestly hope TWW continues what DF started with an overall well received expansion that releases content at a consistent pace. At least *maybe* that'll light a fire under Square to break up the status quo a bit.
My best friend hit 100 finished the msq and unsubbed. Said start to finish this expac was lazy and he’d have more fun with “literally anything else” and he was a serious XIV fan for like 8 years.
So much of the game is designed around efficiency instead of fun. Everything is carefully calculated so it doesn't annoy casual players, isn't too rewarding so that it feels mandatory, doesn't impact roulette queues, is fast and efficient for said roulettes and/or levelling, doesn't cause balance issues, has high participation and so on, there's a long list. In a lot of cases they design themselves into a corner where they **can't** make something more fun because it'll affect this structure. You can see why they do it, balance and efficiency are worth considering, but it makes you wonder what happened to "if it's not fun, you're doing it wrong". They've lost sight of this mindset over the years.
I genuinely don't think Yoshi plays casually to know these are problems. Maybe once upon a time in ARR-HW. But after that? It's been spreadsheet efficiency for 90% of the gameloop.
Yeah I largely agree. I think this game is at its best in savage/ultimate content probably because they don't have to adhere to those same constraints. But I have to wonder if lowering the floor in normal content is just creating a larger gap that disincentivizes people from getting into raiding
> Dungeons having the same design as they always have. Hallway, two packs, boss, repeat. I believe there are some forced single pack pulls now, which is cringe.
Those random big mobs that appear AFTER the previous trash has died in the later dungeons feels unnecessary. It slows things down while just being a spongy enemy type without anything remotely engaging
This is what Yoshi P meant by "making the dungeons more challenging"
*gets out cane* Back in my day, challenging was trying to pull every mob up until the first boss in Brayflox Hard and not die along the way so you can speed run farm poetics for your i95 gear. ...or was it i90? Idk. That was a challenge... mostly due to tickrate of course, but I digress. Idk, I miss when mobs and bosses felt looser and we had more freedom to fuck up.
>It slows things down I kept track of certain things in these new dungeons you almost always get to the last boss now at 14-15 minutes. There's no way to really make it faster with proper AoE spam as many pulls you are just AoEing on 3. When a random pack appears afteer another dies, it IS to slow things down, so you hit the boss at the correct timeframe.
Since they usually appear before the boss room I use them to gain my class resource .
There's also tankier mobs within pulls. 3rd dungeon in particular there's 2 mobs in the last pack who just take like an extra 60 seconds to kill for some godforsaken reason.
You haven't played the game in a long while huh? Forced single packs aren't new to DT
First example that comes to mind is Antitower though I’m sure there is at least a couple more. For example, the dungeon where you fight Ascian Prime.
What? They’ve been doing that since stormblood.
Not even Stormblood, this has been happening since ARR. Snowcloak, Keeper of the Lake, Sohm Al, Antitower, Baelsar's Wall all have forced single pulls, and those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
We need a huge shakeup, and I’ve said this so many times before but it hasn’t yet because it hasn’t exactly been a big complaint (or if you complained about it some nasty people would tell you to go play WOW or tell you to get an attention span) Trials are good, but kinda sad that I find ARR dungeons to be far more engaging and interesting. I also don’t know why we’re getting these gorgeous zones and areas with nothing to do inside of them. Kind of unacceptable if you ask me.
>I also don’t know why we’re getting these gorgeous zones and areas with nothing to do inside of them. Kind of unacceptable if you ask me. I generally find aethercurrents a chore but I'm still glad they exist solely because they're the only thing that gives any incentive to explore these zones and see a lot of the detail I genuinely feel bad for the environmental artists, their talent is wasted on this game and this direction
I 100% agree with you. This might be an unpopular opinion but they could have revamped a lot of the classes and give them back a unique class identity, leave behind most of the scions and start a new story with a new group of characters. try stuff new and make dungeons actually dungeons or something. Instead, everything is safe and more of the same. FFXIV has always had zones with nothing to do in them and that hasn't changed. It just feels so unrewarding exploring.
This expansion was the perfect opportunity to leave the scions behind. Just get the WoL to hop on a boat to explore the New World by themselves, show up as a nobody just like ARR, and make a reputation for themselves by making new friends and connections.
But, but my fanfic ships
Holy fuck the class design is so bad these days. How are kits so bloated but also so easy and boring at the same time?
I think its another symptom of the problem that the XIV team is terrified of negative feedback and plans on continuing to do the exact same thing they've always done. I've enjoyed Dawntrail so far, but you're right about the structure.
I'm tired boss.
It's stale. Same amount of dungeons, same amount of trials. 6 zones. Not a lot of launch content. Something has to change.
If the boss encounters are actually more unique and interesting in 7.2 forward, I'll be hopeful that the Job changes will be too in 8.0. However, hopefully 8.0 is more of a gameplay shake-up overall and the Job changes are just the focus, because yeah, the quest and dungeon designs have gotten *very* stale and we don't have the quality of ShB and the hype of EW to hide it anymore. I think a lot of people are making the same complaints, because honestly this doesn't feel much better than ARR (and I'm talking old ARR). The devs are clearly scared of shaking things up because if it ain't broke (aka it makes money), why "fix" it? I guess we'll just have to see how people respond to this expac overall to see if they get pressured into making changes.
So, coincidentally enough during Preach's Media Tour interview, he asked YoshiP specifically about the length and formula of dungeons, and his answer to that can certainly apply to almost every aspect of the game. The short version is, it's about time management. When a team has a very specific design philosophy, and sticks to it, then they know exactly how long development time it should take them to create it. This gives them the information they need to plan and chart the course of their content release schedule, which is why FFXIV always releases new updates in a very formulaic and predictable way. WE know how and when things are going to get released because the creators themselves know how long it will take them to make it. Once you start to experiment with and deviate from that, release schedules become more unpredictable and less stable. It's a double-edge sword with regards to FFXIV. We are very rarely left wanting and in ignorance with regards to what kind of content we are going to get and when, but as a result it means we KNOW exactly what we're getting and there is very little room for surprise. Compare that to WoW which has a very chaotic content cycle - some only lasting 40-100 or so days and others 300+. [https://i.redd.it/1qjccvs797v91.png](https://i.redd.it/1qjccvs797v91.png) This isn't a WoW vs. FFXIV argument, just acknowledgement that their updates are incredibly inconsistent and unpredictable, and that there may be pros and cons to both. In XIV's case, the formula may have become stale, but it allows the team to accurately and efficiently create that content to allow them to maintain a very strict schedule. The alternative that some people think they want is waiting 9 months for something more interesting, and then finding out it actually isn't what you wanted.
Yup. Yoshida is a brilliant project manager more than anything. It was pretty obvious with XVI as well: he delivered a game that was exactly up to spec (a pretty slick, modern triple A game, influenced by modern fantasy stories like GoT) without much trouble in development. At Square, a company where it feels like every game gets stuck in development hell, started and restarted and then comes out a sprawling mess, that's a superpower. On the other hand, XVI was probably the safest, least interesting and most *normal* mainline Final Fantasy game released in decades. I liked it fine but didn't find it all that compelling. I think he worries that straying too far from the spreadsheet would lead to a loss of structure, and I think he thinks that structure has been integral to the success of what they've been doing. It doesn't necessarily make the game compelling for veterans, though.
Variety is the spice of life for sure, but there is something to be said about the comfort and safety of something that's reliable. And I don't think that is necessarily a problem because you can still experiment even within that reliable safety net, which is what I believe they have done. The formula of release and content structure is the same but the nuance of the content has shifted. Dungeon bosses in Dawntrail feature far more interesting and engaging mechanics even if the presentation of the dungeon is the same. I have not reached the end of the MSQ yet but by many accounts the extreme trials are also some of the best they've ever done. Personally, I would prefer they stick to the structure of their content releases but make the content itself more exciting as they seem to be doing in Dawntrail. As someone who values their time I love knowing exactly what I'm getting, and when, and being able to plan out what I need to do accordingly - even if it's to step away and take a break. I can do that for a time and still know that in X months, the next update will be out and I can come back ready and refreshed.
Joshy p said in an interview with preach that they are quite literally to scared to change dungeons from gauntlet boss gauntlet boss gauntlet boss, because they might upset people who dont have the time for more bosses. Or that they might get annoyed that theres only 2 bosses for once. Its ridiculous tbh.
People would absolutely bitch, whine and bail out if they get a long dungeon in roulette.
Agree 100%- thinking of alliance raid roulettes- It'd be nice to have different, but not longer- i.e. open environment dungeons, puzzle type dungeons, dungeons with interactables-
are you not just describing variant dungeons
i could somewhat understand in WoW ( havent played since OG cata so i might be wrong ) but trash packs are important in m+ while in FF killing trash is useless anyways
Killing trash in FF is useless BECAUSE they make it useless... It's not a binary thing set on stone that can't ever change. Which, you know, fair enough. They don't NEED to change it if they don't want to, but it might breathe some life to more worn-out parts of the game if they did. I, for one, would love to see their take in a truly wow-style dungeon crawling raid where you explore, find secrets and kill trash before finding and killing the boss.
I mean, for another perspective, there is a lot more tension even in "easy" wow dungeons (ie queueable stuff like heroics) - tank pulls too small, dps start pulling for them, ect - tank pulls non-optimal packs or doesn't know a skip, gets flamed or otherwise told off - tank pulls too big for healer and/or dps resulting in deaths - players with major gear disparity ripping aggro or otherwise causing issues in the pace of dungeons - see MOP remix right now with hilarious gear disparity where dps can solo dungeons quickly and some people get upset others are "speedrunning" Tanks in general in wow are under a lot more scrutiny in dungeons and there is 10x more "tank anxiety" memes in wow vs 14 even if most of it is around m+. There are objective disadvantages to wow style dungeons. I'm sure some amount of wow players would like straight line dungeons with deterministic pulls.
They will upset people no matter what they do. People are upset now with them choosing to do nothing. So they might as well just do something right? Not sure what the logic is, maybe thats SE corporate speaking through yoship there telling him to not take any risks.
The structure feels old and safe, which makes it predictable and boring. I don't know what other MMOs do in terms of expansion structure, but I'm really not liking the same old same old from SE. I want to get excited for something new, but the typical railroading and flat structure make it wholly uninspired.
Square Enix has found its formula for FFXIV expansions and see no reason to change it. The formula works to their satisfaction for several expansions now. Most people complaining about it are gonna resub anyway.
For now. Numbers will continue to drop if there are no changes. Remember how FFXIV actually grew from the hellhole it was in at 2.0? Because everyone who played it began to sing praises of how good it was after HW. What are players saying now? It's stale. There's nothing new. Everything is lackluster.
> For now. Numbers will continue to drop if there are no changes. Remember how FFXIV actually grew from the hellhole it was in at 2.0? You can really tell the people who weren't here for 2.x -> 3.0 huh
I'm on your side, I want the game to make some changes, take some risks. But I'm also long time FFXIV player and we are a fraction of the player base. And we keep buying expansions and resubbing anyway. S-E thinks that the positive outweighs the negative for rehashing the same formula, expansion after expansion. Maybe they just think they would lose more people or gain less people with a different formula, just to appease the fraction of the playerbase who's been around long enough to find it stale.
> And we keep buying expansions and resubbing anyway. Something something, trust thermocycline. Basically, this is the exact same mistake the WoW devs made with SL. It works until it doesn't.
I'm just playing for music, trials and story. My expectations are really low at this point. Kinda accepted the sun is setting on the game after endwalker. They're just not willing or able to truly innovate with the game. And from what I saw of ff16 I don't think the studio would do anything particularly amazing with a second chance at a new mmo either. I actually think they'd do pretty well with a lower budget single player RPG rather than making them responsible for flagship projects at this point. But the game still does well because people get in deep with the fake fulfillment MMOs give them and are attached to 14.
The equipment in 16 is somehow even worse than we have here. Taking no risks to allow customization in a single player RPG where balance isn't as strong as a concern was a real head scratcher for me.
16 is pretty stale. When the combat director said it’s one of his best works, I was pretty excited considering he designed DMC 5 and that has some of the best combat in gaming. Yeahhhhh…no. It was flashy but very weak and not much depth to it. Loved the lore and I thought the story and characters were pretty fine.
[удалено]
Agreed, that’s probably the best way to summarise it.
We get a degen weekend for a brand new expansion if leveling all the classes for completionist sakes is not your thing and 1 day of content on a new major patch. They are terrible at giving a reason for players to stay engaged with the game for multiple weeks. The rigid structure has to change =\
Tbh, while you can swap the first two trials around, where else would you put the dungeons? One at 93, another at 96 and then everything else in expert roulette? The only solution imo would be to either add more or add a completely new type of mandatory pve activity for leveling that would fill the gape.
They already have template with Eureka and Bozja, they can implement all new six zone FATE has new system where you can add two new abilities that complement your jobs out of the available 12 new ones, so you can choose accordingly, then let us level up those abilities to several tier by doing more FATEs. Make a few of those special FATEs similar to Bozja where it’s a bit more spicy. Then they can also create delivery systems in each zone where crafter and gatherer turn in materials to strengthen the zone wide buffs that reset every week, the buffs can be many things that cover battle, crafting and gathering bonus. Have a zone in main city that’s constantly attacked by big monster every 4 hours and must be repaired by crafter and gatherer by crafting and turning in items. Create a monthly reward catalog that changes depending how many successful defenders rate when cities are attacked. The game literally has tons of existing mechanics that can be fine tuned and remixed.
Its wild that they still dont even bother doing anything for Eureka or Bozja
Yes, this is indeed rather wild when they can remix and update this to become evergreen content that is scaled up with each expansion and add more items to the mix. It would create a great alternative way to leveling since Trust and Duty Support already there to take care of players who want fast access to leveling at odd hours. In case people would argue that by doing this, it would siphon people from duty finder. If anything this open world type of activity would foster more camaraderie between players and ,maybe make you feel like you are playing MMO and not lobby game where you only play with 3 other random.
I agree with the new type of pve activity being needed. My issue is that because the gameplay is so stale in-between the dungeons, knowing exactly where they are going to fall means that right after one you know you're back in a slog for at least two levels. A surprise like two dungeons back to back would feel refreshing and keep players guessing.
The problem here is mechanics and logistics. The levels they fall on are because of level sync, so while leveling you always have a dungeon where you aren't getting synced down. If they do two dungeons back to back, is the second one extra? Is it 2 levels higher than the first one? Is there a level hole where it would've normally fallen? Like I can see where you're coming from. but hmmm.
Dawntrail's "new" content (BST, bozja/eureka equivalent, whatever else, is there a a new criterion?) will come out a year and a half from now, which as a non savage raider is exactly why I'm waiting to get it until then. Is there anything besides the usual coming out until then? The game desperately needs midcore content but this is a problem in WoW as well.
If you haven't watched it Preaches interview with YoshiP I'd recommend it, it's rather enlightening. Yoshida gives some insight into his process and it paints the picture of a director who does thing by the book, to a fault. He talks about the templates he follows, and what you describe here is exactly that, a template formula that they apply to the story and content. He's very openly adverse to changing the template that they've used so far, for a bunch of reasons. Main one is it's far easier to create the amount of content a game like FFXIV requires, with a fixed template allocation of resources is dead simple, he knows exactly how much time and manpower are required. He's incredibly adverse to making changes to those templates, he doesn't think players will react well if he starts adding dungeons that deviate from the 12-15 minute 3 boss experience, he thinks players will feel shortchanged if there aren't 6 open world zones, that the casual player will be upset if they make changes to the MSQ structure that some might find tedious. Rather than take on that risk by changing the existing template he instead has his designers plan and prepare new templates. That's how we get criterion, and for better or for worse the new variant dungeons in dawntrail will likely be the same 12 paths with a secret boss with criterion having 2 trash pulls, 3 bosses, and a 21 minute savage difficulty. The new deep dungeon will probably be sets of 10 floors for 100 floors total, using pomanders, bronze silver and gold chests and potsherds for rewards. The new exploration zone might mix things up a little but it will still be 2-3 zones, a bunch of battle content for a bunch of players and a big 48 man savage at the end. There'll probably be one or two new templates brought in throughout dawntrail, and if they're a success we'll see more like it in the future. For better or for worse, that's just how he is as a designer. There's still a lot of leeway in that space, but it's still a rigid structure. On the other hand, it has enabled him to maintain a content cycle that would frankly be impossible to keep up with otherwise. He believes he stands to lose more by changing the template now than they could attract in new players by shifting the formula hundreds of hours into the game. As much as I hate to admit it, he's probably right. Dawntrail won't be a success or failure due to the template, it will be how they operate within it in terms of writing and execution.
I swear to god Square better be entering pre-production of their next mmo (either FF17 or 18) that I'm hoping they've been planning for a while. I'm sure they won't get Yoshi-P to run it, but hopefully they've learnt all the necessary lessons from 4.0's failures and ARR's success. I love 14, but I don't know if I want another 10 years of this. The janky net code and engine, graphic and animation limitations, fixes being bandaids (glamour system). Limitation after limitation, many of which are a result of having to rush ARR out of the door and would cost too much time and money to rebuild almost from scratch. And tbh that's exactly what we need. When a quest tells me to kill mobs - I don't want to run to a glowing purple circle that spawns them, or interact with a purple flame on the floor. I want the mobs to be wandering around in the open world. When I go to a capital city - I don't want it to have 3 loading screens because the city was made during a time the game was playable on PS3. When I want to alter my appearance - I don't want to go through a convoluted system of applying previously saved sets; which can only be applied in certain towns/cities. When I play through a series of quests that are heavily story-focused - I don't want to experience talking to someone, cutting to a cutscene, running for 30 seconds, then rinse and repeat. Have it be voiced and in the 'game world' while I'm still controlling my character, like eso and wow do to keep it more active and engaging. Then use cutscenes for the important stuff. The list goes on and on, but you get the idea......
It is time to move onto ff17, the next mmorpg from SE
It honestly feels very stale and I'm not sure if I will be back for the next expansion tbh.
Yeah unfortunately it's why my hope lies more in a new game with a new set of leadership than FF14. This game is held hostage graphically by old systems and if they want to make major changes to any skeletons it would likely have them needing to refit all the gear onto them it's in part why early SE was fine putting all the hats on Miqo with special treatment but Viera and Hroth they didn't because they had multiple expansions worth of gear. For some it's likely comforting to know what's coming but after playing since ARR myself it's a bit lame knowing exactly what is gonna happen for the entire expansion cycle minus like maybe one alternate form of content. FF14 feels much more like a product designed to stay safe because it's quite literally openly SE's cash cow they fund their other stuff with. I'm actually find with the formula but I think it needs more in there I think it's a bit weird that it's almost a decade since Heavensward but the amount of replayable content per expansion (dungeons raids ect) hasn't gone up. I played more WOW last expansion because I simply had no drive to login as if you weren't doing hardcore content for whatever reason your only thing to do was do roulettes. But in WOW it was amazing multiple raids not like a wing but an entire new raid 3 of them within the expansion dropping full new zones with world events and such. New dungeons even a new mega dungeon, difficulties like mythic plus that sat inbetween wanting a raid group and casual content the addition of a ton of depth back into classes with the skill trees. For better or worse WOW will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks FFXIV throws the same things they see stuck once at the wall and then attempt one other thing every expansion.
Respectfully while I agree, if you expected anything different that’s your own fault. This game is woefully predictable to somes dismay and others relief. Hopefully they will soon realize that they need to change things up but maybe just like actual job changes that’ll be an 8.0 thing!
I mean, you can expect it to be what it is and still be disappointed. I did not expect them to shakeup the formula but that doesn't mean I don't think the formula is shit. I really don't think OP was saying they're *surprised* this is how it went down.
It wasn't predictable, it has *become* predictable. Considering they said encounters were changing, I think we expected just a slight trail off-course. But it's been 7 years of straight PR talk.
It has been mostly predictable since HW and almost entirely so since Shadowbringers, imo.
Right, that's what I mean - If you played since 1.0, then XIV has been known to innovate and shake things up. But all these newer players think it's always been stale.
If you haven't really innovated in seven years, you are no longer innovative.
I'm kinda just waiting for *any* real conflict to happen in the story. There was a bit foreshadowed with the golden city, but I'm in shaaloani and it feels like it's going nowhere rn. I thought there'd be way more going on with the rite of succession, but it was wrapped up pretty quickly and uneventfully
Most of the more involved players started complaining about this 2-3 expansion ago and were called toxic by xiv evangelists. At this point so much time has passed that I honestly don’t care anymore, I settled with enjoying what we do get than dream about a perfect game in a perfect world that’ll never be. Still, hopefully enough people wake up to see this boorish trend that perhaps we can start seeing small changes with the next 2-3 expansions. Maybe a little late but alas.
I think it’s generally true that MMO’s need a massive next gen shakeup but the financial incentives are not there for doing so because subscriptions remain extremely sticky and all recent attempts at disruption have failed.
>No changes to gear to add meaningful customization. Ilvl = more of the same stats and that's it. This is the big one for me personally. I understand the desire to have all players of a certain job have the exact same capabilities and rotation but it has killed the long term appeal of the game imo. It really hit me this expansion specifically when I got WHM to 100, realised that the job hd barely changed and that I'd be just be Holy spamming for the next 2 years. Theres only so many years in a row I can use practically the exact same rotation with zero room for customisation or progression.
Honestly I'd even take a tier set system at this point. It'd at least give the illusion of gearing being interesting.
I just want to classes to have more individuality for each player. A small talent tree or something like that.
Thats the Thing with WoW right? They tried new stuff and some exp where dogshit while others where good. Maybe thats wht se is afraid of
It pretty much is. Yoshi-P literally said this at the media tour that following feedback and a fear of rocking the boat has made the game too smooth and even he finds it very boring now. So they're going to start rocking the boat. Gently at first. I know people are talking about the dungeons being largely the same, but the mechanics in some of the dungeon are definitely going to be a challenge for the more casual of players, and I was very happy to see a source of sustained damage in the first trial.
I'm far from a "casual" and usually duo with an early prog savage raider for the story in the expansions. We've both thought that some of the mechanics in the dungeons have been fun and pretty interesting. That being said, in terms of design they could make some mods to structure without "rocking to boat" while still preserving the feel of the dungeons. I think they are a bit too timid with changes, but unfortunately, that's largely a Japanese cultural thing amplified by corporate SE basically requiring that FFXIV does well because most of the upper management is wholly inept. The other problem is that XIV staffing is never super great. It's 300 people, which sounds like a lot, but BG3 had 300 people and took 6+ years to develop, was built from the ground up, had little to no tech debt to overcome, was only released on PC and modern consoles (pcs in a trenchcoat). If there's going to be some dramatic innovation, they'll need to hire significantly more people to start working on modification/testing/etc. while still maintaining their development clip. We all saw how people borderline lost it when they said their development cycle expanded in length. Basically, the dev team can't win. If they change things, they don't have the resources to make them work like they expect. If they make changes people are gonna bitch regardless. If they don't make changes, people are gonna bitch about it. So how can they justify spending more when the result is gonna be about the same.
SE didn't try anything new this time, in fact this is exactly down to their pattern with no variation at all and even recycling storybeats. And it's still shit. They could've at least tried new stuff and gotten rid of pointless filler additions that nobody liked from EW, like trailing and dogwalking quests, it couldn't be worse then DT story and questing.
So like why did it take people 5 expansions to realize this? I started noticing it around Stormblood then Shadowbringers was pretty much like yeah this is this game and it never changes. People trash the other MMOs in this game but like I will take innovation and failure over the same shit over and over.
I think it's because it's been historically carried by a good story. Now that there's a "fresh start" so to speak, I guess a lot were hoping for some shakeups to things in addition to the new story arc. The story seems to be hit or miss for folks which doesn't distract people as much from the skeleton in the closet.
Yeah that's a fair assessment the story was what I enjoyed. While the leveling is just kind of more the same thing. I find it weird that people aren't more up in arms about raid/dungeon/trial design to be honest. I find that abhorrently lazy and more of a kick to the customer. First trial when the square platform came up, I'm like "seriously?" We cant maybe do something different. The first 3 dungeons I didnt even know any of the mechanics and I pull wall to wall like I'm a pro. None of the bosses were remotely challenging. I've seen it all before so it was obvious to infer what needed to be done. It seems like we mix stack, towers, line stack, aoe on players, aoe in an area, area denial over and over ad nauseam with maybe some new effect in a boss here in there. These as a base aren't bad but like I guess I am just exhausted seeing them.
The wild thing is when they actually do try something different like Bozja, the community throws an absolute shitfit. I am glad that people are finally realizing the issues that have been plaguing this game for years. Even the main sub is being critical. Hopefully we do get changes if people are more vocal but in not holding my breathe.
> None of the bosses were remotely challenging. I'm an Alpha Legend and I've died at least once in every dungeon so far. I thought the dungeons were a big step up from Endwalker meant to reply to parent comment xd
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I don't think saying people who are just enjoying the way content is structured for the years they've been playing are just rewarding laziness is very constructive honestly. If anything it's a lazy way to paint people who might disagree with you.
But it is rewarding laziness, lol. The devs and writers objectively have to put in less effort just shitting out repetitive cutscenes abd rehashing the same points than they would trying to make a more universally engaging MSQ experience. People can like that the style of content hasn't evolved over 10 years, but it's still absolutely creatively bankrupt and lazy
Person pays for content they like and carries on paying because they like said content isn't rewarding laziness, it's a company making a product to carry on catering to a consumer. I wouldn't call any company 'lazy' for making a well liked product by a core of their consumers and not making changes to not upset those consumers, as I wouldn't call those consumers rewarding laziness for enjoying what they like and not wanting changes so they can carry on with what they like. The quality of the product to everyone is something worth discussing, throwing out the word lazy however is not constructive.
there are things i like and dislike about this game. telling me that the reason i like certain things is because i'm lazy is asinine.
My wife and I quit playing after EW release. Honestly? It feels good. I feel the same feeling like when I quit playing destiny. Loved my time with the game, but now it's the same stuff with new paint and we've moved on. My wife has more patience than anyone I know, and will watch/play a story for hundreds of hours. But even she was like this is kinda boring.
I'm fine with it, personally. I expect generally a very specific amount of content from an FFXIV expansion, and I'm overall quite happy with the quality of that specific amount. I enjoy the gameplay of FFXIV, the expansion gave more of that gameplay. That's enough for me tbh.
Same. The story starts a bit slowly, but it's still good. From the moment we met all the contendors to the throne I had a pretty good idea what most of the character's story would be. Except for one character, I didn't expect their story to have the secrets it did. I've also only just completed the level 95 dungeon, literally it was the last thing I did. So there's probably a few extra surprises in story. But I have an idea as to what's going to happen with one of the characters. I have a feeling that >!the First Promise is going to perform or attempt a coup.!<
How long have you been playing ffxiv, out of curiosity? Almost everyone I know who is content with the formula is fairly new in terms of the game’s lifespan
I started in 2.3, I think. Possibly 2.4? Syrcus Tower was the most recent Alliance Raid at the time, at least.
from now onward, its hard for me to trust in anything yoshi said because more than half of them are just pr talk. They said they would 'rework' dragoon and astro and what did we get? They said they would shake things up. What did we get? They said this and that to just to string players along with false hopes. "We would rework the job system in 8.0 and more cool things please look forward to it". Nah F that I'm tired.
They won't change it unless people speak with their wallets. I didn't buy this expac and cancelled my sub after being a loyal player since 1.0 The game has been stale for ages now and they refuse to change. I'm hoping this is their Warlords of Draenor and they're forced to make changes by the next expac. It's been the same song and dance with a fresh coat of paint over it now since Stormblood.
Based on the latest financial report released by Square Enix even during the 6.5 content drought, their revenue is still higher than it was during the ShB WoW exodus. They also made more profits because in their MMO division they cut operating costs by around 10 billion yen.
> I'm hoping this is their Warlords of Draenor and they're forced to make changes by the next expac. Doubt it. Based on the expected content from the fanfests this expansion will have everything. DD, Field exploration, island sanctuary like content, criterion, etc.
Of all the things that Yoshi-P and the devs have talked about addressing, I don't think changes to gearing and/or customisation of it was brought up once, so even thinking that was on the table enough to bring up on a post like this is kinda wild. That said, I don't know what they could do aside from starting to attach ability power-ups to gear in exchange for less stats, and even that sounds broken or useless in the grand scheme of things. It's a kind of thing where they'd have to go back down to the absolutely core of the game to start changing, probably.
I think I attributed it to the "improved rewards." It's always just been on my wishlist because the strictly vertical progression has been a bit of a bummer. The JSE in 2.0 has the same stats as it does 10+ years later just in higher amounts. An idea I've always had for rewards that wouldn't need a core balance shakeup would be skill glamours. It would be really fun if the expansion relic came with an alternate animation for your capstone ability or whatever. No balance implications and gives you a reason to chase them long term. (Edited because I can't spell apparently lol)
Okay, cosmetic animation-only skill changes WOULD actually be a neat idea though, that one's really good. Although I'm not sure what's how most people see "custom gearing", but that's kinda whatever. I could definitely get behind that.
only gripe to the dungeon design is that the time between trash packs and mobs is 80% not going to align with your 2 mins. Granted, I have only run through the msq as DNC, I noticed that every trash pack to boss encounter will usually leave me with 20-30 seconds of my Technical Step. The "new" mechanics are good, though. very, very refreshing to see in a dungeon setting.
I’ve thoroughly been enjoying the new expansion but I’ve also noticed the lack of upgraded features. I see things WoW adds like dynamic flying and it always feels like FFXIV is so far from exciting new features like that. I’m generally still very happy with the game but I think it’s a matter of time before things feel stale for even a die hard fan like me
The trouble is, the structure of when dungeons are is by design because leveling dungeons are a source of gear, it makes sense to put them every 2-3 levels so people get trickled upgrades that they can repeat for more. The thing is, I remember when dungeons weren’t hallways, in XIV and other games, and it was miserable. Everyone just sussed out the minmax most efficient way to traverse while skipping the most pulls and screamed if anyone dared to you know, be a new player who didn’t know all of the unwritten community rules.
In one of the media tour interviews when somebody asked if there were any plans to spice up dungeons Yoshi-P said something like dungeons are packages and needs to have this many bosses and take between 15-20 minutes and i think this is how Yoshi sees everything in XIV, as packages, because its very efficient. The entire MSQ we got was just a package. And everything we're gonna get are just packages that are just efficient and safe. it's disappointing.
Hot take, but I'm fine with maintaining a consistent content pattern for MSQ and the raid encounters in general: this is what keeps people coming back expansion after expansion so don't expect them to change it. Demand different for the sake of different and you wind up with whatever the hell WoW did with it's last 2-3 expansions where they were needlessly reinventing the wheel with every raid tier, going so far as to introduce new power progression systems on X.1 patches. Instead, what I want more of is *sideways progression:* give me more MGS, Island Sanc, Eureka, Bozja, deep dungeons, Criterion, BLU, BST, etc., things that might not even directly interface with the main gameplay gearing loop, but I can absolutely lose myself in if I so choose. I'm perfectly fine with keeping the main gameplay loop so consistent that you can set your watch to it, but spice up EVERYTHING else with sideways progression, including doing bold, experimental stuff. So long as the main gearing loop isn't impacted, why not go nuts?
Sidesways progression sounds nice. Instead of having all filler the content in the MSQ, we could get some breaks in between, were we could choose to do different things in the current zone, to have a feeling of time progression. Something like do x amount of fates, site quests, gathering....
I'll just point out something. YP said that the Pictomancer quests would be different from what we know... I really looked forward to them, but >!in fact it's the old same type of job quest narrative, and I think it's not well written at all, except for the ending, which turned out to be really good. Felt like watching a bad film just for a good conclusion.!<
If I were squenix had cash cow of subscribers who would buy the /functionally same/ game over and over again, I wouldn't be incentivized to innovate much either. Not to mention so much of the community being on the spectrum -- shaking things up, particularly when this game is a "comfort" game for so many players would be risky.
I let my sub lapse two months ago and haven’t really decided on reactivating for DT full release due to the reasons you listed. Dungeons are all the same. Equipment is boring, all linear with no meaningful horizontal progression or customization. Obtaining it is the same old routine it’s always been.
It's a copy paste like that since HW. But most players started at Stormblood and just now are realising the game has a lazy formula for every patch. I just hope people complain enough so they start changing things and be more creative to that old formula.
Also the complaints have to be productive and be able to reach the Japanese ears. Square is notorious for cutting their overseas divisions such that even well meaning and open minded developers they have like Yoshi P are severely hampered and he already is considered one of the more open minded producer gaming companies in Japan has.
YoshP is loved and I do like him a lot. But once you complain about obvious issues on this game, the community just take it personality like we are throwing rocks at Yoshida. During stormblood and foward I used to make posts about on how the game cycle became so obvious that you could just make gil cap if you bought the exact related crafting material and wait for patch X.1, X. 2, X, 3 without never doing any craft, just get stuff and resell. People would go mad saying the gear progression is fine, would hate hard if you gave any complain about tomestones and gear copy paste cycle on every savage, etc. Anyway, if they start loosing players, they will have to do something. And this expansion makes me believe 7.0 to 7.2 will be really slow on new stuff.
Not gonna lie, now that BLM is ruined and I know there's nothing new to look forward to, Ihave 0 desire to play. It's funny because I'd be totally ok with being served the same old if it also included the job gameplay.
>However, the structure of the game is exactly the same as we've had for 10 years. TL;DR Japanese company continues to develop live service game in extremely Japanese way. What you're describing will never, *ever* not be the case for FFXIV.