It would be nice if they (you) acknowledged that FFXI had only 5 of those by it's first expansion, and Sky wasn't until later on in it. Expecting FFXIV to have that many now (even half of them) is incredibly unrealistic at best. Listing FFXI's current content as if the game hasn't been out since 2002 and has piecemeal-ed that in is dumb.
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT| Raiders of the Void Ark
- Thread starter Trojita
- Start date
It would be nice if they (you) acknowledged that FFXI had only 5 of those by it's first expansion, and Sky wasn't until later on in it. Expecting FFXIV to have that many now (even half of them) is incredibly unrealistic at best. Listing FFXI's current content as if the game hasn't been out since 2002 and has piecemeal-ed that in is dumb.
Comparing content on a two year old game with one expansion to a nearly 16 year old game with several expansions isn't going to win any "FFXIV sux because FFXI!" arguments.
Reddit is good for some things, like screenshots. Structured arguments are not one of them.
I'm almostas tired of hearing the FFXIV isn't FFXI and I dislike it therefore it sucks arguments about as much as I am tired of FFXIV 1.x did a lot more better than 2.0 and YoshiP doesn't listen to Legacy players anymore arguments.
Except Square Enix has shown that they have no appetite to change the PVE dynamic. It's dungeons and raids, all similarly structured.
Each expansion with FF11 brought new battle modes (plural).
Where's the new significant battle modes in FF14?
Also FF11 was releasing these with nothing to leverage except Everquest and Lineage. FF14 can leverage FF11's 13 year history.
I don't understand why people are defending the lack of content variety always here.
Each expansion with FF11 brought new battle modes (plural).
Where's the new significant battle modes in FF14?
Also FF11 was releasing these with nothing to leverage except Everquest and Lineage. FF14 can leverage FF11's 13 year history.
I don't understand why people are defending the lack of content variety always here.
OK, what do you do each week?
People really just don't understand that he's not saying he wants this game to be FFXI, that he's just saying that there is a serious problem with variety and endgame content in this game and they could take some serious cues from the other MMO on the books. Hugely different but everyone just sees you say FFXI and starts yelling "hurr durr different games".
We are not defending them for not having variety, we are defending the reason for the lack of it. FFXI is a HORIZONATAL progression game, it requires each new piece of content to be completely different or it has no place in the game because items in question that come from the content must find a niche in the long list of other equally similar items/content. Add the same content with only slight tweaks in the item pool and they will justifiably have people wondering what was the point of using those resources. But this is a vertical progression game, content that was relevant becomes irrelevant as soon as the next item level tier changes and thus whatever nice/amazing design they might have made for that content and systems suddenly becomes useless over night, as such in order better make use of their resources and time to structure new events they have to have the ability to make that type of content relevant in some fashion through a lengthy life cycle with room to slowly add new systems which in turn will also be recycled with new skins/content patterns as patches/expansions go forward and remove stuff that people had issues with the previously.
To make such a system work you need to have a platform that is easily approachable and tested. You make an entire tier of content that no one likes without any alternatives then your game starts having a quick escape of users. They released what made people stick around while trying to vary the approach. The problem this time however is they made the item lvl tier too large for so little content and thus the gap in content is more pronounced. The dev team is filled with former FFXI vets as well as newer people to the genre, but in the end the resources they have to make content on a yearly basis is still limited, they have to plan things over a year in advance. They do tried and tested stuff because they know people liked it when they first came out, and they choose other venues (like Gold Saucer) or 'off patches' to test new gameplay types. The Exploration Voyage stuff coming in 3.1 is the first proper PvE new system they will add to the game and it will be expanded each other patch till the end of the expansion if not beyond that (like a variation of it in the next expansion) if it is well received. The kind of things you are asking for is not possible for the type of game this game is striving to become, that is unfortunately all we have to give you. If this is too much a problem, or the 'variety' isn't coming quickly enough then FFXI is still technically there waiting for you to go back to as that has met what you want it to be.
None of my crafts are at sixty, so I spend some time each day gathering up the materials I need to make my GC turn in items as well as some levequests. I'd rather do that than just drop tons of gil on it.
My botanist and fisher aren't 60, so I spend some time leveling those up. I do expert, I level up my other jobs (BRD and MCH currently). I do some chocobo races and minicactpops.
By the time I get done doing all of that, I've been on the game about 3 or 4 hours. That's enough for me for the night and I log off.
Rinse and repeat and I don't get bored, because I am also talking to FC mates on Discord, helping them with stuff, doing maps, etc.
Even before HW all of my crafts weren't at 50, so I focused on that, leveling up the rest of my jobs, etc.
There's more to do in the game than end-game raiding, which is what you do based on the exorbitant amount of comments you make in the thread about how bad people in the game are and about how the dev team should but up arbitrary ranked gated content before someone can move on.
We're no longer in 2002 when FFXI is competing with Everquest and WoW wasn't some big boogy man that MMOs are trying to mimic. There's is a literal smorgasbord of options people have nowadays, so it doesn't bother me one bit that I don't have to set alarms to wake up in the middle of the night to pop and tag and NM, spend an entire work week raiding, or drop hours upon hours upon hours of time just to get a relic.
For dyce, you are right on the money with what I'm trying to say.
For allard, horizontal vs vertical gear progression is definitely an issue but you could change that by adding gear variety via substats. Expansions are good times to do that. Make it where sometimes it's worth it wearing an i150 item over the i200 item because that i150 item has some kind of job ability increase.
For wilsongt, so you level up jobs, do a couple chocobo races, and chat? Sounds like an exciting time :| You could facilitate the same thing by playing an offline RPG and using Skype.
By the way, I spend the same amount of time in this game as you, maybe even less (assuming you play the game more then a day a week). I raid for about 6-9hrs a week and that's it because there's nothing else for me to do.
And that raiding has me slamming my head against the same exact boss. There is nothing else for our group to do. Nothing to break up that progression.
For allard, horizontal vs vertical gear progression is definitely an issue but you could change that by adding gear variety via substats. Expansions are good times to do that. Make it where sometimes it's worth it wearing an i150 item over the i200 item because that i150 item has some kind of job ability increase.
For wilsongt, so you level up jobs, do a couple chocobo races, and chat? Sounds like an exciting time :| You could facilitate the same thing by playing an offline RPG and using Skype.
By the way, I spend the same amount of time in this game as you, maybe even less (assuming you play the game more then a day a week). I raid for about 6-9hrs a week and that's it because there's nothing else for me to do.
And that raiding has me slamming my head against the same exact boss. There is nothing else for our group to do. Nothing to break up that progression.
I understand. I'm saying why does FFXIV need to be locked to a strict vertical gear progression system? Why not add more secondary stats that makes lower iLevel gear useful in situational content over the higher iLevel alternatives? Why not have blended content? Maybe lower the importance of main stats against some secondary stats.
The developers have mentioned before the premise of their simplistic secondary stat design is to make their stat system more accessible for the casual majority.
Here is the simplest answer for what I want:
Instead of:
Tue 6pm: Savage
Thu 6pm: Savage
Sun 6pm: Savage
I want:
Tue 6pm: Savage
Thu 6pm: Content B
Sun 6pm: Content C
Under-tune content but lock out the content on weekly or every couple of days. That would prevent world firsts from clearing so quickly as they could only do that specific piece maybe 3hrs every couple of days.
I don't want to play this game more, I want to have more variety for more fun with the time I do spend.
Yes, I understand that, my argument is my disagreement with this philosophy. You support this or you are just arguing the "That's just the way it is" point? If so, that point is wasted here as I understand how it is and I'm just in disagreement.
Instead of:
Tue 6pm: Savage
Thu 6pm: Savage
Sun 6pm: Savage
I want:
Tue 6pm: Savage
Thu 6pm: Content B
Sun 6pm: Content C
Under-tune content but lock out the content on weekly or every couple of days. That would prevent world firsts from clearing so quickly as they could only do that specific piece maybe 3hrs every couple of days.
I don't want to play this game more, I want to have more variety for more fun with the time I do spend.
Yes, I understand that, my argument is my disagreement with this philosophy. You support this or you are just arguing the "That's just the way it is" point? If so, that point is wasted here as I understand how it is and I'm just in disagreement.
The developers can try whatever they believe makes them more money. I'm all for convoluted stat systems that expose how dumb the majority of people are, but that probably doesn't make much sense business-wise. Old, long forum posts of mine are still out there on the internet with calculations on FFXI's dual wield and haste systems. A more complex stat system is harder to implement and also harder to balance.
FFXI's system had major flaws. Balance basically didn't exist and the exclusion of at least half their jobs in end-game was pathetic. This game does a relatively-decent job with balance. Content variety existed partly because of the horrific drop rates. People wasted years running the same thing to get that their drop. Abysmal drop rates aren't going to fly with today's gaming climate. At least the chests in this game's raid actually reward you items, instead of nothing like most of the time in FFXI. Concepts like a Rajas Ring being the best-in-slot for a decade are also ideas I want modern MMORPGs to avoid. With the ability to change gear in the middle of combat, people would want multiple optimized gear sets. Given the terrible drop rates, that meant running the same shit years on end to get best in slot for a dozen gear sets!
The community came up with third-party applications to exploit FFXI's gear change system to make your character change gear dependent on a selection of parameters you specified. My Red Mage spellcast XML file had at least a thousand lines of code for tanking situations, healing situations, DPS situations, support situations, etc.
I prefer banging my head on the same, small subset of crap for a few months at a time and at least see my raid group rewarded more regularly than dozing through a larger set of crap for years and seeing my raid group get nothing the majority of the time.
This part is funny to me because the sole reason I'm playing FF14 is because of the praise I've seen for the story, despite being an MMO. I enjoy FF games and played a ton of FF11 but I just don't have time nowadays for a true commitment to an MMO, so being able to mostly solo the main story and have it be fun and entertaining is right up my alley.
Yes I know you're talking mostly about end game post MSQ stuff, just thought it was funny in relation to why I'm personally playing.
There's our disagreement. You are also speaking of extremes - I'm not advocating for FFXI, I'm advocating for the good aspects of FFXI to be considered for this game. You don't need to have the low drop rates because you have blended gear progression and content variety.
The problem is they put everything into the MSQ for the expac (along with new zones, dungons, classes etc) and left little for endgame. They did the same thing with ARR 2.0 as anyone who was around for the endless WP and AK speedruns will remember. You would think they would learn from this but sadly no. I remember the wait for 2.1 being long and painful as well.
What I'm worried about is that 2.1 was a huuuge patch. Besides CT there were 3 new extreme primals (4 if you want to add Ultima HM to the mix) that took people a long time to master. That's besides a new story primal, pvp, housing, Hildibrand, the introduction of Duty Roulettes, and the 3 new dungeons. It seems like from what they've announced of 3.1 yes we're getting the 24 man raid but other than that there's 2 dungeons, the equivalent of Ultima HM, and Island exploration which I'm hoping is not just glorified treasure hunts. That's a lot less and I'm a bit worried about it at this point. I hope they show more on Friday.
What I'm worried about is that 2.1 was a huuuge patch. Besides CT there were 3 new extreme primals (4 if you want to add Ultima HM to the mix) that took people a long time to master. That's besides a new story primal, pvp, housing, Hildibrand, the introduction of Duty Roulettes, and the 3 new dungeons. It seems like from what they've announced of 3.1 yes we're getting the 24 man raid but other than that there's 2 dungeons, the equivalent of Ultima HM, and Island exploration which I'm hoping is not just glorified treasure hunts. That's a lot less and I'm a bit worried about it at this point. I hope they show more on Friday.
Content variety in FFXI was a byproduct of the low drop rates. People would stop doing shit like sky, sea once they got their drops. Some people would stop playing the game once they got their drops after spending a lot of time on that content to finally get their drops. Groups would recruit new people to replace the quitters. Groups would then have to go back to do the old content for the new people that need the drops. That cycle!
Without a need to go back to do content for drops, people in FFXI did the same thing they do in this game - run the latest set of shit for the new hotness!
What could airship ventures have gear wise though? They already have Eso, Gordian, and Void Ark gear. There's no way they introduce gear with that. So the reasons to run it would be for gil items, glamour items, and/or minion / mount items. I doubt you'll have many people motivated if no gear.
I played FFXI significantly and you would always be doing that older content to get people gear because they helped you on the content you didn't have gear. There was a selfish reason to help people in that game. Created a good community actually.
And I quit at the level cap increase, but I had played that game quite significantly and I was still missing items from sky and sea and dynamis and limbus and salvage and etc etc.
You can say that was about low drop rates, but I have to say it was more about the lockouts. It's the same with gearing via raids in this game. It takes months and months to gear up a group with that content's gear. You apply -group- (not personal) lockouts to everything else and you create that same community instead of the stranger AFK online content we have now via DFinder. DFinder should be for exping, not for end game content.
Oh, and because that game didn't have a currency system I could play alt jobs for bleeding edge content based on what was needed at the time. You formed up groups based on who was in FC at the scheduled time. Normally I would be PLD or NIN, but maybe they needed SAM or MNK for that content.
I am curious about the type of stuff we'll see soon. Considering that they barely made their aggressive estimate of spring expansion release and the increased development costs and time for story-based material that the 3.0 has a lot of, they've been pushing off content that was talked about when they first announced and discussed Heavensward.
Then what do they do for the Primal fight? Bismarck was useless off the bat and Ravana is now useless.
Xux
Member
i200 weapons. Have 3.2 and 3.3 primals drops be the same iLvl pre- and post-upgrade of the new tome weapons. Airship stuff could also be a setup for the 3.2 crafted gear if that's going to be as relevant to end game as they said.
Thanks for your personal anecdote on how the low drop rates meant that you were missing drops after years of playing.
One of the advantages of Duty Finder is to make the game's content more accessible. This game is big on accessibility and Duty Finder helps with wasting less time on people finding a group to do something and letting them spend more time actually doing that something.
Being geared for multiple jobs for bleeding edge content after years of work is a byproduct of FFXI's horizontal gear progression. FFXI was also more lax with mechanics and gear checks, so being undergeared at your role on bleeding edge content was more accepted. It wasn't the case where gear checks was strict enough that relics and best in slot equipment were necessary to beat content. DPS parse results in FFXI are more pathetic than in this game. Way too many baddies thinking they're decent.
Yeah maybe people should see what they add before they start freaking out. The expac was a decent amount of good quality content so at least give them a chance to follow through with whatever else they have planned. It's only a few more days for more info now anyway.
You do realize this is the OT for the game, right? Where everyone bitches about ass size and not enough content as well as the game being dead?
Person A who loves game says the game could use some serious endgame tweaking to stop the widespread burnout and unsubbing, gives examples and argues passionately for why they could be helpful.
Thread gets super sarcastic and borderline insulting towards person A.
Person A is destroying thread.
neogaf.jpg
Thread gets super sarcastic and borderline insulting towards person A.
Person A is destroying thread.
neogaf.jpg
ChoklitCow
Member
So as someone who started playing on 2.0 release then quit until last month, I started playing with some friends on a random server they were on. Got to 50, hit the 3.4 million 4k xp quests that I'm sure were great when the patches were released, and almost got burnt out..
Then the cutscenes hit. HOLY COW!!!! My mouth dropped and I still haven't picked it back up.
Also, incredibly small world but someone with a FC tag of GAF ran by me the other day and I inspected the FC and it was "Gather Against Fate". I remember telling myself "Man, that would have been crazy if it was NeoGAF.
Turns out it is!! Hi random low level female character that was leveling out near the railroad tracks near Ul'dah on Sunday night.
Then the cutscenes hit. HOLY COW!!!! My mouth dropped and I still haven't picked it back up.
Also, incredibly small world but someone with a FC tag of GAF ran by me the other day and I inspected the FC and it was "Gather Against Fate". I remember telling myself "Man, that would have been crazy if it was NeoGAF.
Turns out it is!! Hi random low level female character that was leveling out near the railroad tracks near Ul'dah on Sunday night.
Video games.
The funny thing is, I'm a random low level character that was near the railroad tracks near Ul'dah.
But it's not a female and I haven't submitted my GAF FC application yet. For a second I thought it was me...
Just to be sure, you were talking about post 2.0 patch cutscenes? I'm just starting out and hoping it doesn't take me FOREVER to do the story as that's what I'm most interested in. I've heard the patch story stuff is nearly as long as the main story quests. I really hope it doesn't take me something like 80 hours to do all the story.
tiggerkiddo
Member
Pack it up folks, time to migrate to other MMO's.
More than ever, the game feels like a treadmill, and while that's generally what MMO's are, others do a better job of hiding it by providing more variety. We have the exact same raid cycle of a four-boss 8 man hardmode content, followed by 24 man casual steamroll content. We're still farming DR Ex to cap tomes.
Moreover, so little actually changed in terms of gameplay and systems with the expansion. Square played it so ridiculously safe. Gear have the exact same stats with no interesting new customization options, such as materia melding in dungeon gear, enchants, proc effects, set item bonuses, new equipment slots for perhaps relics or offhands, new stats, etc. Jobs are just the same with 5 new skills, and we still have no customization options. Armory system and cross-class skills feels dated and pointless, when the new jobs didn't even branch off of any classes. Crafting systems did change, but only for the worse.
I'm used to MMO expansions making significant changes to the core game, but Heavensward ended up feeling more like a large patch. I appreciated the story and new zones and flying mounts initially, but that honeymoon period wore off awhile ago.
Moreover, so little actually changed in terms of gameplay and systems with the expansion. Square played it so ridiculously safe. Gear have the exact same stats with no interesting new customization options, such as materia melding in dungeon gear, enchants, proc effects, set item bonuses, new equipment slots for perhaps relics or offhands, new stats, etc. Jobs are just the same with 5 new skills, and we still have no customization options. Armory system and cross-class skills feels dated and pointless, when the new jobs didn't even branch off of any classes. Crafting systems did change, but only for the worse.
I'm used to MMO expansions making significant changes to the core game, but Heavensward ended up feeling more like a large patch. I appreciated the story and new zones and flying mounts initially, but that honeymoon period wore off awhile ago.
ESO...what are you doing with your life?
This right here is the biggest problem I think. The largest change was probably flight, but ultimately even with bigger maps there's not much reason to use them, there's nothing really new or interesting to be found in the world once the initial shine wears off. There's enough new visual content there for the expansion name. New maps, animations, enemies. But the underlying systems and structure of the game barely changed at all. Once you get past that initial push of content you are back almost identically to where you were before you bought the expansion, or in some odd cases worse off (the scrip system is bad and should feel bad)
I am still enjoying the game, but that's mainly for the good group of people I've found to play with, I don't think I'd stick around for the game by itself. But that was the case back in 2.x as well, and with how they design content I don't see that ever changing. Overall I'm ok with that though. There's plenty of other games, and if anything not needing to devote an inordinate amount of time to this one to keep up with things is welcome.
Sell me on ESO. I played the beta way back and it was...not great.
playing bideogames
It has a lot of build variety, and some really competent RvRvR PVP. Some of the questlines are pretty dope too. I can't comment on the endgame content though, since I've never reached that point.
I can say that tomat punched the first person he saw, and spent the rest of the night as a criminal on the run from the law.
I've lost control
I play as an angry old man with Fabio hair who goes by the name Swagbucks Manymajicks (courtesy of docbon) who is trying to redeem himself of his dark past. I punched a guard in the first 5 minutes because I didn't know I could and spent the rest of the time playing with a bounty on my head which lead to repeated deaths.
It's interesting if anything. I'll sell you on it after I put more than an hour into it.
We're in the Aldmeri Dominion on the PC version, NA megaserver.
ChoklitCow
Member
I think so. I believe the grind that was difficult for me were probably content patches post launch. It took me almost two days of pretty solid playing (like 12hr days) to wrap up. Many of them were "hey, go back across the world where you just were" which was frustrating. Good news was each area capped off nicely with cutscenes and a plot that drew me back.
While frustrating at times, it was well worth it. Just opened Heavenward area so I'm excited.
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