I would love to see FFXI redone as it is today with all updated stuff. But I don't know if that would happen. I don't want to see it rolled back to what it was before all these QoL changes that have taken place. I love the new way of leveling. I love the trust, those things are great, though sometimes they like to go off and do things are their own. But overall an updated engine, some newer graphics and a couple things here and there, that would be great.
Funny enough when FFXIV released I loved it a lot more than ARR. It was a pretty good game like that, though buggy as all hell. But most didn't like how it was setup. To bad really, as I loved the THM than. It was great. And I wasn't really a caster type person. But as all things it evolved into ARR. Which is great for those that love it. I do like the whole Chocobo companion thing.
How can you say that in it's failing state, XIV was good. It's one of the worst mmo's in history. It was so bad that most left by the 5th day in, me included. It crashed and burned and what we have now is gold. Not even the fanboys could save the train wreck. The name and franchise alone could not save it from destruction.
No, ARR is the best thing to happen to XIV. It brought us back and were still here. Legacy 1.0 and so is our FC.
When FF XIV ARR shuts down, i'm moving on.
I don't think anyone that enjoyed 1.23 for what it was could disagree that the game was still failing. While it regained the faith of a lot of its fans and was the step in the right direction didn't mean that alone could be it's redemption. Many simply enjoyed it over ARR because it felt like a Final Fantasy game and the game itself wasnt hollow and stuck true to itself like FFXI. Square Enix had its own sense of magic in its presentation in FFXI and after 1.23 FFXIV felt the same.
Despite this a major rebranding was needed and major changes needed to be done, but nobody said that it needed to be at the cost of losing the Square magic so it could be a WoW reskin. Whether this was the best thing to happen to the game still is to be questioned and only time will tell. The growing discontent of players has been rising since Heavensward and unless things change in a big way come 4.0 that "opinion" will be questioned.
To each his own as far as opinion goes but to go as far as calling it gold gave me a good laugh. All I could think of when I saw that sentence was a plate win a gold painted turd laying upon it and I couldn't help but share my "opinion" too. That "everyone left on thr 5th day" comment tho. Using your 10 friends as a census of the entire playerbase again? On a unrelated note what happened to your twitch channel? I miss your sweet innocent pubescent voice and was disappointed to see you had deleted your account, what happened?
FFXI has way more grinding than XIV ever will. It took me almost a year to get my first job to 75, and that was when BLM's were considered good in XP PT's. At endgame the XP grind didn't stop because of merits, and then there were endgame activities, all of which took forever. When playing FFXIV, nobody ever called my cell phone at 2 a.m. to tell me to log on because the Nidhogg spawn window just opened. Then I got to sit in Dragon's Aery for three hours only to be out-claimed by another LS.
I miss FFXI, but it was extremely grindy and extremely time consuming.
You got two kinds of people, the ones who prefer an mmo that is bound to their time schedule and usually hop around different games in search of breadth, things like duty finders and instances are welcomed because standing around too much prepping for fun is un-fun. Then there is the ones who prefer an mmo that their time schedule revolves around and usually stick to one game much longer in search of depth, things like no instances and same server play make the game feel like a living world to them.
Which is more grindy? I say if you play mmos in general 20-40 hours per week or one mmo 20-40 hours a week then grind is perception. If you were playing multiple rpgs or mmos over the course of that year instead of FFXI, is that not a grind? Playing games in general is wasting time, hell 90% of things people do is wasting time. What way of wasting time is uplifting for you?
The game industry is trended the way it is because we are all novelty whores. We get our novelty in different ways.
Ps. I got 75 blm in two weeks doing mana burns but I played in very long durations. I used all the best mp tick swaps to damage items available.
Me and my FC runs Diadem every night. We also still chocobo race. Have you queued for chocobo racing? the queue is like 10 seconds. Lords of Verminion should have been it's own stand alone game like HotS or whatever.
And yes, almost everybody will run exploratory missions after the next expansion. Why wouldent we? Everything in this game has a purpose.
Saying that everything in this game has a purpose is a stretch, because you know it's a case to case basis. Just because you get "something" out of doing an aspect of the game doesn't mean it holds the same value to everyone, even then it tends to have less value than you think. Not everyone that plays a MMO(RPG) feels the need to complete gearscore irrelevant content because they wanted the reskinned shiny chicken mount; which is becoming its own trend as of late as far as my GF and roomate is concerned. Certain elements of major content drops (primals e.t.c.) struggle to maintain relevance a short few weeks from release both due to the speed at which players consume the content and the speed of which gear becomes irrelevant. Mid patches are also for the most part useless before they even release to players actively playing the current major patch due to the "catch up content" theme they share.
All of this boils down to the ever famous two dungeons (down from 3 due to supposed "new content" to be added which all we have seen from it was the train wreck that was diadem and nothing up until this reported future feature) for the next 6 months for the gear progression centric casual player.
No it really isn't much of a stretch seeing that most main content including Diadem in the game gives you a form of progression via tombs, gear, crafting mats, tokens and materia. The golden saucer is really the only one that doesn't. Of course not everyone cares for modern themepark progression so it doesn't matter if everything has a purpose for them. However, the diadem is mediocre content that could be made better just by not allowing flying. Because then people would have to fight to get to the tornadoes to get places. That said I am optimistic about the Palace of the Dead.
Correct, and I am aware that Diadem gives you all of these things and its a shame that its not the least bit fun to do despite that. While Hellbound was referring to Diadem in the quote he followed up with "Everything in this game has a purpose" which is what I am commenting on and why I stated its a "case to case basis. The two dungeons and diadem gives you currency for the tombstone gear for the next 6 months meaning that's all you do to progress your character which by now this late in the patch you should have all your dungeon runner gear. That considered the next patch isn't slated til sometime in mid may and its not even a real "content" patch for those currently playing.
I really thought diadem would be like skirmish with a little variation to the island/islands you see every time you go because Idk its "EXPLORATION" no? What we got is the same couple of crap islands fighting the same mobs for the same loot. According to my roomates as far as Excalibur goes diadem is more or less dead because Idk its still drops 160 180 and 210 gear when the current item level is 240? Yes you get tombstones and materia but at that point its just justifying the grind for the sake of a grind because the whole allure of Diadem in the fist place was the DROPS!!! The fact you could get super lucky and get a 6 stat 210 piece with a medium-high stat roll at the pitiful chance of less that 5% but it was still worth hoping for that drop.
For gods sake Diadem came out in NOVEMBER of LAST YEAR and has seen absolutely no updates outside of nerfing the drop rate weeks in because people were getting gear too fast lol. The reason my roomates actually still do it now and then is because of how mind numbingly boring the (2) dungeons they do week in and week out and even then its a tossup as to whats more boring. Meanwhile the whole reason we lost one dungeon in the patch rotations was to release "new content" of which has not been updated for two patches now which is 6 months and counting! Things like this are why vertical progression and Item level is quite literally killing the game in many ways and you can be as optimistic as you want to be with Nyzule Isle -er I mean Palace of the Dead but I'm sure the rewards will quickly be underwhelming. Knowing good ol Yoshi he will find some way to screw everyone, but WORRY NOT! There's always a way to force you to do it when the new relic upgrades come out! This is mostly because he doesn't like it when people don't to all the irrelevant/terribly designed content in the game.
His FC does diadem ever night though, well sometimes I enjoy watching a fresh coat of paint dry myself; quite a guilty pleasure of mine.
Going to simply reply instead of quoting for obvious reasons, but to start where I'm coming from isn't strictly making gear horizontal. Me and you conversed back and forth several times about augmenting skills with bonuses to different job specific bonuses on armor rather than just the usual stats. Since this game is so die hard on copying nearly everything from every final fantasy so shamelessly why not take some systems that worked from FFXI. The Job points system from FFXI where you can do Open world EXP parties fighting level 60+ enemies in structured low man parties to raise small stat allotments and get cool stat bonuses and buffs for reaching JP milestones to give someone something to work towards. Adding ways to smash rare or relic fragments that enchant your armor with bonuses while upgrading its stats, maybe incorporate a RNG system where you get a 1-10% shield bash damage bonus to add some horizontal progression to your gear e.t.c.
Adding a open world zone (not instance) where players fight monsters for materials for spawning notorious monsters that can drop fragments to further progress gear along with mats for crafting/vanity gear/materia and maybe a rare variant of a mount (something for everyone) to re-purpose the open world rather than jamming you into a damn instance at ever corner. Adding open world content where a crafter/gatherer and battle classes to work towards a coalition effort like hamlet battles in FFXIV 1.0. Driven, the point of an expansion is to EXPAND on the game OUTWARD not make everyone prior to that expansion useless. I can go on for hours on small bits (or give you some ideas posted on the OF and reddit) of content that can add longevity and purpose and can be "updated" and "expanded" as patches are released instead of being wet farts in the wind like diadem and other content like Hunts that are forced upon you to do them creating a grind for the sake of a grind.
Me and you can discuss ways of creating content that CAN coexist with the item level centric nature of the game and simply adding progression to the gear itself rather than grasping and snatching at a higher item level in 6 month sessions. Just as people are tired of others complaining about how bad vertical progression is I'm just as tired about people repeatedly defending the FFXIV dev team with the "the dev team is small and overworked e.t.c.". FFXIV ARR is graced as the second coming of christ itself and "gold" and "the best MMO in 10 years" by its valiant white knights, then by that regard the game is nothing short of a crowning success is it not? You cant seriously tell me the skeleton crew still actually creating content in FFXI on a month to month basis is bigger than the FFXIV dev team. The problem does not lie in the dev. teams size, its the scope and the formula. If its really the case then by the games success could they not afford to expand the dev team? Could they get over their pride and start considering adding talented individuals of different nationalities since there is a limit of talent that can be employed within theirs? The reason why a skeleton crew can keep adding things for players to do is because they created several systems of designed battle content and they EXPAND upon them. Because content is created with the purpose to be EXPANDED on it retains longevity, where FFXIV creates content with the intent of it being only as relevant as the current ilvl of the player.
FFXIV spends so much time fine tuning/polishing/creating content only to see it abandoned and useless weeks/months down the line because its all made with the vertical ladder in mind. The game is already a damn grind for the sake of a grind, why not allow players more freedom to play and build a job the way the enjoy and to enjoy content with a small group of friends (1-5 or even 6) and create content that is enjoyable/challenging and rewarding when complete. Even a game as old as FFXI created ways to make random template maps to change things up even if its ever so slightly. With a little random generation and endless RNG tower climb like Nyzul and Salvage why not give it a shot.
I wouldn't mind if they deprecated Diadem, or overhauled it in a major way. Forcing you to get a group of 8 players, of predefined class, just so you can gather (solo) is very annoying... making materials exclusive to Diadem is border line insulting. If it's not fun on it's own (i.e sans exclusive rewards) it shouldn't be in the game!
As for the deep dungeon, cool idea (if, unlike Diadem, it is designed and implemented well), but I would have really liked for it be duo, or trio, content as well. I know duo / trio could be hard to balance for, but even it was for fixed roles (i.e. only allows 2 * dps) at least it would be something to do with a friend / partner that doesn't require +randoms.
FFXI has way more grinding than XIV ever will. It took me almost a year to get my first job to 75, and that was when BLM's were considered good in XP PT's. At endgame the XP grind didn't stop because of merits, and then there were endgame activities, all of which took forever. When playing FFXIV, nobody ever called my cell phone at 2 a.m. to tell me to log on because the Nidhogg spawn window just opened. Then I got to sit in Dragon's Aery for three hours only to be out-claimed by another LS.
I miss FFXI, but it was extremely grindy and extremely time consuming.
I came back to XI after quitting XIV in disgust after finally giving up on it after 3 and last week I took Blue mage on XI from 1 to 99 in 5 hours, was during double XP but still. The game is nothing like you remember, it's been totally changed.
Also I hate to break it to you but if there is no random or grind in any mmo you have no reason to play once you hit cap, no mmo is free from these things.
Truth be told, nearly every patched in feature of the game since its inception has been team or guild oriented (or it being efficient to be in a team, much like FFXI's old leveling system). There isn't a single system that I can think of that isn't best with multiple people around or requires you to be in a group. Even this content is heavily hinted that it would be best to have a group with you, as they specifically mentioned something along the lines of "or you could try to solo if you want a more difficult challenge". The only thing that is truly solo -- and even then it's only 70% of the time -- is the storyline (with exception of Stone, Earth, Sky and the Novice Training grounds -- of which were incorporated into the story for new characters). Heck, even most housing upgrades in the past years have been group and guild focused what with requiring airships and team effort via chocobo stables and guild planting and the systems involved thereof.
Due to frequent travel in my youth, English isn't something I consider my primary language (and thus I obtained quirky ways of writing). German and French were always easier for me despite my family being U.S. citizens for over a century. Spanish I learned as a requirement in school, Japanese and Korean I acquired for my youthful desire of anime and gaming (and also work now). I only debate in English to help me work with it (and limit things). In addition, I'm not smart enough to remain fluent in everything and typically need exposure to get in the groove of things again if I haven't heard it in a while. If you understand Mandarin, I know a little, but it has actually been a challenge and could use some help.
Also, I thoroughly enjoy debates and have accounts on over a dozen sites for this. If you wish to engage in such, please put effort in a post and provide sources -- I will then do the same with what I already wrote (if I didn't) as well as with my responses to your own. Expanding my information on a subject makes my stance either change or strengthen the next time I speak of it or write a thesis. Allow me to thank you sincerely for your time.
Can someone please explain how I can buy the expansion? My account for the store is separate from my game account so I don't know how that works... will I get a product code or some other kind of deal allowing me link my Heavensward expac to the game, or what?
What version are you using?
PC? Steam? Console?
If it's steam, you can only buy it from Steam. PC, you can buy it from Amazon or Green Man Gaming and get a digital code. If it's console, I'm not sure. Perhaps the store in the console. See if it asks you for a code when you log in to the base game.
Due to frequent travel in my youth, English isn't something I consider my primary language (and thus I obtained quirky ways of writing). German and French were always easier for me despite my family being U.S. citizens for over a century. Spanish I learned as a requirement in school, Japanese and Korean I acquired for my youthful desire of anime and gaming (and also work now). I only debate in English to help me work with it (and limit things). In addition, I'm not smart enough to remain fluent in everything and typically need exposure to get in the groove of things again if I haven't heard it in a while. If you understand Mandarin, I know a little, but it has actually been a challenge and could use some help.
Also, I thoroughly enjoy debates and have accounts on over a dozen sites for this. If you wish to engage in such, please put effort in a post and provide sources -- I will then do the same with what I already wrote (if I didn't) as well as with my responses to your own. Expanding my information on a subject makes my stance either change or strengthen the next time I speak of it or write a thesis. Allow me to thank you sincerely for your time.
I think solo play is a good idea because so many FC and or guilds are really not that dependable anymore. There are so many times I have logged in to a empty FC or guild, and as time goes on more peeps leave or leave the game. I have been in large and small FC and they all seem to end up the same way, so yeah solo content can help the game.
Free Companies are not dependable because it is extremely hard to keep them together when there is literally no reason to be in one besides playing house and 100% pointless buffs. Linkshell give you the chat channels already. FCS saves you some money on food in the long run basically it.
Guild lasted in other games because you came together for reasons of progression not for a casual chat channel.
Solo is not what is needed to start fixing FFXIV.... Guild Based Progression content is what is needed to start building communities in game. This is a mmo (A multiplayer game), and FFXIV has a ton of solo content already. Guilds are falling apart because unlike older mmos people in general feel no connection to thier guilds. Their statics are the most important thing which work independently from the guild. The game actually punishes you for helping guild members in newer content with major loot and lockout penalties. It is why even in top tier guilds that clear stuff before everyone else they have whole statics leaving constantly... because the guilds honestly mean nothing when it comes to progression or honestly any content in the game, with maby the exception of diadem which was a mindless zerg and has no relevance really to top tier endgame anymore.
This new content sounds ok, but it does not solve any problems with endgame or the community issues ffxiv faces. The 4 man cap is way way way too low in my opinion for something endgame. If they wanted to add some lowman they should of had difficulties with varying drop rates/drops or something. Easy - 1 man, Normal - 2man, Hard - 4 man, Extreme - 8man, Savage say 16 man.
In my opinion overall SE needs to fix the problem of why guilds are dying out... not put a band-aid over a severed limb and call it fixed. It is 100% squares fault that endgame guilds are shortlived, it is by design. And unfortunately they show no signs of changing that.
One thing I never understood about the way they release content is since there are so frequently new dunegons added, etc....they need a better system for telling you where to go to unlock them. Unless you read through patch notes for every patch since 2.0 you will have no idea how to access %90 of the games dungeons lol. It's a side-note/rant, something that always bothered me.
Just going to leave this here, this very well explains the problems current themeparks; especially FFXIV face. Happened to run across this as he's a person im subbed to and this thread was still fresh in my mind. I find it interesting he was playing FFXIV throughout the entire video while making the points. All I see on party finder on Excalibur are players looking for a new static/guild/friends because hardly anyone is doing the current patch and their guild/FC/friends are quitting in droves, waiting for the new shiny temporary time waster to come out.
Also Driven, I assume by incentive for doing old content as well as "relevance" is in the form of forcing you to do them for trial roulette's due to the flawed design of placing forced storyline content in duty finder at ever corner (not to mention the need to revisit and do something you have don so many times already because lazy)? I'm sure its either that or your going to mention "tombstones" and in that I can while its "worthwhile" is it still fun to YOU? This is where instead of expanding on content FFXIV just slaps on tombstones on anything no one wants to do anymore. This is just one of many examples of where FFXIV tries to slap a band-aid on a open wound rather than doing things properly from the get go.
It's really simple, at least for me. I liken it to running a marathon. Set up a course that is the full length of the marathon and don't make it so easy that I can complete it without training in any way shape or form. When you take a marathon and break it up into quarter miles and tell someone they can only complete one every 3 months or so....it's not fun at all, you lose interest. Eventually you look at it and go "why even bother? in a few months i'm going to move one quarter mile and have to wait for months to move another quarter mile" . Oh and by the way, you'll have to put just as much effort into running that quarter mile as you would the full thing (RNG, etc) This is the problem with WoW-Style endgame progression. What's the point in spending all those hours getting the new gear when in a few months there's going to be a catachup patch that makes it half as time consuming and then a month later there will be a new "ultimate" to chase. This is not motivational, it is asinine.
It's really simple, at least for me. I liken it to running a marathon. Set up a course that is the full length of the marathon and don't make it so easy that I can complete it without training in any way shape or form. When you take a marathon and break it up into quarter miles and tell someone they can only complete one every 3 months or so....it's not fun at all, you lose interest. Eventually you look at it and go "why even bother? in a few months i'm going to move one quarter mile and have to wait for months to move another quarter mile" . Oh and by the way, you'll have to put just as much effort into running that quarter mile as you would the full thing (RNG, etc) This is the problem with WoW-Style endgame progression. What's the point in spending all those hours getting the new gear when in a few months there's going to be a catachup patch that makes it half as time consuming and then a month later there will be a new "ultimate" to chase. This is not motivational, it is asinine.
Because some people believe it or not think it's silly to keep gear for over a year and want constant progression upwards. Not snapping at you it's just true, I can enjoy both as I have said.
I like to look at things past the "need to get shinies now instant gratification" standpoint and consider it all from the amount of good vs bad it does the game to be this way. We obviously know that its nice for the few to have friends/statics/FC's that quickly clear the patch content within the first week or two but where does this stand for everyone else? Its obviously not necessarily BAD to reward players more often but without a true investment in what they are doing and gear they are obtaining they will not stick with the game long term. This creates a system where players just mob all the content, get what they need and then quit 2-3 weeks into each major/mid patch for various reasons resulting in major player drops.
These reasons range from boredom from a wide range of reasons such as they only have one class they want to gear paired with the slog and tedious nature of capping weekly currencies AND getting bored of doing the same two Dungeons week in and week out. Just like the video I mentioned above the game has "features" that do well to lock you into a sense of artificial investment and fake sense of attachment which really are two separate states of mind that the "New" age of MMO's do well to blur together. Be it vanity/housing furniture or the ever popular mount collector simulator that becomes a bigger craze than it ever should of been (imo). The game is designed from a standpoint of being a wipe simulator all the way to an RNG rage fest from a standpoint of not getting raid drops to mounts (finding screenshots of players having 300+ totems which means they killed that extreme primal 300 times to only see a mount a dozen times and never get one) which do well to ensnare players to believing that they are "investing" themselves creating artificial attachment.
This does not work on everyone as the real problem of this game is retaining players. While its fine to have a low attention span that is only satiated by being engorged by continuous rewards it can adversely affect the population or let alone this games community. If you aren't driven away by boredom you are driven away by the sheer toxicity and elitism that this game so effortlessly breeds. A mere 24 hours post a patch drop you are expected to be at the final phase/no clear bonus of the new primal that JUST CAME out! While you can make your own group the community does well to illustrate the short attention span these games create. You start a "learning group" and after the second wipe half of the party leaves only to put you back on step one. You must also realize you are on a timer because if you don't clear this primal within the first week and you plan on farming then you will be left in the dust and thus created is another one of many pitfalls by bad design that deters and causes players to leave.
Despite knowing all this if Yoshida announced 4-5 even 6 man raids with more party structure than just two healers and his hardon for tank swapping I'd still be willing to play with our friends. I have a high tolerance for BS as I have spent a great deal of time playing this between 2.0 and now but the one thing that gets us is statics (and lack of fun mid core battle systems outside of the 2 dungeon slog week in and out). Because of this games inability to hold interest long term its nearly impossible to hold Free companies and statics together. Our server is a population capped server, and weeks prior to the announcement of 3.3 the only thing you would see in party finder from top to bottom is "looking for new FC/Static/Group of players to play with" to "reforming guild/merging with other guilds" e.t.c. Its a problem driven and there are many solutions to this problem if content is handled better and they stopped copy/pasting their crap formula. Despite harsh criticism I found some of the second season of alex fights to be quite an enjoyable thing to behold and its a shame that we constantly struggle filling a full static because people just quit weeks into a new patch. This has been a problem for this game since 2.0 and I just don't get why SE cant see it.
FFXI has way more grinding than XIV ever will. It took me almost a year to get my first job to 75, and that was when BLM's were considered good in XP PT's. At endgame the XP grind didn't stop because of merits, and then there were endgame activities, all of which took forever. When playing FFXIV, nobody ever called my cell phone at 2 a.m. to tell me to log on because the Nidhogg spawn window just opened. Then I got to sit in Dragon's Aery for three hours only to be out-claimed by another LS.
I miss FFXI, but it was extremely grindy and extremely time consuming.
But it was/is rewarding and made you stand out. Today's MMORPG's do not feel rewarding because you get everything without effort. FFXIV is a great example of this. All you do is grind [token] for [generic armor] and after 3 months they change [token] and [generic armor] just to start the cycle again. There is no individuality, sense of accomplishment or gear choice. Everyone get's the same gear. You can start to play FFXIV now and get the best iLevel gear because you simply have to join the queue and grind tokens and the people that played for the last 2 years have accomplished nothing.
I agree with @scorpex-x that FFXI is still going strong with monthly updates and new gear being added that allows choice and vertical progression.
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Comments
I don't think anyone that enjoyed 1.23 for what it was could disagree that the game was still failing. While it regained the faith of a lot of its fans and was the step in the right direction didn't mean that alone could be it's redemption. Many simply enjoyed it over ARR because it felt like a Final Fantasy game and the game itself wasnt hollow and stuck true to itself like FFXI. Square Enix had its own sense of magic in its presentation in FFXI and after 1.23 FFXIV felt the same.
Despite this a major rebranding was needed and major changes needed to be done, but nobody said that it needed to be at the cost of losing the Square magic so it could be a WoW reskin. Whether this was the best thing to happen to the game still is to be questioned and only time will tell. The growing discontent of players has been rising since Heavensward and unless things change in a big way come 4.0 that "opinion" will be questioned.
To each his own as far as opinion goes but to go as far as calling it gold gave me a good laugh. All I could think of when I saw that sentence was a plate win a gold painted turd laying upon it and I couldn't help but share my "opinion" too. That "everyone left on thr 5th day" comment tho. Using your 10 friends as a census of the entire playerbase again? On a unrelated note what happened to your twitch channel? I miss your sweet innocent pubescent voice and was disappointed to see you had deleted your account, what happened?
Which is more grindy? I say if you play mmos in general 20-40 hours per week or one mmo 20-40 hours a week then grind is perception. If you were playing multiple rpgs or mmos over the course of that year instead of FFXI, is that not a grind? Playing games in general is wasting time, hell 90% of things people do is wasting time. What way of wasting time is uplifting for you?
The game industry is trended the way it is because we are all novelty whores. We get our novelty in different ways.
Ps. I got 75 blm in two weeks doing mana burns but I played in very long durations. I used all the best mp tick swaps to damage items available.
Correct, and I am aware that Diadem gives you all of these things and its a shame that its not the least bit fun to do despite that. While Hellbound was referring to Diadem in the quote he followed up with "Everything in this game has a purpose" which is what I am commenting on and why I stated its a "case to case basis. The two dungeons and diadem gives you currency for the tombstone gear for the next 6 months meaning that's all you do to progress your character which by now this late in the patch you should have all your dungeon runner gear. That considered the next patch isn't slated til sometime in mid may and its not even a real "content" patch for those currently playing.
I really thought diadem would be like skirmish with a little variation to the island/islands you see every time you go because Idk its "EXPLORATION" no? What we got is the same couple of crap islands fighting the same mobs for the same loot. According to my roomates as far as Excalibur goes diadem is more or less dead because Idk its still drops 160 180 and 210 gear when the current item level is 240? Yes you get tombstones and materia but at that point its just justifying the grind for the sake of a grind because the whole allure of Diadem in the fist place was the DROPS!!! The fact you could get super lucky and get a 6 stat 210 piece with a medium-high stat roll at the pitiful chance of less that 5% but it was still worth hoping for that drop.
For gods sake Diadem came out in NOVEMBER of LAST YEAR and has seen absolutely no updates outside of nerfing the drop rate weeks in because people were getting gear too fast lol. The reason my roomates actually still do it now and then is because of how mind numbingly boring the (2) dungeons they do week in and week out and even then its a tossup as to whats more boring. Meanwhile the whole reason we lost one dungeon in the patch rotations was to release "new content" of which has not been updated for two patches now which is 6 months and counting! Things like this are why vertical progression and Item level is quite literally killing the game in many ways and you can be as optimistic as you want to be with Nyzule Isle -er I mean Palace of the Dead but I'm sure the rewards will quickly be underwhelming. Knowing good ol Yoshi he will find some way to screw everyone, but WORRY NOT! There's always a way to force you to do it when the new relic upgrades come out! This is mostly because he doesn't like it when people don't to all the irrelevant/terribly designed content in the game. His FC does diadem ever night though, well sometimes I enjoy watching a fresh coat of paint dry myself; quite a guilty pleasure of mine.
Adding a open world zone (not instance) where players fight monsters for materials for spawning notorious monsters that can drop fragments to further progress gear along with mats for crafting/vanity gear/materia and maybe a rare variant of a mount (something for everyone) to re-purpose the open world rather than jamming you into a damn instance at ever corner. Adding open world content where a crafter/gatherer and battle classes to work towards a coalition effort like hamlet battles in FFXIV 1.0. Driven, the point of an expansion is to EXPAND on the game OUTWARD not make everyone prior to that expansion useless. I can go on for hours on small bits (or give you some ideas posted on the OF and reddit) of content that can add longevity and purpose and can be "updated" and "expanded" as patches are released instead of being wet farts in the wind like diadem and other content like Hunts that are forced upon you to do them creating a grind for the sake of a grind.
Me and you can discuss ways of creating content that CAN coexist with the item level centric nature of the game and simply adding progression to the gear itself rather than grasping and snatching at a higher item level in 6 month sessions. Just as people are tired of others complaining about how bad vertical progression is I'm just as tired about people repeatedly defending the FFXIV dev team with the "the dev team is small and overworked e.t.c.". FFXIV ARR is graced as the second coming of christ itself and "gold" and "the best MMO in 10 years" by its valiant white knights, then by that regard the game is nothing short of a crowning success is it not? You cant seriously tell me the skeleton crew still actually creating content in FFXI on a month to month basis is bigger than the FFXIV dev team. The problem does not lie in the dev. teams size, its the scope and the formula. If its really the case then by the games success could they not afford to expand the dev team? Could they get over their pride and start considering adding talented individuals of different nationalities since there is a limit of talent that can be employed within theirs? The reason why a skeleton crew can keep adding things for players to do is because they created several systems of designed battle content and they EXPAND upon them. Because content is created with the purpose to be EXPANDED on it retains longevity, where FFXIV creates content with the intent of it being only as relevant as the current ilvl of the player.
FFXIV spends so much time fine tuning/polishing/creating content only to see it abandoned and useless weeks/months down the line because its all made with the vertical ladder in mind. The game is already a damn grind for the sake of a grind, why not allow players more freedom to play and build a job the way the enjoy and to enjoy content with a small group of friends (1-5 or even 6) and create content that is enjoyable/challenging and rewarding when complete. Even a game as old as FFXI created ways to make random template maps to change things up even if its ever so slightly. With a little random generation and endless RNG tower climb like Nyzul and Salvage why not give it a shot.
As for the deep dungeon, cool idea (if, unlike Diadem, it is designed and implemented well), but I would have really liked for it be duo, or trio, content as well. I know duo / trio could be hard to balance for, but even it was for fixed roles (i.e. only allows 2 * dps) at least it would be something to do with a friend / partner that doesn't require +randoms.
Also I hate to break it to you but if there is no random or grind in any mmo you have no reason to play once you hit cap, no mmo is free from these things.
Truth be told, nearly every patched in feature of the game since its inception has been team or guild oriented (or it being efficient to be in a team, much like FFXI's old leveling system). There isn't a single system that I can think of that isn't best with multiple people around or requires you to be in a group. Even this content is heavily hinted that it would be best to have a group with you, as they specifically mentioned something along the lines of "or you could try to solo if you want a more difficult challenge". The only thing that is truly solo -- and even then it's only 70% of the time -- is the storyline (with exception of Stone, Earth, Sky and the Novice Training grounds -- of which were incorporated into the story for new characters). Heck, even most housing upgrades in the past years have been group and guild focused what with requiring airships and team effort via chocobo stables and guild planting and the systems involved thereof.
PC?
Steam?
Console?
If it's steam, you can only buy it from Steam. PC, you can buy it from Amazon or Green Man Gaming and get a digital code. If it's console, I'm not sure. Perhaps the store in the console. See if it asks you for a code when you log in to the base game.
Guild lasted in other games because you came together for reasons of progression not for a casual chat channel.
Solo is not what is needed to start fixing FFXIV.... Guild Based Progression content is what is needed to start building communities in game. This is a mmo (A multiplayer game), and FFXIV has a ton of solo content already. Guilds are falling apart because unlike older mmos people in general feel no connection to thier guilds. Their statics are the most important thing which work independently from the guild. The game actually punishes you for helping guild members in newer content with major loot and lockout penalties. It is why even in top tier guilds that clear stuff before everyone else they have whole statics leaving constantly... because the guilds honestly mean nothing when it comes to progression or honestly any content in the game, with maby the exception of diadem which was a mindless zerg and has no relevance really to top tier endgame anymore.
This new content sounds ok, but it does not solve any problems with endgame or the community issues ffxiv faces. The 4 man cap is way way way too low in my opinion for something endgame. If they wanted to add some lowman they should of had difficulties with varying drop rates/drops or something. Easy - 1 man, Normal - 2man, Hard - 4 man, Extreme - 8man, Savage say 16 man.
In my opinion overall SE needs to fix the problem of why guilds are dying out... not put a band-aid over a severed limb and call it fixed. It is 100% squares fault that endgame guilds are shortlived, it is by design. And unfortunately they show no signs of changing that.
One thing I never understood about the way they release content is since there are so frequently new dunegons added, etc....they need a better system for telling you where to go to unlock them. Unless you read through patch notes for every patch since 2.0 you will have no idea how to access %90 of the games dungeons lol.
It's a side-note/rant, something that always bothered me.
Playing - Minecraft, 7 Days To Die, Darkfall:ROA, Path of Exile
Waiting for -
Also Driven, I assume by incentive for doing old content as well as "relevance" is in the form of forcing you to do them for trial roulette's due to the flawed design of placing forced storyline content in duty finder at ever corner (not to mention the need to revisit and do something you have don so many times already because lazy)? I'm sure its either that or your going to mention "tombstones" and in that I can while its "worthwhile" is it still fun to YOU? This is where instead of expanding on content FFXIV just slaps on tombstones on anything no one wants to do anymore. This is just one of many examples of where FFXIV tries to slap a band-aid on a open wound rather than doing things properly from the get go.
Set up a course that is the full length of the marathon and don't make it so easy that I can complete it without training in any way shape or form.
When you take a marathon and break it up into quarter miles and tell someone they can only complete one every 3 months or so....it's not fun at all, you lose interest. Eventually you look at it and go "why even bother? in a few months i'm going to move one quarter mile and have to wait for months to move another quarter mile" . Oh and by the way, you'll have to put just as much effort into running that quarter mile as you would the full thing (RNG, etc)
This is the problem with WoW-Style endgame progression. What's the point in spending all those hours getting the new gear when in a few months there's going to be a catachup patch that makes it half as time consuming and then a month later there will be a new "ultimate" to chase. This is not motivational, it is asinine.
These reasons range from boredom from a wide range of reasons such as they only have one class they want to gear paired with the slog and tedious nature of capping weekly currencies AND getting bored of doing the same two Dungeons week in and week out. Just like the video I mentioned above the game has "features" that do well to lock you into a sense of artificial investment and fake sense of attachment which really are two separate states of mind that the "New" age of MMO's do well to blur together. Be it vanity/housing furniture or the ever popular mount collector simulator that becomes a bigger craze than it ever should of been (imo). The game is designed from a standpoint of being a wipe simulator all the way to an RNG rage fest from a standpoint of not getting raid drops to mounts (finding screenshots of players having 300+ totems which means they killed that extreme primal 300 times to only see a mount a dozen times and never get one) which do well to ensnare players to believing that they are "investing" themselves creating artificial attachment.
This does not work on everyone as the real problem of this game is retaining players. While its fine to have a low attention span that is only satiated by being engorged by continuous rewards it can adversely affect the population or let alone this games community. If you aren't driven away by boredom you are driven away by the sheer toxicity and elitism that this game so effortlessly breeds. A mere 24 hours post a patch drop you are expected to be at the final phase/no clear bonus of the new primal that JUST CAME out! While you can make your own group the community does well to illustrate the short attention span these games create. You start a "learning group" and after the second wipe half of the party leaves only to put you back on step one. You must also realize you are on a timer because if you don't clear this primal within the first week and you plan on farming then you will be left in the dust and thus created is another one of many pitfalls by bad design that deters and causes players to leave.
Despite knowing all this if Yoshida announced 4-5 even 6 man raids with more party structure than just two healers and his hardon for tank swapping I'd still be willing to play with our friends. I have a high tolerance for BS as I have spent a great deal of time playing this between 2.0 and now but the one thing that gets us is statics (and lack of fun mid core battle systems outside of the 2 dungeon slog week in and out). Because of this games inability to hold interest long term its nearly impossible to hold Free companies and statics together. Our server is a population capped server, and weeks prior to the announcement of 3.3 the only thing you would see in party finder from top to bottom is "looking for new FC/Static/Group of players to play with" to "reforming guild/merging with other guilds" e.t.c. Its a problem driven and there are many solutions to this problem if content is handled better and they stopped copy/pasting their crap formula. Despite harsh criticism I found some of the second season of alex fights to be quite an enjoyable thing to behold and its a shame that we constantly struggle filling a full static because people just quit weeks into a new patch. This has been a problem for this game since 2.0 and I just don't get why SE cant see it.
I agree with @scorpex-x that FFXI is still going strong with monthly updates and new gear being added that allows choice and vertical progression.
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