[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Kelimbror]

Not sure how I feel about this.

It's awkward considering people only have like 2 dungeons to run over and over right now, which was a failing of the expansion, but as a design schedule going forward it's really vastly better than three dungeons or bust. Having lots of different content types for fun additional content is a fantastic idea.

[Remilia]

Not sure how I feel about this.

If they deliver what they say, then it's not a bad thing. More dungeons isn't a bad thing, but isn't exactly a great thing but having different things to do is better overall in my opinion.

[Graeham]

They're not afraid to experiment so I'm sure there will be a lot of fun things to look forward to. What doesn't work will be taken into consideration and not expanded upon. I guess the 'sky island exploration' thing may have something to do with airships.

[Deleted]

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/126...-Gamescom-2015

"In addition to the Gold Saucer content, we're also working on implementing a totally new play style called "Sky Island Exploration," which is unlikely anything we've had before. However, we've always added three instanced dungeons in each patch before, but it will be two starting with the next patch. Instead of producing a bunch of similar type of content, we'd rather spread out the cost of our development to new types of content."

Not sure how I feel about this.

The issue I have with this is, new as in new types of content, or other type of content, pvp has its own team which then leaves crafting/gathering and vanity. Personally I have felt this game really increased its vanity presence by a lot and this is a horrible route to go down.

Theres speculation that the team just is slowing down, but if thats true then I'm not sure how exactly they are pumping out more vanity garbage with each patch if that was the case.

Releasing less content with short term goals is what people complained about in WoW, only the raids held its length and nothing else, honestly think SE have gone a slippery slope since they released odin in trial form that only released vanity content.

The game needs more dungeons that dare I say it, needs to be harder, needs more content for people to keep doing, not release less of it.

Theres no denying that dungeon content is a huge draw to mmos these days, its suicide to release less of it intentionally to focus on other things like vanity.

[Graeham]

It's possible that they're playing around with new types of content to prepare for when support for the PS3 is dropped. At that point they'll be able to do a lot more with the game - and what they can do already is quite impressive.

[Deleted]

New type of content if its exactly that is fine, however as its a translated interview, this is part of a problem and also the intentional aspect of reducing the amount of dungeon type or PVE content per patch, blizzard just can't get enough content released fast enough but thats not done by intent, thats the scary part here.

They are by intent gutting the biggest draw to mmos per patch, no matter what else they want to release as content, thats gonna cause a huge backlash.

[Graeham]

I don't think it'll be very bleak so long as they keep to their current schedule of adding new content every three months. They'll still be adding more dungeons over the course of an expansion than WoW does. Plus we're due to get a new raid in 3.1 as well. Then more Alexander in 3.2...

[Deleted]

Well the problem with that comparison with FF14 adding more dungeon then wow does over an expansion is actually wrong, how many max level dungeons does heavensward have right now?

According to expert roulette thats only 2, 1 story mode 4 man and only 3 trials for 8 man content.

WoD released 6 lvl 100 dungeons from the very start with the first tier containing 17 raid bosses and the 2nd tier 13 bosses.

Wow just has its content stretched over a longer amount of time but theres more per patch by a long shot.

Though WoD as a whole has less content as an expansion, it still has more content even when you add patched content in heavensward if they are going by 2 dungeons every 3 months.

Thats pretty bleak if you ask me, non content is non content even on a 3 months cycle sadly, I was actually expecting to see more PVE content to be released as a lot of people assumed the team gained more funds with the continuing success of the game but to get less, how do you actually justify that, you still need to push for the biggest draw of mmos out of the gate non the less which is PVE content.

[Scufflegrit]

Yay

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...143803_189.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...143813_564.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...015_150520.png

One day we're gonna see a post from you consisting of something like:

sadpfiu7777723499895l;mv';.dsaghghm,DSFFG'; idef807wef2Sy

Followed by:

Sorry, Carbuncle on the keyboard

[Graeham]

Well the problem with that comparison with FF14 adding more dungeon then wow does over an expansion is actually wrong, how many max level dungeons does heavensward have right now?

According to expert roulette thats only 2, 1 story mode 4 man and only 3 trials for 8 man content.

WoD released 6 lvl 100 dungeons from the very start with the first tier containing 17 raid bosses and the 2nd tier 13 bosses.

Wow just has its content stretched over a longer amount of time but theres more per patch by a long shot.

Though WoD as a whole has less content as an expansion, it still has more content even when you add patched content in heavensward if they are going by 2 dungeons every 3 months.

Thats pretty bleak if you ask me, non content is non content even on a 3 months cycle sadly, I was actually expecting to see more PVE content to be released as a lot of people assumed the team gained more funds with the continuing success of the game but to get less, how do you actually justify that, you still need to push for the biggest draw of mmos out of the gate non the less which is PVE content.

FFXIV's dungeons tend to remain relevant for longer though - WoW's end up stagnating pretty quickly. Who knows? Maybe they're planning to add stuff that's more engaging than instanced content to further draw players out into the game world?

[Deleted]

Relevant depends on how you look at that though, relevant in terms of time frame due to the lack of them to do in a 3 months cycle then yes, but thats by developer design then player choice really, however you do need to grind them longer in 14 to get gear to get to the next stage now so depends how you see that. Doing 2 dungeons for a few months now just to get alexander normal mode/ravana extreme ready already stagnated to me pretty fast because it was just 2.

The issue with that is, they have already tried other stuff, its called golden saucer and people for sure are still doing it but its not that busy really anymore in fairness, doesn't mean they still can't try new things and I do welcome it, just don't think gutting dungeon content for that is the right way to do it, I am sure there are other stuff they could of gutted to make that happen.

More content is welcome as always anyways but from the sounds of it, its just the same amount of 'content' to the devs eyes in the same cycle and any amount of that could be just non content, like a selfie cam ;/ or twitter integration.

[Graeham]

Eh, I think we can afford to give them the benefit of the doubt given how well they've handled the game so far. It's clear that FFXIV isn't going anywhere anytime soon and after the original game flopped so terribly I doubt they'll be letting things get anywhere near to that point ever again.

[Deleted]

I quite cynical of matters like that, believe me I want the game to succeed even more, even went to london fanfest with VIP tickets and have a photo with yoshi P and some of the dev including Soken and had my collectors edition signed by them, I do like the game very much and a fan, however I will still remain cautious on the matter but a gut feeling is saying they are heading into a slippery slope with that direction.

[Cattleya]

A bit early to claim the sky's falling, I'll wait and see how fun and/or elaborate the new stuff like sky island exploration is before I chastise them for dropping one out of three patch dungeons for it.

[Aberrict]

Will there be a new type of content in every patch?

Yoshida: The production cost of instanced dungeons is not that high, so we think those will continue to be included in every patch. We're trying to understand our workflow and overall schedule and upcoming new elements better so we can understand if it makes sense to pool certain costs from two patches and have one large update. We are planning to add a bunch of content in the 3.X series that's unlike what we've had before. Perhaps some of the content will fail, but at least we can say we're trying a bunch of new things. I think we developed a pretty solid foundation of gameplay with the 2.0 series, so now we're proposing new things we haven't done before.

You've been saying some of the things you're expecting to add for a while now, so what kinds of things are planned for the 3.X line-up?

Yoshida: We have things like the Grand Company platoon and content using Magitek armor, and we're looking at the calendar and carefully planning it out.

Will the content that uses the Magitek armor have anything to do with that mysterious arena in Ishgard?

Yoshida: Some things from previous updates will lead into it, so we've already made allowance for it. You might see some if you pay careful attention [[I think he references some specific area in Ishgard here, theological school or something, not sure of the translation]].

These are the following questions (there's more before and after about other stuff like 3.1 AST adjustments) and they provide some information on what types of content SE is planning to add and experiment with.

[SodiumChloride]

Yay

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...143803_189.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...143813_564.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...015_150520.png

And we still can't summon them as SMN.

Next expansion they told me. Well?

Now it's 3.2/3.3/3.4 ... -_-

[Astralos]

One reason they could add 3 dungeons in ARR was because 2 of them were hard modes of existing dungeons which used the extra assets from the original and often used at least some of the rooms the original dungeon had. They cannot add anymore hardmode dungeons so the 2 dungeons in each patch will be completely new. I can however understand that running 2 dungeons can get stale quite quickly. We'll have to wait and see how this pans out.

[Granyala]

Maybe they're planning to add stuff that's more engaging than instanced content to further draw players out into the game world?

I'm a healer for a reason. I don't want more outdoor content that is essentially DPS only.
I also HATE healing at FATEs because I get to tank all the crap that aggros b/c no tank can be arsed to pick it up.

[Deleted]

I'm a healer for a reason. I don't want more outdoor content that is essentially DPS only.
I also HATE healing at FATEs because I get to tank all the crap that aggros b/c no tank can be arsed to pick it up.

Right... cause I m having such a hard tine doing outdoor content on my WHM with cleric stance...

[Deleted]

Theres no denying that dungeon content is a huge draw to mmos these days, its suicide to release less of it intentionally to focus on other things like vanity.

Don't know about that, dungeons are really boring, whats fun about them are boss fights, so I'd say stuff like Trials are excellent and whatever drops from them, doesn't really matter either as long as you "want it". (Vanity and +ilvl upgrades are fine)
I mean, I've literally never read that someone said "Oh, killing trash is so much fun"... I'm so glad that AlexTrash is pretty much non existent and Trials are well designed-instant boss fights.
And Trash in WoW for example was always the most annoying thing you could have in Raids.

So instead of releasing 2 dungeons each patch. I'd prefer to have 3-5 trials. (with their extreme modes added later when ~ilvl gets higher)