I can see my ultimate weapons just fine in content. Not sure what you mean. If you have all spell effects on sure they'll probably be drowned out sometimes. But a lot of the reason for their flashiness is just general sense of pride and being able to show them as a trophy.
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Borrowed power is one of the biggest mistakes made by WoW in the last several years. Sure, it can be fun slowly gaining power and powering up with something that stays with you over an expansion, but I believe the success of relic weapons was largely due to most of them being canonic lore weapons of legend. And the ones that weren't already established as legendary weapons had great stories to them all the same.
Borrowed power is always taken away, and people HATE that feeling. You lose all of those cool abilities and bonuses you'd gained over an expansion, and it felt like you were far weaker for it. The other downside is all of the mandatory grinding, which is enough of a topic that people have talked about it since its inception.
Yes, FFXIV has a simple gearing system, and that's its strength. It doesn't have to do anything like increase your damage by 50% just for getting on trinket to still feel great when you finally get your P4S weapon. Visual progression is one of the most major components to FFXIV, especially in the form of ultimate weapons, which serve as trophies for doing the hardest content.
Perhaps some people want to feel that power progression be far more... steep, but it leads to incredible imbalance between the classes as a result when balancing around tons of legendary bonuses, borrowed power bonuses, conduits, etc. all affecting each other in different ways. Sure, your PLD feels the same as everyone else's paladin, but what does that matter? You're never going to feel useless in a raid because your class isn't part of the meta.
It's certainly two different systems that each have their own merits and appeal to different people. I prog raids primarily for overcoming a challenge, gear is a secondary reward. The icing on the cake. If massive jumps in power is your jam, good for you. Doesn't mean the lack of it in FF makes it bad.
Also, it seems to be enough for a large number of people, considering FFXIV now has a confirmed concurrent global subscriber count above 2m.
The jumping puzzles in FF are just fine. They're not the same as GW2, but still quite simple. And while some platforms may seem tiny, you also have more "hitbox" in other games for your character to catch hold on. The summer event tower isn't meant to be completed by everyone. It is ultra difficult, getting incredibly hard near the top. It also has its own progression system, getting harder the higher you go.
The summer event jumping puzzle isn't hard because the movement system is poorly designed, the summer event jumping puzzle is hard because it's designed to be that way. I can go up Kugane tower in 2 minutes. Adjusting one's jumping height and distance is easy. Getting it precise enough to land on tiny pegs is what is difficult.
Just like any other game it takes practice. You're not going to instantly be good.
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If Yoshi P makes his own MMO, I will instantly play it. It's clear the man knows his stuff. He's been an online gamer since the 90's, and an mmo player since they've existed, getting imports of english only MMO games before they existed in Japan. He knows what people want and what they don't want most of the time. He's great at communicating with the playerbase. It's clear from his interviews that he's a gamer first and foremost, and wants what's for the players. He's currently working within the confines of a dated game that was programmed like crap originally and making miracles happen.
I'd be more excited for an MMO crafted by Yoshi P from scratch than any other game I've been excited for.