[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Graeham]

I forgot that the patch was today. I mixed up the date with the upcoming Live Letter and somehow convinced myself that it was set for the middle of the month.

Heaven-on-High is pretty neat. It's about what I expected, really - it's basically a higher level version of POTD but with different aesthetics and a few tweaks. It'll serve its purpose well to help people catch up on leveling alternate DoW/DoM jobs as well as providing something for the 'midcore' players to tackle in regards to the higher floors.

[lawow74]

Aaaand HoH got broke. Geez, for such a big team they sure don't test shit very well. Too busy counting all their Mogstation money, I guess.

[Graeham]

At least it wasn't every instance server that went down.

I just decided to chip away at some Seal Rock. I still need to get some jobs to 61 to level them through HoH anyway.

[Granyala]

And it has been like this since day 1 in MMOs, so we can't go blaming the players, either.

Simplest explanation?
There is no other way than providing "work" in order to give the player a feeling of having a persistent world in which he always has sth. to do.
Fun content is usually content we do once or twice, because endless repetition != fun for most people.

[leviathonlx]

Aaaand HoH got broke. Geez, for such a big team they sure don't test shit very well. Too busy counting all their Mogstation money, I guess.

Perfect example of why you have PTR's. Or do basic shit like having QA zone out of the instance as each job.

[Eleccybubb]

Perfect example of why you have PTR's. Or do basic shit like having QA zone out of the instance as each job.

PTR doesn't guarantee a bug free patch. WoW is proof of that. And Rift.

Both have PTRs. Both have had the odd bug with their patches.

Look at the Warrior bug with Legion where jumping from Skyhold could crash the game and put you in Azsuna for example.

I can't think of a single MMO that's never had the odd issue/bug or had to hotfix to fix things.

[lawow74]

As someone who enjoyed POTD, I have to say, HoH is a welcome improvement. The Aether is very easy to build up, SE got the message on speeding for XP and made it easy to clear the deepest 'story floor', which guarantees Aether each clear, as well as a potsherd and gives the best XP and Tome reward. You can spam it over and over with little difficulty. The new magicites are, IMO, much better than the Manticore pom was, and the new stone and invisibility poms are fun to play with too.

[Dugna]

using a magicite to clear a floor that is one of those massive open ones feels soo good, just one click and bam tons of pots

[leviathonlx]

PTR doesn't guarantee a bug free patch. WoW is proof of that. And Rift.

Both have PTRs. Both have had the odd bug with their patches.

Look at the Warrior bug with Legion where jumping from Skyhold could crash the game and put you in Dalaran for example.

I can't think of a single MMO that's never had the odd issue/bug or had to hotfix to fix things.

A bug found within hours of release would have easily been found on a PTR. The warrior bug wasn't something that impacted everyone and was known about and just took time to fix because it didn't effect everyone. This bug was found within hours that was easily reproducible and fixed in maintenance this morning so it wasn't some impossibly hard to find bug or incredibly hard to fix. This was entirely a failure on their QA teams part.

[Eleccybubb]

A bug found within hours of release would have easily been found on a PTR. The warrior bug wasn't something that impacted everyone and was known about and just took time to fix because it didn't effect everyone. This bug was found within hours that was easily reproducible and fixed in maintenance this morning so it wasn't some impossibly hard to find bug or incredibly hard to fix. This was entirely a failure on their QA teams part.

You cannot guarantee a perfect release every time.

Yes QA should have been a bit more aware. But no game has ever had a perfect patch launch. A PTR does not always help.

I'd love for all MMORPGS to have perfect patch launches. And it doesn't matter. It's still an example of a bug that's irritating. There will always been known issues with any game be they minor or major. Hence why the emergency maintenance happened.

And servers were down for an hour-hour half at most. Not the end of the world. Was morning time in PDT so I doubt many were on over there and was nearly midday around here when a lot of people are at work/school.

I was a bit irritated because it was my day off before I go Silverstone for the Grand Prix and I wanted to get the HoH farm out of the way but I just went and did some chores for a couple of hours.

[Wrecktangle]

I think the point is the world is much more transversal between expansions.
It's pretty uncommon in WoW to have to do any quest in a previous zone when an expansion is released (except capitals obv). Allied Race and Artifact quests did that and it was nice, however Legion is really the first time it happened.
Now in FF, current content often tie in old areas, NPCs, etc. One example of that would be the refugee from Dalmasca you have to meet in Eastern La Noscea when unlocking Ridorana. Most of the old crafting items are still used (thanks Housing!).
The whole Eureka area is a throwback to the end of 2.3 (when the Isle of Val was seemingly obliterated by an Ultima-like spell). Most Job/class quests still have you go through Idylshire for it, or the RDM quest, even though it's old content.

In short, they still build upon what they created before, unlike WoW where the expansion content is self-contained. You could almost never leave the broken isle/argus and there would barely be any difference.

If you read my post I acknowledged the MSQ as the only area that accomplishes this pretty well. However, I don't think that's enough to say that it's considerably better, or even functionally better, because at the end of the day, you're still not doing old expansion content in any relevant manner, in either game.

Notable example in WoW was acquiring my corrupted Ashbringer skin. That was a real treat to work with the community to unlock. It was especially touching to me as a PLD player from that time period who remembers the rumors back then and it was a nice nod to the community. Then there were the riddle mount puzzles and stuff too.

Both games have room for improvement there and I am not comfortable assigning a winner in either category.

Simplest explanation?
There is no other way than providing "work" in order to give the player a feeling of having a persistent world in which he always has sth. to do.
Fun content is usually content we do once or twice, because endless repetition != fun for most people.

While I agree with what you're saying I still don't think it's that black and white. I think work can be fun, if there's enough engagement/decision points to support it.

Perfect example of why you have PTR's. Or do basic shit like having QA zone out of the instance as each job.

As someone with an extensive testing background at a fortune 500 company that would literally be one of the most obvious regression test scripts a QA tester would do.

PTR doesn't guarantee a bug free patch. WoW is proof of that. And Rift.

Both have PTRs. Both have had the odd bug with their patches.

Look at the Warrior bug with Legion where jumping from Skyhold could crash the game and put you in Azsuna for example.

I can't think of a single MMO that's never had the odd issue/bug or had to hotfix to fix things.

Dial it down for a second. No one is saying it should be bug free, but the simple fact of the matter is that a PTR does help identify stuff like this. A PTR might have solved half of Eurekas problems prior to launch too (like no bulk opening option, level scaling, etc.). That's an objective fact.

However, it's not without consequences, especially in the spoilers territory. All stuff aside - SE really needs better QA procedures. Honestly, if I could relocate to JP and speak Japanese, I'd take the job and fix it just for the opportunity to pitch:

1) Aymerics outfit NOT being gender locked/undyeable
2) My Chocobo Racing remake pitch

I was a bit irritated because it was my day off before I go Silverstone for the Grand Prix and I wanted to get the HoH farm out of the way but I just went and did some chores for a couple of hours.

Nice! I used to be a spotter for my buddy down at the Baltimore GP. Was a ton of fun being that close to the cars. He got paid to shoot them, and I got paid to watch them

[Advent]

I was sitting at work one day with a friend talking about mmo design when the question came up, "What would a mage tower-like challenge in FFXIV be like?". In my opinion, ff14 doesn't have the sort of class design to support a feature like that, but perhaps I'm wrong. What do you guys think?

[Granyala]

While I agree with what you're saying I still don't think it's that black and white. I think work can be fun, if there's enough engagement/decision points to support it.

Sure, work can be fun, just not in a videogame, where you don't get anything of actual worth from your effort.
Also, actual gameplay in most videogames is still limited to a few scenarios that get repetitive ... fast. No matter the genre, which is why most drop a game once they finished the story.

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I was sitting at work one day with a friend talking about mmo design when the question came up, "What would a mage tower-like challenge in FFXIV be like?". In my opinion, ff14 doesn't have the sort of class design to support a feature like that, but perhaps I'm wrong. What do you guys think?

Don't even think about "class support" lol.
Add systems support first.

In order to get any precision and skill into the gameplay, you have to take the retarded lag based guessing game out of the equation.

If there is one thing that triggers me during savage raiding, it's seeing "you did everything right" on my screen and then getting gibbed half a second later because the server was like "nope".

I really love the game, world etc but the underlying unresponsiveness drives me nuts at times. Esp as a haler, wasting CDs etc on a dude near death only for the server to be like "yeah, I know the dude still lived in YOUR UI but over here, he was already dead".

[lawow74]

Finished the new Hildy quests. Pretty amusing, makes me wonder if we're headed for a solo duty where you'll have to face an enemy as Hildy?

[Granyala]

I don't know, maybe I'm simply not much of a gamer these days anymore but I'm not interested in "challenging" myself in any way.
I mean what is the point of that? games are designed for you to win, so it all boils down into time and repetition but ultimately you do not get anything for meeting the challenge.

I much rather divert energy like that into real life challenges of which I have ample to tackle and reserve gaming for relaxation and story enjoyment.

Agreed on the "playing with others" though. Even Eureka was bearable when I was in there with my buddies doing nonsensical things and trolling around (within reason).

[Graeham]

I'd actually be all for a 'challenge' if it wasn't for the mentality of the average gamer. In MMO's, many players push for more hard content not because they enjoy it but purely because they want the bragging rights that come with completing it. Some don't even complete it in an authentic manner (as seen by win trading in PvP and the dubious black market for Ultimate clears in exchange for real money).

Furthermore, a lot of raiders pull the ladder up once they're at the top and refuse to aid others in getting there themselves. They have no obligation to, but in my experience the raiding community is a lot more flaky than it used to be. Very few people seem to raid alongside friends and instead act more like mercenaries. It's very telling that the clear raid for difficult content is higher over in the Japanese servers compared to the EU and NA servers.

I'd be happy to raid...if I could find like minded people to do it with. I've cleared some of the tougher content through the party finder but I just don't feel like doing it unless I'm doing it alongside people who care for the game as a whole and who aren't opposed to friendships.

[lawow74]

I don't mind repeating content when I have a clear and guaranteed reward in sight. Kill x mobs, get y. Do x content, get y. It's shit like 'chainkill this mob for an hour and maybe at some point x will spawn' that drives me bugfuck nuts. Give me a progress bar, a counter, something that shows me how close I am to my goal and I'm fine. RNG can go shit itself to death in a bed somewhere.

[Granyala]

Furthermore, a lot of raiders pull the ladder up once they're at the top and refuse to aid others in getting there themselves. They have no obligation to, but in my experience the raiding community is a lot more flaky than it used to be. Very few people seem to raid alongside friends and instead act more like mercenaries. It's very telling that the clear raid for difficult content is higher over in the Japanese servers compared to the EU and NA servers.

Yeah, met many a mercenary raider definitely the first ones to go once the group reaches a tough spot.

The only reason why I raid savage is that I enjoy running with the group I am in.
Should that ever disband... I don't give a hoot about the bosses and won't continue savage.

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Personally, I go nuts just mindlessly whacking away at helpless mobs and such, I'll literally start to fall asleep or even feel mildly depressed if that's all I'm doing.

I guess I worded it poorly. Of course I want mobs and bosses to put up a fight, have interesting abilities I need to counter and necessitate me being aware of what they can do and when.

That's what I call "interactive gameplay" and fun. Loot pinatas may be fun now and then, but if everything just lies down to your feet it gets boring .. FAST.
What I mean is more along the line of soul crushing difficulty (you know like old japanese hardcore games that make you cry and throw your controller against a wall) and bragging rights. I do not care about those one bit, because I find bragging about achieving stuff in videogames a bit .. eeeh.. nonsensical (E-sports excluded b/c that is challenging other humans, the videogame is merely a platform for that).

Mage tower and back then the green fire quests are examples of stuff that is too harsh for my taste (esp if you only played lock on a barely active alt every new moon ). Not worth my time, esp when I know that it'll get nerfed.
To be honest: main turnoff regarding the mage tower was the associated grind for tries. Never bothered with it because of that.

[Deleted]

l into the gameplay, you have to take the retarded lag based guessing game out of the equation.

If there is one thing that triggers me during savage raiding, it's seeing "you did everything right" on my screen and then getting gibbed half a second later because the server was like "nope".

I really love the game, world etc but the underlying unresponsiveness drives me nuts at times. Esp as a haler, wasting CDs etc on a dude near death only for the server to be like "yeah, I know the dude still lived in YOUR UI but over here, he was already dead".

This so much. I honestly hate how it feels like the servers updates the UI 1 time every 2nd second or so. Your heal go off, 1 second later "LOL HE DED SORRY"

[The Stormbringer]

I took a break from the MSQ and have started working my way through the Hildibrand quests (I'm like level 52 I think). It is... unique.

My description for it was 'an episode of Japanese Scooby Doo that never ends'.