Hydaelyn Role-Players

I can't speak on behalf of retention of existing players, but I can say that I've known a lot of newcomers who were turned away by the way the game has some confusing, obviously-retained-from-1.0 stuff that isn't really adequately explained or sufficiently utilized, while at the same time the game spoon-feeds game systems and sidequests by way of an intricate web of gating.

I've heard a lot of: When do I get a mount? When can my mount fight with me? Why can only a Chocobo fight? Wait a minute, what do you mean cross-class skills? What's a job? I don't want to be a Bard, I want to be an Archer. What do you mean a Bard is just "still an Archer, ignore the name"? Why is it called Bard, then? I want to RP with my friends, when can I leave Limsa? What is Materia? When do I get that? Why can't I raise my main stat any further using Materia? I get extra stat points? What's the best thing to put that in? When do I get a cosmetic system? What do you mean I have to be level 19 to use Dyes (and do a sidequest the game doesn't give me any indication exists) and level 50 to use glamours? Can't I just equip an outfit set and call it a day? How do I buy a house? What do you mean there aren't any? What do you mean it costs MILLIONS of gil? How can I be a Machinist? What do you mean I have to have access to Heavensward? I bought the expansion. Oh, you mean the location? When do I get there? What do you mean I have to have completed the entire pre-HW main story first?! I heard there's flying mounts! How can I fly? What do you mean I have to get all the way to the HW zones, and then I also have to have basically completely explored a zone and cleared a bunch of its content before I can fly in it? 

Suffice it to say, from a mechanical perspective it isn't a very welcoming game for newcomers. 

If you ask me, rather than adding new content to appease the veterans... because let's be totally fair here, veterans in every MMO ever will jump ship to some other MMO as soon as they've beaten the new thing, and the aggressive veterans will have beaten the new thing within a couple weeks... I think, in my opinion, they should try to resolve some of the things I mentioned above. If an MMO is welcoming to newcomers, then it's okay if some veterans migrate along with the release of content, because there'll always be new players getting subscriptions. It's when the veterans migrate and you don't have a solid newcomer retention that you have a problem.

(12-04-2015, 05:39 PM)Melkire Wrote: [ -> ]Yyyyyeaaaaah, think they might've goofed with this announcement. Usually for issues of this magnitude, developers will just state, "We've identified the cause and we're working on a solution, please stay tuned" and leave it at that. Prevents malicious users from deliberately exploiting and/or impacting the game in a harmful fashion.

...good to know though, I suppose?


EDIT: That said, I don't see a conspiracy here to cull "massively multiplayer," just a genuine, honest-to-God issue with... dun dun dunnnn... their infrastructure.

FFXIV's dev teams strikes me as people who give far too much benefit of the doubt to their playerbase. Which is sad, because while I do like they believe that strongly in the community, some people will inevitably exploit it. 

(12-04-2015, 09:25 PM)Ryanti Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-04-2015, 08:35 PM)Teadrinker Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-04-2015, 06:50 PM)Caspar Wrote: [ -> ]I just read from all this "squaresoft please give our team money so we can improve our server infrastructure and hire some more programmers." ;_;

From the small team they've got the amount of issues that DON'T make it live is pretty damn amazing.

These guys have to be working themselves to the bone.

They probably are. IIRC Yoshi had a little moment in one of the recent Live Letters in which he made a passive aggressive comment about being understaffed that caught a lot of people's attention. There's been a lot of rumor about that recently. I'm starting to believe a lot of XIV's revenue is not going back into XIV. I don't understand why Square isn't re-investing back into the game. XI wrapped up all new content, how about putting some of them on XIV's staff?

Square Enix nearly bankrupted themselves after 1.0's disastrous launch, coupled with spending obscene amounts on Tomb Raider and FFXIII. The former supposedly didn't make a profit, while the latter struggled to corner the estimated market. I suspect they are using FFXIV to funnel other projects to basically reinvigorate the company. FFXIV, unfortunately, has long been viewed as a hail mary attempt to salvage a sinking ship. The fact it practically saved SE makes me think their shareholders are writing it off with the mentality, "well, if you were successful with a shoestring budget. Why should we give you more money?"  

Sincerely hope that isn't the case long term.

As much as I love their games Square Enix have a nasty habit of screwing over passionate developers. FFXII, for example, suffered greatly from executive meddling - despite the lead developer having created Vagrant Story; one of the few games to score a perfect score in various gaming magazines back in the day.

It's still a great game but it could have - and should have - been so much more. I fear that FFXIV is going to go the same way, especially with the way in which the developers seem very burned out and forced to operate on a very tight and hectic schedule. 

It isn't their fault, I suspect - since in these situations a lot of the blame can be placed firmly upon the shoulders of those in charge of allocating funding. If, however, we don't see the housing system addressed soon and the next patch is also full of technical issues then I fear that I'll become very cynical about the game as a whole.

Two new mounts were added to the cash shop recently. The income provided by them will no doubt be significant - but if it isn't going back into the game development itself then there's a major issue. It's fine for a company to make a profit but profit should not come at the cost of stability.

(tl;dr: Just some more of my introspection on a lot of the state of the game and my feelings about stuffs. I don't post enough on this forum. Oh, and Warren? Talk about relics lol)

(12-05-2015, 01:58 AM)Olivia Wrote: [ -> ]Square Enix nearly bankrupted themselves after 1.0's disastrous launch, coupled with spending obscene amounts on Tomb Raider and FFXIII. The former supposedly didn't make a profit, while the latter struggled to corner the estimated market. I suspect they are using FFXIV to funnel other projects to basically reinvigorate the company. FFXIV, unfortunately, has long been viewed as a hail mary attempt to salvage a sinking ship. The fact it practically saved SE makes me think their shareholders are writing it off with the mentality, "well, if you were successful with a shoestring budget. Why should we give you more money?"  

Sincerely hope that isn't the case long term.

Me either.

I can pretty much firmly believe at this point that they are using XIV to cope with the net losses they had to deal with a few years ago that nearly crippled them as a company. But I am afraid that if they keep that mentality up, they're going to end up using XIV as a crutch to throw money at other titles because their other titles won't have long term consistent revenue like XIV will. But you have to feed the cow that gives you milk, and Square needs to take care of its cash cow.

This breaks my heart because of this:

Naoki Yoshida, A Realm Reborn’s director, told The Penny Arcade Report on Friday, “Most MMOs have investors in the background, and the company uses the profit and splits the profit with the investors. But, if the game’s not successful, and it doesn’t reach the target, then they have to switch to free-to-play to try and get just a little profit from it. Among the MMOs in the market, only Blizzard and Square-Enix are making money without investors in the background.”

^ FFXIV does not have investors. It means they don't need to try to do things to please them. They can focus 100% of their efforts in studying their audience and giving them what they want and they don't have to put any effort towards trying to give investors what they want.

But it feels like XIV is -still- torn in two directions. The staff wants to make a game the people want, but Square Enix wants XIV to make a game that Square Enix wants. Square Enix wants a continuous revenue with maximum profit with minimal investment. But they are having difficulty understanding that MMO's, especially MMO's with sub-models, need to be re-invested into over and over again to provide that same consistent, healthy long term growth. This means staff. This means raises. This means funneling money into development costs and being willing and able to take a short term loss if it meant a great chance at long term growth. That's taking a risk, something Japan's culture is iffy about compared to the West.

FFXIV may not have investors, but Square Enix is currently acting like a disgruntled shareholder that wants his return right -now- on money they gave towards the game years ago and not willing to see the bigger picture here. I really hope that there's some sort of human resources department or some kind of intermediary between XIV's staff and Square that can start making some positive changes done for the overworked and tired-as-hell XIV staff that is being worked to the bone and basically living on caffeine and passion for the title.

Switching subjects here...

(12-04-2015, 11:42 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: [ -> ]It's impossible to determine what's the "right" difficulty" for anything. Clearing the EXes for i90 weapons was truly hazardous because of Titan EX: I was seriously almost driven to quitting because I kept failing the encounter because no one else could hold up this part of the encounter. I did beat it eventually, and I never looked back. The gimme 3-pack of tokens is still on a retainer.

Yeah.. that was a real thing too.

I can't say I was frustrated enough to think about quitting, but I did have an adventure trying to get that clear the first time. Lots of wipes, lots of frustrating nights dealing with frustrating people. That's the negative side of it. Often times, not just in those fights but in Second Coil and stuff as well, I would feel like 'these people can't do this shit, who can?'. Like Turn 7 pre-nerf, holy crap the stuff I put up with.

But at the same time, I look back on those Titan HM days and those Turn 7 days and I also remember how it made my old FC so healthy because we were always trying to help people with those clears and all of my funny/great experiences in PF and all of the pop culture that resulted from it (the rage gifs and the fan art and the web comics about Titan and Enrage strat) and in the end, I had bad memories and good memories. I had an experience, and MMO's to me are about having experiences.

I personally prefer that. When things feel hazardous, I feel great for making past it. I want to support your friends that haven't yet. I realize that's more of an old school MMO mentality, and I admit that I am more of an 'old school' guy on that. I also know that PF can sometimes let people down but I'm not gonna touch the whole "NA Partyfinder hurdur" subject with a ten foot pole because I really think that communication has more of an effect on that than location.

The first relic questline felt like a journey. Sure, it was just a lists of steps to do, but in my mind I was the Hero that was on a quest, and that each step in that quest got harder and harder until I hit the midpoint bottleneck. Got past it, slid down that hill and grabbed my relic.

And sure, I didn't touch Titan for a while after that lol but I didn't touch Ravana either after doing it ten times within three days so.. truly, the Titan content lasted longer with me.

(12-04-2015, 11:42 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: [ -> ]So what is there to do now? Diadem, for one: It can drop 210s and it isn't overly difficult, even if it is a bit grindy. Doing Void Ark once a week gives you a guaranteed 210 piece of Esoterics gear. Grinding your Esoterics every week is fairly standard; Queue, do dungeon, receive progress. It all adds up to a fairly straight-forward progression.

Ever since ST it's been pretty straight-forward. I actually appreciate the fact that it's straightforward and not convoluted. I think a lot of people are glancing over the fact that the feeling of progress in XIV is simple, clean, and solid. I always feel like I'm one step closer to my goal when I log out. But when is the point where things become *too* routine?


How long can a dedicated subber do the roulette routine before they begin to desire something different? Was the Diadem supposed to cater to that? Is there no hope for the Diadem to provide the true break in the routine after people just figured out it was dino island farming/mob farming?

More significantly, will FFXIV ever move away from its current progression system of new tomes/raid/progressive patch, new 24-man/dungeons/catch-up patch? Will we ever see a different endgame than what we see now?

I think people... wanted something familiar but different for Heavensward endgame. They still wanted to feel the same emotions and experience from 2.0's endgame, but delivered in a fresh and exciting way. They wanted something more obvious to tell them that the game is evolving. They wanted an endgame to match how fresh and cool it was to have huge zones and flying and new jobs and a new DX11 client with new graphics and stuff that was still based around the same core engine.

In other words, they didn't want a different cake, but they wanted a new type of icing on their chocolate cake and ended up being fed the same icing and the same cake. They wanted to be like Squidward in that gif who ended up racing back to the unpredictable (Spongebob).

I really do think that the Diadem had huge potential to completely re-vamp endgame. "It could be the new Dynamis!" I thought pre-3.1. They still can make it something super special but.. it needs work. It really needs work. It's too.. shallow, and it should not be a situation where people just find out the best way to get 210 gear and do that. Maybe vertical progression is to the blame or maybe the community is to blame. But.. I just have this huge feeling that the devs wanted to try out more exploration, more adventure, more random but... didn't know how to go about it. Just like PVP. It's like an owner of a restaurant not knowing what should be on his menu.

(12-04-2015, 11:42 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: [ -> ]It comes down to the classic argument of progression: If you aren't raiding, why do you need raid-tier gear? Why do you need 210s if you aren't pushing Alex Savage? If you aren't doing Coil, why do you need i90?

It's a need to want.

This is a very peculiar thing to me because it actually fascinates me in a way. I actively try to push myself to get 210. I actively try to get myself on par with raid-tier gear. I -needed- that i90 weapon at launch regardless of whether or not I was gonna do Coil. Whether or not I was gonna raid. I don't raid anymore, yet I really want, I -need- that raid-tier gear.

Not just that, but I really push the limits of my job. I try to edge out 3k crits on DRK with a vitality build on a practice dummy. I'm constantly trying to better my Wildfire burst as MCH. I get a chuckle from a buddy: "Why do you care? You don't raid anymore."

Why? ... I honestly don't know. I guess it's just very irrational. I want this stuff because I know people who raid and I like to feel like I'm on par with them because I'm an ex-raider. I want this stuff so that I can try my best, so that I can create a goal (Hit a 8k Wildfire in a dungeon) and then smash past that goal. I want this stuff so I can get content done faster, be more useful to others, and maybe even be a replacement for a static one night if they need help. That's another thing, I feel like I can help more.

If I dig really deep down inside, then I come up with yet another answer. I want the i 90's and the 210's because the real reason why I quit raiding is because I hated putting up with the stress of managing other people and having it suck time out of my life. I had a schedule, so I felt like I was doing this not out of my free will. I had to manage people, have a schedule.. wait a sec, that feels like work! It began to feel like work to me when the managing and the schedule and the drama became more of a hassle for me than the content.

I was part of three statics, the last one I created myself. I left the latter two due to this.

I created a static back in January because I was so freaking tired of not being able to be taught Turn 9 and not being able to put myself in a position to beat it (because no static would accept someone who didn't have experience, and Second Coil was supposed to be less hardcore because Final Coil was out, but I had to gate through T9) that I made my own, got taught by being a replacement for another one of my FC's statics for a night or two on a dps job (DRG) when I wasn't gonna be dps (PLD) and I just sucked it up, learned it the best I could, recruited my own people and we blasted through T13 the day after I got home from my graduation trip in May.

But the baggage that comes with a static killed me.

The schedule killed me. Having to be the sole leader killed me. Having to manage people killed me. Everything outside of being in the fight itself killed me. Going to bed at 1-2am or later even because of after-raid meetings and getting up at 7am every day killed me. I became a stressed out, RP-starved madman and I had to leave.

I realized that it's not 2013 anymore. I'm not a fledgling college student with too much free time anymore. I couldn't do it. I bailed. I'm not that hardcore to lead a static and I will never be.

I left the static I created in July, cut that stress out of my life and my blood pressure loves me now. I feel free. I feel like I can relax. I feel like I can roleplay more than I ever have. I feel like I can do what I wanna do. That's casual mentality. I don't want anything to feel like a job.

But I still have that passion for being the best, for bettering myself and doing some hard ass content that can kick my butt because at the end of the day I still love this game and doing that stuff.

That's why I classify myself as midcore now. I have that urge to be carefree and take a breathe and not take things too seriously, but I also have that edge (kill me for using that word) to 'git gud' and blast through some content hard enough to satisfy that passion yet not where I need to call up seven people four nights a week every week to do like I'm doing it to keep the lights on.

I know that's a terribly long answer, but this is the first time I truly wrote out my feelings about that question and why I feel like I need those things.

(12-05-2015, 12:28 AM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: [ -> ]What do you mean I have to get all the way to the HW zones, and then I also have to have basically completely explored a zone and cleared a bunch of its content before I can fly in it? 

Even as a not-new person this baffles me to high extremes.

I basically have to do everything that there is worth doing in the zone and explore it completely before I can use something confined specifically to that zone, which I will never visit again because that zone is now basically done. By the time you unlock flying, it's practically useless.

What the hell, SquareEnix.

(12-05-2015, 10:50 AM)Oli! Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-05-2015, 12:28 AM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: [ -> ]What do you mean I have to get all the way to the HW zones, and then I also have to have basically completely explored a zone and cleared a bunch of its content before I can fly in it? 

Even as a not-new person this baffles me to high extremes.

I basically have to do everything that there is worth doing in the zone and explore it completely before I can use something confined specifically to that zone, which I will never visit again because that zone is now basically done. By the time you unlock flying, it's practically useless.

What the hell, SquareEnix.

This design decision was made because Yoshi looked at games like WoW that had flying in the past and realized that introducing flying in the very beginning takes away the feeling of exploration and navigating terrain during the leveling process.

People would just fly in straight lines from point a to point b and never explore, and it would take a very short time to complete quests.

So that's why Blizzard killed flying abd that's why Yoshi made flying unlockable only after the zone has been thoroughly 'warmed in'.

Hope that makes sense.

The hard rub for me, and others I assume is along the lines of what Calliope wrote. There are so many mechanical and cosmetic issues that everyone (player and developer) sees, everyone knows the fix needed, yet for either reasons of being to ingrained in the game's code, stubbornness or lack of resources is never fixed.

The big stuff like bugs get attention sooner or later so that's not as big an issue to me. Its the small stuff (I'm looking at you Class system) that make a player's first few weeks in game make or break.

(12-05-2015, 02:52 PM)Ryanti Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-05-2015, 10:50 AM)Oli! Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-05-2015, 12:28 AM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: [ -> ]What do you mean I have to get all the way to the HW zones, and then I also have to have basically completely explored a zone and cleared a bunch of its content before I can fly in it? 

Even as a not-new person this baffles me to high extremes.

I basically have to do everything that there is worth doing in the zone and explore it completely before I can use something confined specifically to that zone, which I will never visit again because that zone is now basically done. By the time you unlock flying, it's practically useless.

What the hell, SquareEnix.

This design decision was made because Yoshi looked at games like WoW that had flying in the past and realized that introducing flying in the very beginning takes away the feeling of exploration and navigating terrain during the leveling process.

People would just fly in straight lines from point a to point b and never explore, and it would take a very short time to complete quests.

So that's why Blizzard killed flying abd that's why Yoshi made flying unlockable only after the zone has been thoroughly 'warmed in'.

Hope that makes sense.

Oh that makes sense. I would be inclined to agree with Yoshi on that.

The real issue may be more on the side of abusive pingpong questing, uninteresting sidequests, and the usual themepark MMO culprits. Look no further.

It is sad, to know that 80% of the time spent in game if not more, what makes you play long hours of MMOs, is actually the mob killing quests and the time spent traveling between various points of quest givers.

And yes, knowing that you can fly in an area, and knowing that you have to unlock X things to be able to, is the most unnerving thing I have had to deal with while leveling. 

Which is rather indicative of the flaws of the usual MMO questing design. The MSQ doesn't really suffer from those flaws. They did it very well with that little pilgrimage through Dravania, to the Churning mists, etc... It even teleports you to the point of arrival when a cutscene makes you use Sid's airship and the likes...

Am I bittervetting? Damn. I'm too young for that.

(12-05-2015, 02:52 PM)Ryanti Wrote: [ -> ]This design decision was made because Yoshi looked at games like WoW that had flying in the past and realized that introducing flying in the very beginning takes away the feeling of exploration and navigating terrain during the leveling process.

People would just fly in straight lines from point a to point b and never explore, and it would take a very short time to complete quests.

So that's why Blizzard killed flying abd that's why Yoshi made flying unlockable only after the zone has been thoroughly 'warmed in'.

Hope that makes sense.

It makes sense, and I would say he's right regarding exploration, but there is so little to do in many of those zones afterwards that unlocking flying ultimately just seems like a waste of time; if there were some motherload of additional content hiding up somewhere in a flying-only zone then it wouldn't be a problrm. But there isn't.

So now regardless of intention, the concept of Flying in this game just feels like an afterthought. By the time I had finished all my flying quests and gotten all my nodes, I was over leveled for the area and looking for new things to do.

Even if he might have had a reason, it just wasn't done well at all, especially with the story content gates placed on most of them. If they just let you do all the quests and exploration as soon as you entered the zone, it might be a little better, but for a lot of people, as soon as the story quests take them out, they're not coming back.

(12-05-2015, 07:51 PM)Oli! Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-05-2015, 02:52 PM)Ryanti Wrote: [ -> ]This design decision was made because Yoshi looked at games like WoW that had flying in the past and realized that introducing flying in the very beginning takes away the feeling of exploration and navigating terrain during the leveling process.

People would just fly in straight lines from point a to point b and never explore, and it would take a very short time to complete quests.

So that's why Blizzard killed flying abd that's why Yoshi made flying unlockable only after the zone has been thoroughly 'warmed in'.

Hope that makes sense.

It makes sense, and I would say he's right regarding exploration, but there is so little to do in many of those zones afterwards that unlocking flying ultimately just seems like a waste of time; if there were some motherload of additional content hiding up somewhere in a flying-only zone then it wouldn't be a problrm. But there isn't.

So now regardless of intention, the concept of Flying in this game just feels like an afterthought. By the time I had finished all my flying quests and gotten all my nodes, I was over leveled for the area and looking for new things to do.

Even if he might have had a reason, it just wasn't done well at all, especially with the story content gates placed on most of them. If they just let you do all the quests and exploration as soon as you entered the zone, it might be a little better, but for a lot of people, as soon as the story quests take them out, they're not coming back.

There's zones that offer a lot more out of flying than others. Sea of Clouds is one. Azys Lla is definitely one because it has no location currents. But yes, I do think that they could have added different layers on content based on surface questing vs. aerial questing. But maybe they didn't have the money to or.. maybe places like the Western Highlands didn't make sense to have floating rocks or whatnot.

Though, places like the Western Highlands instead have some cool landmarks. I remember people struggling to find the chained dragon that was in the trailer, only to find out it was only in a place where you could reach after you learned how to fly.

There's additional content that they're thinking about like having aerial races. But at the end of the day, flying is more of a feature than a core aspect. It's 'cool' to be able to fly, but it's not essential to the game's engine that you need to fly (Aion was like that).

Also, the zones are large, so the additional speed of flying made things much more convenient when I went back to those zones to do things like hunt or level alts.

The thing is, though... like any aspect of the game, exploration is something you can't force on players. For every player who oohs and ahhs at all the scenery, there's another player who is watching their minimap to make sure they're going in the direction of the next quest marker and otherwise their attention is on their television as they watch some show on Netflix while they level. Flying doesn't change that. For players who like exploration, they're still going to poke their nose into every nook and cranny whether they can fly or not, because it's part of what they enjoy. For players who don't like exploration, it's an added QOL convenience for them.

As others have mentioned, a lot of players don't even like sidequests. Maybe they have multiple characters, and so after they've gone through the quests on one, they'd rather just do the MSQ and run some dungeons with their FC to bridge any exp gaps. Said player forever has no access to flying if they do that. Whether it's their first or eighth character they MUST do a few sidequests and run around the zone collecting 10 ground spawns. Tedium.

A far better solution would be to let flying be unlocked as of the moment you unlock it via the MSQ (around level 51 quests, IIRC). Presto, it's now unlocked for all zones. But, until you know the currents in a zone, your flying speed is poor - you can fly only at the same speed you can run (which would be slower than your land mounted speed, of course). Each aether current you unlock increases your flying speed in that zone. There's 15 of them, so take the flying speed in the game now, minus walking speed, then divide that remainder by 15 to get the amount each unlocked current would boost speed. Got all the currents? You can fly at the same speed you can right now. Got no currents? Cool, you can still fly for the convenience of not dealing with maze-like rock outcroppings and platforms, just not swiftly.

It's exactly that kind of QOL stuff that will make or break a game. 

Consider: What is even the point of the cross-class skills system? Generally, people take the same 5 skills for a given job, because you only get two classes' skills to pick from and there are usually only 5 that actually apply to your job (if that - some of them it's like... ehhhhh... I guess I'll take that because there's nothing better, but it isn't really an impact at all). Can't that be simplified? Why, yes it can:

1. For each cross-class skill a job would normally take, just make the base class of said job get their own version of that skill at the same level where the origin job gets it. For example, Provoke is a cross-class skill that's pretty much mandatory if you're playing as a WAR or DRK. GLA gets it at 22. Instead of mucking around with all this cross-class malarkey, just give MRD and DRK their own Provoke skill that they also obtain at level 22. 

2. Forget about the required 15 levels in a secondary class in order to qualify for a Job. That's pointless. Even in the current system you generally won't have all of the cross-class skills you would need from that class by level 15, so you end up having to level it further anyway. Plus, removing that requirement also keeps new players from getting blindsided upon hitting 30 that they can't fully progress in their class (let's call it like it is, a Job is just additional core function for a class, and is therefore really not even a separate thing, it's pretty much just your class) unless they "take a break" from their MSQ progress and go start all over again for 15 levels, for which they might have not saved any sidequests, and can't do dungeons (because that doesn't start until 15), and very likely need to get new equipment for (since if they weren't expecting it, why would they have held onto their lowbie gear). Instead, they just smoothly go from finishing their class story to starting their job story. Neat.

3. If weapons define your class, but a crystal defines your job, but ultimately it's your job that you're playing as, then we can have everyone get a "class emblem" at level 1 in their class which is equipped in the same slot that you'll later use to equip a crystal. Equip the Lancer Emblem to be a Lancer. Easy. Guess what? Now weapons can be unlocked from classes, because that system is already totally irrelevant even in the current game (using a sword doesn't make you a PLD, using the PLD job crystal does). 

Some other easy solutions:

4. Let people buy a chocobo at level 1 if they want to, but it only moves 10% faster than running. Let them use it in battle if they want to, too, and it can accumulate exp and level up (something which, normally, on a first character in their first job, the chocobo takes ages to get anywhere useful with), it just can't spend any SP yet. The GC thing you can unlock, instead of giving you a chocobo, is a training which enables the chocobo to run faster (to the current move speed). The level 30 quest for the companion unlock instead unlocks the ability to assign SP and make your chocobo more useful (and by that point, you might have a few SP to spend).

5. Since housing scarcity isn't going to change, why not add a feature to inns where a player can sink some Gil to rent a Suite for a month? Each month they pay rent, and they can pay rent up to 6 months in advance. A Suite would function as 2 simple rooms which could be decorated like a house and which you can invite visitors to be able to enter. Accessing the suite would be as simple as talking to the innkeep in the city where the suite is owned, and keying in the player's name. You could designate a given suite as a "favorite" for easy lookup on your "favorites" list, perhaps. 

6. Want to check out gardening but can't get a house? Why not do something similar to the Suites idea where at the botany guild someone can rent a garden plot? A private little instanced garden which, like the Suite, others could look up and enter (but like the suite, only if they have permission).

7. Want to do things like coloring your chocobo? Yeah, I don't know why this isn't something that's available at the main city chocobo stables either - why does it have to be an owned stable? Psh. Lemme pay some stabling rent and have the same options to color up my bird and get him racing-ready or whatever (seriously, as a non-landowner, I have no idea what all can even be done with stables, that's how broken the current system of housing is making this kind of thing for people).

8. There's no conceivable reason why the dye quest is level 17 and the glamour quest is level 50. Those quests could just as easily be level 1 quests, and should be offered by the vendor who sells dyes in each of the main cities at their markets. Further, make a "Basic Glamour Prism" for each type which only works for items level 1-20 but is vendor-bought. Grade 1 changes to 21-50, Grade 2 starts at 51 instead of 41. 

9. This one's a biggie. Add "Veteran mode". If a player has a character that has completed the pre-HW MSQ already (so everything through patch 2.55), upon creating a new character they will be prompted as to whether or not they'd like to begin that character as a Veteran. A Veteran character loses the "sprout" icon from their name (because duh), but more importantly begins with all MSQ-gated features through 2.55 already unlocked regardless of progress in their MSQ (including, but not limited to, access to levequests, guildhests, dungeons, and trials, albeit with their access to individual content within those systems still limited by level; ability to select a GC and begin earning seals right away; airship and boat travel routes unlocked; ability to change class unlocked; materia system unlocked; and, most importantly, access to Ishgard and the HW MSQ unlocked - though everything there still requires level 50+ except for unlocking DRK, MCH, and AST which would have their initial unlock quests scaled down to level 1, but would have no further job quests until the appropriate level).

Anyway, I could go on. Wall of text, woo! The point is, the huge number of QOL issues that are off-putting to newcomers are pretty easy to resolve with just a little tweaking. And yeah, fine, I'm sure I'll get a response to this from somebody claiming to have worked in the video game industry and they have all this computer programming expertise and the things I'm suggesting are actually super duper complicated and they are super cereal about it. Cue preemptive 9_9 and :p at that person.

I don't ever think housing's going to be resolved soon. I mean the times I was dicking around in other servers 2~5mil and a presto you have a small lot, in wherever city you want it, to call your own. I think think the housing problem may just be native to Balmung or the other rp servers.

Still that rent apartment idea is a cool one to implement.

(12-06-2015, 02:22 AM)Noirelle Wrote: [ -> ]I don't ever think housing's going to be resolved soon. I mean the times I was dicking around in other servers 2~5mil and a presto you have a small lot, in wherever city you want it, to call your own. I think think the housing problem may just be native to Balmung or the other rp servers.

Still that rent apartment idea is a cool one to implement.

It's not the "RP Server" thing. It's the population. We're one of the highest population servers in the game. And we're not the only one with this problem - all of the extremely high population servers are in the same boat with regard to housing. All of them had the issue of the small houses selling out within minutes of servers coming back up when they added new wards, etc.

I got my paladin to 60. I queued. I waited 30min. I sat in my large house.

(12-05-2015, 02:14 AM)Graeham Wrote: [ -> ]As much as I love their games Square Enix have a nasty habit of screwing over passionate developers. FFXII, for example, suffered greatly from executive meddling - despite the lead developer having created Vagrant Story; one of the few games to score a perfect score in various gaming magazines back in the day.

Famitsu, back when getting 4-10 was actually meaningful as they didn't give those at the drop of a hat for AAA titles from Japanese developers.

(Also as far as the Tomb Raider thing is concerned, it did draw a profit but they went on record that it sold below expectations at only... 4 million I believe.)

For me, right now logging in feels like a complete joke. Since my goal is all-60 and they've not really offered a good alternative path for leveling (still doing the odd dungeon/even fategrind route), I'm essentially grinding away the fun I used to have playing the game.

Also, the less we talk about crafting, the better for my mental health.