Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Froggy Fresh Sextape]

They should also probably update Ala Mhiggers gay ass little city so when new players play through the story, they don't spend countless hours fighting for them only to see it's like some gay desert dump that is tiny as shit and looks like it smells like ass.

I'm 99% sure it was some raid they were working on in ARR and just shrugged and put it in as it was. The boss arenas are about as large as the ones in CT and there's absolutely nothing of interest going on in the city.

 

[Xerxes IX]

They should also probably update Ala Mhiggers gay ass little city so when new players play through the story, they don't spend countless hours fighting for them only to see it's like some gay desert dump that is tiny as shit and looks like it smells like ass.

They don't even get to have one of the endgame hubs because they chose to put that in as Rhalgr's Reach lol

Just a dungeon and a tiny corner of the Lochs.

 

[Ravana]

Forgot to also mention I like the second dungeon boss. It triggers my monkey brain and makes me try to be the first one out of jail.

 

[Baron Reginald]

Actual question, but what would actually bring you back to the game more, and are you guys actually going to preorder the next expansion?
Had a chat with a coworker and they are the type of person who will preorder the premium delux "Im a retard" packages for basically every game, and even he said he's giving 14 a wary miss to see if it'll be alright. So it must be rough if even the most dedicated consoomer is giving it a wary pass.

 

[Baguette Child]

are you guys actually going to preorder the next expansion?

I probably won't preorder. But I'm not ruling out buying 8.0 if after the first couple months I'm hearing good things.


I wouldn't say I'm optimistic. But, despite everything, a part of me really wants to see the game do better. I don't get super into games anymore and the ARR - EW part of FFXIV captured my attention in a way not many other games have in a long time. I want more of that.


The less-retarded part of my brain though tells me that what has been fucked cannot be unfucked, so I won't be holding my breath.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Actual question, but what would actually bring you back to the game more, and are you guys actually going to preorder the next expansion?
Had a chat with a coworker and they are the type of person who will preorder the premium delux "Im a retard" packages for basically every game, and even he said he's giving 14 a wary miss to see if it'll be alright. So it must be rough if even the most dedicated consoomer is giving it a wary pass.

Something interesting.

Every expansion has been
+ New Area broken up into 6(ish) zones
+ 2 New Jobs, often needless
+ 5 New Dungeons, 3 New Trials
+ New Raid Series, New Alliance Raid Series
+ etc, etc

It's very formulaic and boring at this point and something I hope they're aware of given Dawntrail's flat landing so far. All I can hope is that they've been working hard on the next expansion because I'm not sure about several bombs in a row (I also did not like FFXV or FFXVI, despite them having some charm) and my attachment to the Final Fantasy series as a whole.

They've sanded down a lot of neat concepts because "it's too hard" but honestly some kind of major reset to bring those things back would be very welcome and would let them level-set on a lot of huge issues. My list core issues being...
- Classes/Jobs no longer feel like Classes/Jobs. Role Quests really hurt class fantasy and a lot of inter-role classes don't feel remarkably distinct outside of your Artifact Gear. Crafters suffer from this even worse as the class quests were the only thing differentiating the class fantasy for them. I get why Role Quests are easier (it's one questline instead of ~4-6 different ones) but who gives a shit.
- In the same vein, but Class Quests should also feature much better Solo Duties, preferably 2 per "block" of quests. Even if it's just smoke and mirrors, DRG 50 and SAM 60 were cool as hell just in terms of the story of the fight (even if DRG 50 was weird as hell concurrent with HW).
- Crafting and Gathering need a shot in the arm badly. For Crafting making it a bit easier but with more variance in the steps would be nice and for Gathering it would be nice to have much better access to abilities instead of slamming Cordials down constantly.
- In the same vein but Items generally need to be better. The progression of a base item at Level X0, then X1 in a dungeon, X2 crafted, X3 dungeon (repeating until X9 where you're given your Artifact Set) is very boring.
- In the same vein, but checks in cutscenes and other quests for characters from other quests. Have the BSM quest be making weapons for the WAR trainers and have a small "Oh hey it's you guys" like they used to.

- I'd really like 0 new jobs unless they do something crazy with them but would prefer if they ran through the existing classes and fixed those up.

-- Much better QoL updates.
- The inability to upgrade an item in your inventory is maddening and the inability to unequip a weapon (which you need to do for Relic Steps or Upgrading Crafted Weapons or Upgrading Tomestone Weapons) is wild.
- The Duty Support doesn't extend to the handful of required MSQ trials, you can't use your Adventurer squad in Duty Support, you can't use your Retainers in Duty Support.
- Allowing multiple upgrade steps for armor/weapons, even if only specific ones. Or not having such a massive ilvl between intermittent patches.
- Figure out how to let people, doubly so solo people, queue for a roulette as multiple roles and then make faster parties based on the flexibility. WoW figured this out in 2006ish.
- Really wrangle down the amount of vendors and drop the costs of older gear and maybe put them into groups.
- A much better system for Glamour, storing gear, keeping track of gear, glamor plates, and dyes. I'm not a GameDev but I have no idea why they just aren't set as flags instead of being handled as real items like it's a core requirement that I'm actually able to really equip my bunny outfit and not just a glamor.


They really would need to take an approach of "let's fix what's broken" instead of the usual approach of "Let's take the easy way out and also just throw some shit on top of this". I could probably write a hundred lines more and I'm sure many of the posters here could too, but it all boils down to just making changes to the game so it's better/faster/easier to actually engage with it.

 

[Baron Reginald]

A much better system for Glamour, storing gear, keeping track of gear, glamor plates, and dyes. I'm not a GameDev but I have no idea why they just aren't set as flags instead of being handled as real items like it's a core requirement that I'm actually able to really equip my bunny outfit and not just a glamor.

You have no idea how often I have asked this question. They always complain about server storage limits regarding inventory and storage being massive limiting factors.

Then stop storing literally a gazillion of every item? If the glamour wardrobe got fingersnapped overnight, and turned into a server-flag system, where you just exchange the item for the flag, then convert the armoire to allow relics to act as physical storage (since they have actual value as items, the rest are disposable), suddenly you'd have literal millions of open spaces worth of space on the servers.

 

[Brandy [◉'']]

Actual question, but what would actually bring you back to the game more, and are you guys actually going to preorder the next expansion?
Had a chat with a coworker and they are the type of person who will preorder the premium delux "Im a retard" packages for basically every game, and even he said he's giving 14 a wary miss to see if it'll be alright. So it must be rough if even the most dedicated consoomer is giving it a wary pass.

I want to see armour sets I like and areas that look new and impressive. Them comitting to making the overworld more involved in the gameplay, outside of just a backdrop for the MSQ. Make Jobs more interesting to play, add QoL stuff like a better Glamour system, bake NoClippy into the client, try to do something with the combat that isn't increasingly harder DDR fights. And, of course, a MSQ that I am invested in building up on the previous one.

Spoiler: delux edition sperging

Some cool physical box stuff of characters I like, mostly. I would really enjoy a statue of Thancred, Urianger or Y'shtola, that would go hard. Naturally that would mean that either of those 3 are featured a lot in the MSQ which would be a huge plus as well. Cloth map would also be nice, along with some gil coins of where ever we go. Having a gil coin minted of every big city we visited would have been such a cool delux edition insert. We would have by now
a random coin from Limsa, Gridania or Ul'Dah
an Ishgardian coin
an Ala Migan or Kugane coin
a coin from the First
a Sharlyan coin
a coin from Tuliyolla or god beware some purple plastic one from Alexandria

I don't think I have ever bought a deluxe version of the game, neither physical or digital so far and can't remember if they ever came with anything cool.

 

[Troon Whisperer]

Actual question, but what would actually bring you back to the game more, and are you guys actually going to preorder the next expansion?

Combat and jobs need a major rework. I am fucking sick of the two minute meta and how the game caters to the whims of the parsed brained trannies. PLD pre 6.X was fun and I don't give a single fuck that it drifted.

 

[Kane Lives]

Actual question, but what would actually bring you back to the game more, and are you guys actually going to preorder the next expansion?
Had a chat with a coworker and they are the type of person who will preorder the premium delux "Im a retard" packages for basically every game, and even he said he's giving 14 a wary miss to see if it'll be alright. So it must be rough if even the most dedicated consoomer is giving it a wary pass.

At the very minimum:

a) Fridging trooncat.
b) Midcore content that's actually worth engaging.
c) Story that manages to blow HW and EW out of the water, on par with ShB.

Those are my demands. SEnix is going to fail even the first one.

 

[Pigeon Enthusiast]

Actual question, but what would actually bring you back to the game more, and are you guys actually going to preorder the next expansion?

A rework of the core gameplay that puts back or replaces the systems they've just plain ripped out of the game entirely over the last three expansions, like aggro management and all the unique job mechanics stripped out by successive job reworks. This is really the big ticket one, because my biggest problem with the current state of the game is that the fundamental means of how you engage with everything is just not fun anymore - they have sanded down every corner where you can possibly fail, short of just not pressing buttons, and the increased pace of the DDR bullshit is not an adequate replacement, not least because the fixed timelines mean that the novelty of the DDR routine is a perishable good.

As a lesser wish, a rework of their content schedules and reward model. More content in general, and providing rewards for engaging with content that feel worth the time investment. Or just making content that's actually fun to engage with on its own merits - Bozja was some of the best midcore content this game has had IMO, even not being terribly bothered about the rewards, and I struggle to wrap my head around how Occult Crescent missed the mark so badly. The patch schedules are also genuinely ridiculous. 20+ weeks per patch for less content than before, and it's all flash in the pan content that you wrap up in like four hours and have no reason to go back to after. The fact alone that it takes a year after expansion release for them to start releasing anything for people who aren't savage raiding goblins is fucking insane.

Oh, and crucifying Hiroi publicly in front of SE headquarters as an apology for Dawntrail's... everything. That'd be nice.

I am incredibly pessimistic that they will do any of this, and will certainly not preorder 8.0. If they, against all my expectations, actually do something to fix the game in 8.0 and the reviews look good a few months in, I might think about it. Maybe.