[XIV] Heavensward Discussion

For now.

They said in the future they want us to ride them, keep up

There's one thing that really surprised me about Heavensward. Can't say if in a positive or negative way, but likely the former.

It's probably a bias I developed aver over 10 years of playing Wow, but there you're used to Expansions really revolutioning the game, changing some core aspects completely, making it feel like a really different game/experience, you get used to "expect" that. It's hard for me to say whether or not this is a positive thing for the game's health. In the past I've harsly criticized that, demanding for changes to be less world-changing-scale. In hindsight I wonder: were my demands good? I can't tell.

The opposite happened in Heavensward. I was expecting huge, big changes to some core aspects of the game (because of WoW "teaching" me to expect that), I was expecting them to "fix" some remnants of 1.0 and I was kinda surprised they barely gave us any details until the week before launch. (there's been a lot of information, but it was mostly useless/cosmetic stuff, not details).
Of course Heavensward didn't deliver that. Despite a plethora of changes to game balance, classes, a lot of things here and there, overall the "structure" of the game design is exactely the same.
You have Main quest to level up, some sidequest, fates to grind, dungeons, roulettes, old dungeons in sync, hunts.
It's much better, cleanier, prettier and more balanced, but it's also kinda a "more of the same".
And this is not bad, it's exactely what I was demanding with fervor all those years where Blizzard changed changed stuff I wish they didn't touch. It's exactely that, a more of the same.

I wonder now: will this prove to be successful for the game's health and for the players, in the long term?
Time will tell.

Tier V materia come out at 3.1 aswell, please loow forward to it.

So it looks like the mathy BLMs have come to the same conclusion about Thunder. When Enochians up thunder is useless.

I dont necessarily like this community and their specific brand of psuedo-math. Wheres this "Math"? reddit, BG, or the OF? Reddit is spotty but the OF you may well as just ignore that cancer.

Guess I have cancer then.

I'm disappointed that Drk doesn't seem to have their smokey black aura that they showed off in the trailers while in grit stance. instead they must of got rid of it. very disappointing because that looked way better than darkside.

Or its the AF gear set that will be coming out soon... wish it was just grit stance though

I'll be skipping Heavensward for the foreseeable future, given that Sechs is basically confirming what I thought it'd be like.

But that's Sechs's well-taken point: WoW significantly DOES NOT do that. The expansions mix enough up that they feel more like proper sequels than glorified version updates. There's no reason ARR has to be so unambitious and samey; it CHOOSES to be.



Why indeed? XIV can do hardly any wrong in the eyes of most of its players, it seems, and it saddens me because two years of the most unimaginative updates possible have only made the fan base more rabid.

ARR has a serious problem with trying anything remotely risky or innovative and Heavensward seems to be confirmation of more of the same going forward. It makes a lot of sense given the game's real world context, but that doesn't make it less disappointing.

Except for indies that sounds like the entire gaming industry these days.

Bunch of whiners

fair

RIP.

Reddit is worse/on par with OFs, though. The only difference is the fact that the sharing is more practical on Reddit.

That being said, due to FFXIV's community, there is barely any cancerfree community to exchange ideas with.

/ffxivg/ is what comes the closest to it but even then, it's full of waifu and drama.

I'll never understand people masturbating over "muh indies" in 2015. It really show one's ignorance.

There is nothing bad with indie games, it's just wrong to believe that they are any different from the rest of the industry.

Then again, people see the industry as something magical when they talk about companies they like and as greedy tyrants when it's companies they don't fancy.

People with an hipster-like attitude have sought solace through indie games, thinking they are above "mainstream" games.

well that sure has nothing to do with his point

I didn't necessarily mean to crticize or bash HW btw.
I just shared my "surprise" about it.

HW feels really good, there's a lot of fresh stuff, new things to do, new jobs, a plethora of new content, blah blah blah.
Srsly, I didn't want to bash it.

It's just that they didn't change the "approach", the core model behind the game. Despite several small and big differences, the game model is exactely the same.



This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's actually what I've been asking to WoW for over 10 years. Blizzard had the habit of changing things TOO MUCH and it annoyed me.
In hindsight though, I'm no longer sure about all of that.
Was I wrong in demanding less changes to Blizzard? Will Yoshi-P's choice to make HW what it is now prove successful in the long term?
Or will it turn out that Blizzard's choice wasn't that bad in the end, even if I was unable to see it for all these years?

I have no answer to these questions, yet.

I think due to the core model of the game, they cannot change much. In my perception, the way the boss fights are does not allow versatility and depth for the jobs and also the other way around: the job mechanics are so casual and "flat", I would call it, that bossfights have to be this jump and run style in order to be challenging.
the equipment needs to be easy to get, few pieces to be well geared (as opposed to different gearsets like in ffxi) and still dispensable, otherwise people wouldnt go along with the 3 month "everything now useless get new stuff" hamster wheel.
I think if you would change one of those things, the whole concept of the game would come crashing down. And being radical saying you change it all together, what would you do with the old content then?
A change I could imagine (and would welcome very much) were getting decent exp from killing mobs and exp parties. I would have thought that this was one of the successful mechanics of ffxi they would implement as it allows to give some depth to the jobs (e.g. various enfeebles and enhancement spells/abilities to control the fight). Then again, thinking about it, probably this would even demand giving some versatility to the jobs as it would be even more boring than repeating dungeons as jobs are now, just hitting your same 3 buttons all over again in a static fight. Thus, the game might not even allow that and we will stay restricted to dungeons. and of course fates as the awkward emergency mechanic.

@kaitaru
I havent played any of the new jobs yet, but Im fairly sure those people that didnt like the jobs of ARR wont be happy now with HW. After the initial "this is cool and so atmospheric" feel of the job, you just blind that out after a while and get bored on repeating dungeons with people that arent half impressed of you as you are yourself.
And btw I totally liked the "BA DUM TSSSSSSSSS" more of that please!

Nah I think you're wrong here.
Once more, I'm not advocating that they SHOULD have changed model lol, just saying that because of WoW I was kinda expecting that to happen.
Trust me, they could've totally changed model if they wanted to.
Drastically, less drastically, but they could've.
If you think that's not possible it's probably because you do not fully understand what I meant for "changing the model", but it's hard for me to explain unless you've experienced several years of WoW expansions. If you did trust me you'd understand exactely what I meant.


Talking about small&big changes though, sicne you brought it up, I think Jobs gained a lot of depth compared to the flatness they had before.
Well, hard to say in reality, it's too early, I'm judging from small experiences and from patch notes, but it seems to me on average there's a higher degree of depth in some jobs mechanics.
It's a good change imho, one of the many good changes that HW brought in.

Don't get me wrong, it was not meant as a defense of SE. They're as guilty as anyone of relying heavily on status-quo sequels, HD remasters, and copycat games rather than taking risks and innovating. XIV is itself a copycat game of WoW and Heavensward is essentially a status-quo sequel. There is simply no innovation at all in the MMO genre, and SE is doing absolutely nothing to change that. It's really rather sad.

Anyone tried out machinist (sp?)

Don't get me wrong, it was not meant as a defense of SE. They're as guilty as anyone of relying heavily on status-quo sequels, HD remasters, and copycat games rather than taking risks and innovating. XIV is itself a copycat game of WoW and Heavensward is essentially a status-quo sequel. There is simply no innovation at all in the MMO genre, and SE is doing absolutely nothing to change that. It's really rather sad.


I get the feeling you don't understand a lot of things yet, but you'll learn as you grow up, kiddo. I simply said that they produce games that are outside the norm. At no point did I say that they could do no wrong. Most indie games are awful, just like 90% of everything is crap. But, at least they generally try something different. The industry as a whole is just stuck in a repetitive rut, and once you escape the ignorance of your youth you'll come to see that. Of course, maybe things will have changed by then. I certainly hope so.