Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Remedi]

We don't need a rehash of what wow does, with 200 hundreds difficulties that serve no purpose but to inflate the ilvl and then cry WEZ NEEDZ STATZ SWUISHHHHHH!!!!!

Also I put the blame on SE caving too much to the "I want this [insert object of desire here] NOW". srsly that's one of the mayor reason why too much feels shallow .

[ShadowHunterrX]

Because 2.0 had such great depth of content that you could spend hours to do right? Man there was so much to do that you were overwhelmed wait......

I fact that was with 2.0. Everything was new and most players started with nothing. Ofcourse you have the 24/7 who wanted to be first lv50.

[Kaliesto]

I think before the developers do anything else is first they need better hardware if this keeps going back to server issues.

[Vhailor]

I fact that was with 2.0. Everything was new and most players started with nothing. Ofcourse you have the 24/7 who wanted to be first lv50.

Still, I must point out, 2.0 was pretty damned shallow. The primary issue is that the MSQ and Job Quests took you through literally everything available, with the exception of a small handful of dungeons and... well, a small handful of dungeons, only two of which were relevant after the MSQ was complete. This is the double-edged nature of using the MSQ and sidequests as the primary mechanism for leveling one's first job: it both speeds up the leveling process, and leaves the player with less to do once the leveling is done.

Case in point, I hit level 50 in ARR within about three days. I wasn't a '24/7' player, but I had significant amounts of disposable income, and I wanted to really soak in Eorzea. In so doing, I leveled quite quickly, because questing is a really rapid way to level up. So before I knew it, in the space of less than a week, the MSQ was done, my primary job was leveled, I'd conquered both the level 50 dungeons, I'd completed literally every available quest flag in the game, and I was left to... well, think about what I wanted to level next, be it DoH, DoL, or another combat job. That's a fairly startling position to be in after a scant seven or so days. It's a large part of why I quit around 2.4, and didn't return until a couple of months before Stormblood hit.

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All this to say, acting as if only the '24/7 crowd' has a problem is just wrong. Similarly, the claim that 2.0 is 'overwhelming' is ludicrous, unless someone is brand-new to gaming. Grand Theft Auto games can be overwhelming. Elder Scrolls games are overwhelming. FFXIV 2.0 was closer to the complexity of Diablo, and wasn't overwhelming in any sense of the word. Eorzea felt downright cramped within a few weeks of playing. It's one thing if only the truly hardcore players felt this way: the Twitch streamers, the students on summer vacation, the people with dozens and dozens of hours a week to devote to gaming. But this feeling impacted me, a mid-core sort of player, a single adult with 4-5 hours of free time per night and weekends to devote to the new game I'm playing. I'm not the type of player who should be able to clear literally every non-Job-specific quest icon within a week or two of ARR releasing. I shouldn't be examining other classes within two weeks of a new MMO, wondering what I'll play next because the end of the process for my primary class is nigh until the first content update lands.

SE has simply made FFXIV too convenient, the grind too minimal. I don't want a return to pre-ToAU FFXI, where leveling an average job to cap could take several months. I do, however, want an update to still feel fresh a week later, and new expansions to still feel fresh after a month. SE has yet to hit that target with XIV, and in fact hasn't even really come close. I, and others, keep clamoring for it, attempting to deliver the message in countless ways, but they're simply not listening.

They're out of touch.

Edit / Addition:

I think before the developers do anything else is first they need better hardware if this keeps going back to server issues.

I don't agree with this. I think the core issue plaguing FFXIV is shallow, overly-convenient content. That's not a hardware problem, it's an overall product development problem, starting with Yoshi-P and working its way on down through the ranks. I do think there are a ton of QoL features we're currently lacking that FFXIV would benefit from, but realistically, if I envision a world in which all of the server-related problems are fixed - housing for all, no bottlenecks because SE pulled a stupid and put a solo instance early in an expansion, a true Glamour Log, a butt slider, etc. - I still don't see a vastly improved game. I see a significantly less annoying game, but one that would still deliver updates and expansions that fail to meaningfully occupy me for more than a week or so.

SE needs to bring back more grind, horizontal itemization, and other mechanisms that slow us down. They're throwing us the tools to go 100mph through the content, and they're only capable of developing content at a speed suitable for, say, 25mph. They've got to put up road blocks and speed bumps for us so that mid-core players like myself don't blink and find ourselves at the end of an entire expansion by the time a weekend has gone by.

[Kaliesto]

I think when it comes to the length of the MMO is because of much effort he has been putting into the story, something I have never seen really and almost feels like I was playing a single player game at times.

However

I can't say the same for his side quests which are about 80% fetch quests which to me is pretty lazy, and boring. That kind of time and effort should have put into meaningful side quests with a good story backing it.

[Riardon]

I think when it comes to the length of the MMO is because of much effort he has been putting into the story, something I have never seen really and almost feels like I was playing a single player game at times.

It's the good side of the game and one of its strongest features against all other MMORPGs.
The complaints we have is with gameplay features we ask for years now.
The game's engine and code is utter crap.
This leads to the walls of limitations which prevent game from further growth and evolution.
For example they still can't figure out how to add more glamour plates and how to add the glamour dresser as a housing items for personal houses. In a recent E3 interview Yoshi said it's very difficult and they still didn't figure it out.
Same with character creation options and same with the game's graphic engine. And we still don't have numeric values over the TP bar on the group list HUD despite the drop of the PS3.
I'm just not happy how they are not even trying to solve those issues.
Yoshi himself said many times in past than for an MMORPG to stay alive it needs to evolve and enhance it's features and graphics over time.
I see nothing of this.

[silentwindfr]

it's not because you don't like the question that they don't deserve answer, plus, they are easy question to answer.... character creation, true it need an update, but it will not happend before a big change of the graphics of the game, what will happend, but not with 5.0... and honestly they don't have a lot to talk to us, since the 4.4 is not coming before 2 months.

this E3 live letter did arrive at the worst time, since the 4.3 is only here for 1 month...

about the bike, how is breaking immersion? we do have magitek armor, airship, robot,.... and bike is immersion breaking? you know that garlemald even have train and stuff like this? we are not into heroic medial fantasy....

It's the good side of the game and one of its strongest features against all other MMORPGs.
The complaints we have is with gameplay features we ask for years now.
The game's engine and code is utter crap.
This leads to the walls of limitations which prevent game from further growth and evolution.
For example they still can't figure out how to add more glamour plates and how to add the glamour dresser as a housing items for personal houses. In a recent E3 interview Yoshi said it's very difficult and they still didn't figure it out.
Same with character creation options and same with the game's graphic engine. And we still don't have numeric values over the TP bar on the group list HUD despite the drop of the PS3.
I'm just not happy how they are not even trying to solve those issues.
Yoshi himself said many times in past than for an MMORPG to stay alive it needs to evolve and enhance it's features and graphics over time.
I see nothing of this.

the code is not crap, it was planned for use console and not for this much player.... the game was means to be played by 600.000 player at best and we are more of 5M.... they need to work on this all the time, they did improve the server and continue to improve it.... the game engine is far to be shitty too....
plus they did improve the engine, by adding more stuff over time, it not super change, because the engine was very good from the start. the only complain we can have is about the texture.... outside this the game is gorgeous.... anyway, they already planned to improve graphism, but not for the 5.0....

[Vhailor]

It's the good side of the game and one of its strongest features against all other MMORPGs.
The complaints we have is with gameplay features we ask for years now.
The game's engine and code is utter crap.
This leads to the walls of limitations which prevent game from further growth and evolution.
For example they still can't figure out how to add more glamour plates and how to add the glamour dresser as a housing items for personal houses. In a recent E3 interview Yoshi said it's very difficult and they still didn't figure it out.
Same with character creation options and same with the game's graphic engine. And we still don't have numeric values over the TP bar on the group list HUD despite the drop of the PS3.
I'm just not happy how they are not even trying to solve those issues.
Yoshi himself said many times in past than for an MMORPG to stay alive it needs to evolve and enhance it's features and graphics over time.
I see nothing of this.

I'm curious - do you think FFXIV would really become a transformed experience, one well worth its monthly sub, if technically-limited QoL features like the Glamour system and housing and character creation system were completely resolved to everyone's satisfaction?

To me, the core issue isn't a lack of QoL features, it's boredom. Certainly I'd love to have a Miqo'te with a proper ass again, but at the end of the day, it wouldn't entertain me more than I'm entertained now. Shallow gameplay surrounded by overhauled and improved customization and UI systems is still shallow, to me. I think these problems are easy targets for complaints, but to me, it's a very surface-level issue that SE would be wise to back-burner in favour of creating enduring, longer-lasting content.

the code is not crap, it was planned for use console and not for this much player.... the game was means to be played by 600.000 player at best and we are more of 5M.... they need to work on this all the time, they did improve the server and continue to improve it.... the game engine is far to be shitty too....
plus they did improve the engine, by adding more stuff over time, it not super change, because the engine was very good from the start. the only complain we can have is about the texture.... outside this the game is gorgeous.... anyway, they already planned to improve graphism, but not for the 5.0....

Oh, man, yes, the code is awful.

Firstly, due to server sharding, there's really no difference between 600,000 and 6,000,000. Just add more servers. And as an aside, we're nowhere near five million. Not even close. That would be around 75,000 people per server on each individual server. That's too large by an order of magnitude. Do you remember when SE was splitting map instances near the launch of Stormblood to handle the temporary influx of players? Yeah. They used three instances, and none had more than 150 people in it at any given time. I'd be surprised if there were more than 5,000 truly active players on any given server, and the true number could easily be less than half that. Nowhere near five million total players.

Secondly, the engine was awful at the start. It's based on FFXIV 1.0, which, for its time, looked like utter ass considering the resources it required. Sure, character textures were decent and polygon counts were high, but textures and level design was noticeably repetitive (literally there were copy-pasted chunks of map), and there were plenty of single-player titles that looked as good or better while drawing less power. ARR solved this to some extent by bludgeoning the engine's technical side (texture resolutions, poly counts, etc.) and attempting to gloss over it instead with vibrant artwork, but that approach is rapidly showing its age.

What worsens this, of course, is that SE routinely makes the bone-headed mistake of designing content that squarely collides with the limitations of their crappy engine. Eureka is a prime example of this. The idea of an instanced, cross-data-center environment where players can team up in large packs and have a different experience sounds good on the surface. Until you remember that we can't send /tells from instances, obviously can't join a friend's party if they're in the instance and we're not, can't Black List from within instances, can't form truly durable Linkshells with the people we might meet in instances, couldn't at the time consistently target party members or monsters when enough players came together in one spot... these issues should have sent Eureka back to the drawing board. Instead, SE stupidly plunged forward, and released a piece of content that will in all likelihood never fully realize its potential. Or, look at Housing: SE devised a tremendously ambitious Housing system, with nary a thought paid toward the fact that their existing server infrastructure was wholly inadequate to address the demand. The result was players waiting literally years for the Housing supply to even remotely approach demand, and the wait is ongoing on more crowded servers.

Look, I get the desire to defend SE sometimes. I can certainly be harsh on them myself, and so can the forums. But FFXIV's underlying code is not a hill upon which to make an effective stand.

[Riardon]

I'm curious - do you think FFXIV would really become a transformed experience, one well worth its monthly sub, if technically-limited QoL features like the Glamour system and housing and character creation system were completely resolved to everyone's satisfaction?

The crap coded base of the game that prevents those QoL advancements is the same reason we can't have cooler content like more dynamic dungeons and fort-sieges type of content.
The game can't even handle a darn FATE with more than 40 people around and game engine can't even handle showing those PC/NPCs and starts culling them despite us having the hardware to do so.
For an MMORPG this game can't handle the MMO side of things and this is the big irony.
It bottlenecks itself. They never fixed that and they will probably never will.
Aside those tech limitations it's their management as well. They are scared to allocate more recourses to XIV development.
So they stick to the formula that works and they do not move an inch away from it. To be fair though this formula kinda works as XIV is healthy and has steady population.
The only issue with that is that it prevents the game to further grow and evolve.
But if you wanna be successful you must never settle down and relax. You must always look how to improve and advance.

[Felis]

Yeah their exact patch content cycles are so predictable to the point where we know exactly what we're getting every single time which is basically the same rehashed content with a slightly different flavor.

the devs should do something unpredictable for 5.0
Something like 5.0 8 man raid, 5.1 24 man raid, 5.2 24 man raid 5.3 8 man raid, 5.4 3 trials instead of any raid