Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Vhailor]

I’d much rather they spent this time discussing classes and content like most mmo devs instead of keep getting asked weird costume questions by weeabos.

You keep saying we like you speak for the community, and you don’t speak for me and many others like it or not.

100% agree. A significant portion of FFXIV's primary 'content', the carrots at the end of many of the sticks, are entirely superficial fluff. That stuff needs to be in the game, but XIV focuses on it to such an extent, it more closely resembles a F2P mobile app than it does a supposedly-premium MMO. We need more content, that's designed to last longer, and is infused with more creativity and challenge. It shouldn't be possible to make half-serious jokes about Glamour being the real end-game.

Edit: This is particularly relevant in light of the fact that FFXIV is not well-designed for Glamour. The character options are average at best; the texture resolution is shit; SE's back-end code is incapable of supporting a proper Glamour log; the graphics engine features some of the worst character model clipping I've seen in years. Can we please stop asking SE to focus their attention on fluff content that the game clearly cannot execute all that well? It's like whining for better AoE indicators for players who prefer playing in first-person mode.

[hynaku]

They could just have a third party do a texture pack for it like they did for Skyrim. I rather have them spend funds on making the game more enjoyable. Like adding options for primals and dungeons. where can pick if want echo and add difficulty settings for them to pick from. Like have a easy setting where wouldn't need a tank or healer to complete it. that way can just pass it and go on.

[Remedi]

SE's back-end code is incapable of supporting a proper Glamour log;

TBH atm we are at the void storage stage of wow, I think if they manage to snag one of the ppl that worked on the diablo 3 trasmog they might fix it (they were the ones that made the glamour log possible in wow).

Technically speaking it would be giving you access to the storage from anywhere

[Vhailor]

TBH atm we are at the void storage stage of wow, I think if they manage to snag one of the ppl that worked on the diablo 3 trasmog they might fix it (they were the ones that made the glamour log possible in wow).

Technically speaking it would be giving you access to the storage from anywhere

That could potentially alleviate the Glamour log issue, but there are still the other problems I mentioned. The clipping one, for instance, is huge. Do I want to wear a big hat? Well, I'd best be fine with hiding my displayed weapon, because it's going to clip. Do I want to wear a skirt? Well... there really aren't any good options for that unless I want to pretend like my character always has her hands in a pair of nonexistent pockets. The texture resolution is also an issue: as soon as I zoom in much, it just looks like ass relative to modern titles. It's interesting that you mentioned D3, because while D3's transmog system is effortless to use, the items themselves look like crap if you zoom in on your character or are looking them over. This isn't an issue for D3, since transmog is very much an additional 'why not' feature, but in FFXIV, when Glamouring is positioned as a significant objective for players, I think we'd just swap usability complaints for different ones (we need high resolution textures; we need to address clipping; why don't we have equal outfit opportunities across genders and races; can we have a butt slider; etc.).

As a result, I really think that SE should stop positioning Glamours as being such a large part of the game. Stop advertising them in patches. Stop charging so much money for them on the cash shop. Stop locking key ingredients behind content walls on par with, or surpassing, the best available crafted combat gear. Then, refocus all that effort on building the high-quality, durable content that XIV is so sorely lacking. With a bit of luck, this will mask a lot of the game's issues, because XIV's engine is fine for delivering battle content, at reasonable scales, in tremendously immersive maps. It's terrible at Glamours. Why focus so much effort and attention on an area of the game that exposes all the shortcomings of the engine and back-end?

[Remedi]

Dunno how long it took for wow to fix that, but I remember some terrible things happening with hats there too eheheheh

[Vickii]

Yes, don’t get me wrong I have nothing against glamour or people who enjoy that part of the game. I personally find some of the things I see in Limsa a little weird but to each their own, I hope all have fun in the game.

But it shouldn’t be catered for those people so much. It would be like catering wow for the low levels who hang out in goldshire.

When the director speaks for an hour he should speak about the state of the game, class balance, content and maybe at the end take one or two random questions.

Instead he spends 50 minutes talking about glamour and social stuff and barely anything on the actual game.

I’m sorry but this is what The Sims is for.

[Vhailor]

False
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ges_over_time/

The team size has been constant in it's size, the amount of battle devs have been always low and only with SB they've been able to expand it to alllow them do things like the extra savage boss and Ultimate

Also I remember hearing that FFXIV is the biggest team working at SE but I wasn't able to find that quote so don't quote on me for that

Very good point. Also, again, it cannot be said enough: the XIV dev team is shooting itself in the foot by creating throwaway content.

It's bone-headed stupidity to design content, and then relegate it to the trash (err.... Roulette*) heap after six months. It massively increases pressure on the development team to churn out content rapidly, because the core available content isn't augmented by what you're developing - it's almost entirely replaced. This argument is even more critical if there is a shortage of experienced developers on Yoshi-P's team. They're making some really bad decisions.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Agreed on all points to your post above Vhailor. The forums kinda messed up my other reply, so I'll copy and paste what I had for the edit, but I lost the original response.

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.

Speaking strictly personally here - I don't think the solution to the issue is "more grind" or intentional roadblocks/slowdowns. The problem lies in the fact that the core content systems are shallow and binary. Imagine if a piece of content was actually fun for longer than the handful of times it's meaningful? I know fun is subjective, but treat it this way: If you remove the rewards - would you still participate consistently?

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.

The actual code is optimized quite well for sure. It's actually one of the common points I praise about the game., but it having a redeeming feature of two isn't enough to offset how:

• Awful the netcode is
• Overly reliant on menus
• Clunky
• Bloated

In addition - I very strongly suspect you do not have a source to corroborate your statement that the game was designed for only 600K players OR that the game has 5M players.

Please edit your post to remove the misinformation.

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.

Agreed wholeheartedly. This would be the equivalent of designing a race car to enter in the Formula 1 equipped with a Toyota Prius Engine. It's an idea so bad that people should have intervened, but no one did. Yet somehow they're still surprised by the outcome. If that doesn't demonstrate an out of touch perspective I don't know what does. AND to add insult to injury that doesn't even count the fact that they needed to add features to Eureka to make it tolerable in a hot fix. Stuff that any junior level intern with 20 minutes could have identified.

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

No. This doesn't actually change anything. That is not unpredictable. That would be awful. What they need to do is design actual meaningful content with scale-ability and replay-ability.

I know that they took away alot of the developers on Yoshidas team so they can create KH3, FF7 remake and whatever else the company is working on but that's no excuse for not being able to reuse assets and create harder difficulties for the newly released battle content.

You know? or you feel/think? Do you have a source for this? I'd be interested to read it.

I agree with most other points. I think creating an EX primal level 24 man alongside the normal version would be welcomed by the midcore community. I'd argue to make it 8 man though if I was speaking personally.

[Remedi]

The reason why we need grinding back is because there is a intense lack of long term goals, also I'd rather ppl stop using fun as a way to judge content since it's a very subjective choice, some find fun Eureka others don't, just as some like testing themselves in ultimate while others prefer 24 man raids.
Since MMOs targets a wide audience it's impossible to use fun as a metric at all.
I'd rather gut myself than play PvP, but I don't think that Pvpers shouldn't get content at all because of that for example or that they shouldn't receive what they ask of the devs

[Remedi]

Very good point. Also, again, it cannot be said enough: the XIV dev team is shooting itself in the foot by creating throwaway content.

It's bone-headed stupidity to design content, and then relegate it to the trash (err.... Roulette*) heap after six months. It massively increases pressure on the development team to churn out content rapidly, because the core available content isn't augmented by what you're developing - it's almost entirely replaced. This argument is even more critical if there is a shortage of experienced developers on Yoshi-P's team. They're making some really bad decisions.

It also true that the reason why such content exist is because they catered too much to the fast food community imho.
I'm starting to believe that hoever it's less than a yoshida's policy and more a company policy tbh.
In a recent interwiew Yoshida used as an explanation for why they are spreading out content the exact same words for why 1.0 had the fatigue system.

That makes me think that SE got burned badly by the controversy of players fighting mmmh I think it was pandemonium warden or absolute virtue for X hours in FFXI (notice how he asked mrhappy if he slept when they met at E3). As such players well-beign is a sensible topics for them and this is affecting their decisions. I mean it's a supposition but it does fit if you think about it

I mean even FFXV can't be possibly considered a grindy game and FF game (and JRPGs) have been always considered to be grindy