4gamer Interview

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

"On the other hand, there are also voices saying that they want enhanced content or exclusive content for weapon production. It's a voice that never existed before

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This part also bothers me. The voice in favor of relic grinds didn't exist before, because, well, there was a grind and the achievement hunters were happy. So why would there be voices in support of them when those players were happy?

This just reinforces that this is probably my last expansion if FFXIV.

It's been a great run but I think it's run it's course.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

This part also bothers me. The voice in favor of relic grinds didn't exist before, because, well, there was a grind and the achievement hunters were happy. So why would there be voices in support of them when those players were happy?

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The answer is there, less people were completing the relic grinds simple. They want more people to be able to complete them. They over simplified. People complained bitterly about the duty roulette and having to sit through cut scenes so they made more duty support/trusts but had to make it so the NPCs could support the player so dumbed down. Seriously people complained on this very forum about having to help sprouts and sit through CS just to get a reward, a reward that was increased to get veteran players to help new people. So really people are getting what they asked for. Games need a influx of new players to survive-realize this, the players have become more instant satisfaction due to mobile gaming. So they are mixing things up trying to find a sweet spot. But the sky isn't falling, there is a reason they are not paying much attention to the forum feedback and I suspect it has to do with their own internal numbers and what story they really tell.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Yeah...they are looking at this data and are unfortunately likely using the EW completion rates as justification for their oversimplification of the relic grind. To me, that is learning the wrong lesson. Dawntrail will definitely make or break this game for me at this point. For multiple reasons, this one among them.

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they should make ultimate a solo boss that dies in 5 sec. then ultimate would be highly successful content too

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Originally Posted by VictorSpoils

Why not make the first weapon the long grind and subsequent weapons more lax? Basically the previous relics but with more one-time steps to account for all the extra jobs.

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I’d be fine with that… to be fair, I didn’t mind the tomestones overmuch. At least it wasn’t Fates with random drops! But I did miss having a Eureka or Bozja for the relic. Hard grind for first relic, then the current tomestone scheme for each additional weapon? Sure! As someone who multi-classes, I’d appreciate not having every weapon be a grind.

As far as Criterion rewards go, yes they definitely need more. But just don’t take all the glam and emotes from the Variant level to do it. I was happy that each version had a mount of their own. But I don’t want to have to do Criterion just for the glams, emotes and orc roll stuff that’s currently Variant level.

As for DC travel, how do they not know how it is on NA?! I mean, there must be data on that somewhere! That was probably the most troubling statement I read, because besides certain content being totally dead or near-dead on some NA DCs, the Eastern US and EU have been suffering from bad NTT (SE’s ISP) nodes for months now, making the game almost unplayable without a VPN. There’s a 130+ page thread about it in the tech forum. We keep submitting traceroutes, but the problem never goes away for everyone. One region sees improvement, another gets the crushing lag, like a never-ending merry go round. If they really are that ignorant of things outside of JP, that worries me.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

This part also bothers me. The voice in favor of relic grinds didn't exist before, because, well, there was a grind and the achievement hunters were happy. So why would there be voices in support of them when those players were happy?

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There has never been a relic grind that has ever been fun. Each relic can be cherry picked apart on why they weren't fun. Bozja on the dev side, was supposedly such a failure that they hap hazardly ended it and scrapped the third zone we were supposed to get for it. Now all of a sudden there's demand for aggressive relic grinds despite history showing that a bigger portion of the community was against them. I think relic is one of the few pieces of content where SE devs are, "Damned if they do, Damned if they don't". I'm hoping this 'voice' from the community only exists because the rest of the content is equally unsatisfying, but I've been around the block enough to know that even if EW had gone perfectly, there would still be complaints of field content.

Why do people want relic to be either a grind or no grind.

Why can't they do criterion dungeons in Dawntrail, make normal mode a bit harder, and make relic one of the steps using those (by discovering X paths which is randomized for each player)?

Why can't relic have a game mechanic outside of grind like Bozja which arguably was a leap in quality and in the right direction (though not perfect and should not be copy / pasted in the future) from the previous expansion relics. Eureka / Books / Fate grinding / Guild Leve grinding / Etc. just isn't fun and at the end of the day a video game is supposed to be fun.

If you make relics look cool but also make it a straight grind you'll get players who pursue it, get burned out, and quit the game. SE obviously saw this in their data, heard the incredible amount of complaints that divided the community during ARR / Heavensward, and has shifted further away from pure grind with each subsequent expansion.

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

Why do people want relic to be either a grind or no grind.

Why can't they do criterion dungeons in Dawntrail, make normal mode a bit harder, and make relic one of the steps using those (by discovering X paths which is randomized for each player)?

Why can't relic have a game mechanic outside of grind like Bozja which arguably was a leap in quality and in the right direction (though not perfect and should not be copy / pasted in the future) from the previous expansion relics. Eureka / Books / Fate grinding / Guild Leve grinding / Etc. just isn't fun and at the end of the day a video game is supposed to be fun.

If you make relics look cool but also make it a straight grind you'll get players who pursue it, get burned out, and quit the game. SE obviously saw this in their data, heard the incredible amount of complaints that divided the community during ARR / Heavensward, and has shifted further away from pure grind with each subsequent expansion.

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

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i think most ppl just want some variety or something new to do for the relic.

when u spend the first year of EW doing roulettes and hunt trains, then the relic is basically more roulettes and hunt trains, it is pretty disappointing.

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Originally Posted by Snorky

The answer is there, less people were completing the relic grinds simple. They want more people to be able to complete them. They over simplified. People complained bitterly about the duty roulette and having to sit through cut scenes so they made more duty support/trusts but had to make it so the NPCs could support the player so dumbed down. Seriously people complained on this very forum about having to help sprouts and sit through CS just to get a reward, a reward that was increased to get veteran players to help new people. So really people are getting what they asked for. Games need a influx of new players to survive-realize this, the players have become more instant satisfaction due to mobile gaming. So they are mixing things up trying to find a sweet spot. But the sky isn't falling, there is a reason they are not paying much attention to the forum feedback and I suspect it has to do with their own internal numbers and what story they really tell.

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Relying purely on "internal numbers" would explain why they're so utterly out of touch in their responses, certainly. I'd love to know what their "internal numbers" told them about the WoW exodus, and why they failed to hold onto that potential boost to their playerbase. Also the self-same excuse now used to explain the drop-off in LB numbers, as if they were always fated to lose those players.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

This just reinforces that this is probably my last expansion if FFXIV.

It's been a great run but I think it's run it's course.

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I don’t even know if I can say it’s been a great run because of the major controversies I’ve had to endure with this game and it’s decisions. They turned Blue Mage into a limited job and to this day Summoner is still too far from what it should be. They genderlocked one of my favorite races and when they added the missing gender it came with too many limitations and strings attached still. Now the story and content is in shambles too. All the internal data in the world means nothing if they don’t try and listen to actual players instead of staring at spreadsheets.

Oh good, we’re entering the “Paper Mario Sticker Star” phase of this game.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

Why do people want relic to be either a grind or no grind.

Why can't they do criterion dungeons in Dawntrail, make normal mode a bit harder, and make relic one of the steps using those (by discovering X paths which is randomized for each player)?

Why can't relic have a game mechanic outside of grind like Bozja which arguably was a leap in quality and in the right direction (though not perfect and should not be copy / pasted in the future) from the previous expansion relics. Eureka / Books / Fate grinding / Guild Leve grinding / Etc. just isn't fun and at the end of the day a video game is supposed to be fun.

If you make relics look cool but also make it a straight grind you'll get players who pursue it, get burned out, and quit the game. SE obviously saw this in their data, heard the incredible amount of complaints that divided the community during ARR / Heavensward, and has shifted further away from pure grind with each subsequent expansion.

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

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All I'll say is I am baffled by the fact that they didn't hook the relic and relic zone features (like logos actions) into V/C dungeons, coupled with overshooting on the difficulty for Criterion and not offering sufficient rewards to motivate players to do it. There's been a lot of posts about how they could've improved it or EO through simple changes. I honestly don't consider the "burn out" to be an unavoidable issue of the relic being a bit of a grind to achieve - they state that the issue lies with players having multiple jobs. Fine, then just make the first relic the harder one to obtain and offer streamlined options after that. The whole plan with Bozja was to allow for alternatives to the instance, unlike Eureka, but it wasn't handled too well. Really, Eureka and Bozja just offered a lot of things to do if you wanted to do them, coupled with a social experience, and it's not like their engagement rates were bad, either. That's not inextricably tied to the relic acquisition burnout because a lot of that came down to external grinds. Just make sure to avoid any bottleneck stages that force players back into the instance when trying to acquire the surplus relics. Whether they envision the relic zones something entirely separate or not to the V/C dungeons, which are here to stay, the aim should be for the content fun to play and/or rewarding even to someone not pursuing a relic and provide methods to keep it alive once the next expansion is out. Their current approach to design seems very binary to me and I don't think they've really addressed the issue well or identified those legitimate issues that the relic zones did have.

I'll also be quite honest and say I don't see an issue with the relic grind being something you have to work towards and that any burnout in this case is by choice, mostly through obtaining relics through more than one job. As it stands it sounds like they want the relic to just be a fancier tomestone weapon but I think it's lost some of its meaning if that's the case. There comes a point where you could apply the same approach to any form of content and I really don't think completion metrics are all that matter here.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

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For me personally, I don’t care if it’s hard or easy. That just determines how many I’ll make. I think I took 1 HW, 2 Eureka and 5 Bozjan weapons to full completion. I’ve lost count of how many Mandervilles I have in various stages right now. lol honestly I have nothing else useful to buy with those tomestones otherwise! Which is why it didn’t really bother me. They had other stuff this expansion (Island Sanctuary and the V/C dungeons) so having an easy relic process to go with the silliness of the Manderville questlines really didn’t strike me as being out of place.

What I did miss was having a new zone to explore, a new side story to tie to the relic weapon quest, new gear and other rewards from the zones, and the player interaction/cooperation (much more so in Eureka than Bozja) to get the NMs/CEs to spawn. I guess rewards-wise, the Variant dungeons filled some of that gap, as well as the exploration part. I actually really like the Variants, though they do lose their replayability after you finish all the paths and get all the rewards you want.

Things from past weapon grinds I could’ve done without: get 30 each of 3 different crystals that may or may not drop when you do a Fate! If it’s going to be a grind, leave the RNG out of it please! Let me know I have to do X amount of something to get a step done. And maybe after a certain amount of time they could’ve made it so you can just que for the bigger dungeons like BA, CLL, etc. rather than spawn them, because once it’s old content, you need to organize a discord party to go do them. Hence why I still haven’t done BA yet! lol

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Originally Posted by seolhyun

i think most ppl just want some variety or something new to do for the relic.

when u spend the first year of EW doing roulettes and hunt trains, then the relic is basically more roulettes and hunt trains, it is pretty disappointing.

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That's fair, so what would you like to see?

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

There has never been a relic grind that has ever been fun.

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That really depends on the person. There are people who find them fun.

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Bozja on the dev side, was supposedly such a failure that they hap hazardly ended it and scrapped the third zone we were supposed to get for it.

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I was in there (all throughout Shadowbringers right up to the last months) and it was full up always. It clearly wasn't a failure. I did CLL 23 times and Dalriada 32 times. I farmed for the stat boosts and it was busy then as well.

If their definition of failure is that casual players who like farming CT and Deltascape 3 instead of field areas didn't do the field areas, then they should adjust their definition of failure.

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Now all of a sudden there's demand for aggressive relic grinds despite history showing that a bigger portion of the community was against them.

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Nobody showed support because they didn't need to, since they existed and you could visibly see the achievement hunters very happy and very busy farming them.

Now those same achievement hunters are evidently bored and quitting according to this graph https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-is-in-decline - this graph is about achievement hunters dropping at an unprecedented rate and unless I'm mistaken, it's a drop of about 100,000, taking it to Stormblood levels.

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I think relic is one of the few pieces of content where SE devs are, "Damned if they do, Damned if they don't".

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Agreed. But just because people support all content being easy, doesn't mean it should be. As I said in my original post, just because a lot of people would like savage to be clearable in 1 pull doesn't mean it should be (in case you don't believe that's the case, remember the majority of people unsync it later on).

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

There has never been a relic grind that has ever been fun. Each relic can be cherry picked apart on why they weren't fun. Bozja on the dev side, was supposedly such a failure that they hap hazardly ended it and scrapped the third zone we were supposed to get for it. Now all of a sudden there's demand for aggressive relic grinds despite history showing that a bigger portion of the community was against them. I think relic is one of the few pieces of content where SE devs are, "Damned if they do, Damned if they don't". I'm hoping this 'voice' from the community only exists because the rest of the content is equally unsatisfying, but I've been around the block enough to know that even if EW had gone perfectly, there would still be complaints of field content.

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I can't go totally against that, but the problem is that they scrapped that and gave us nothing else to do. Bozja, for its relics or whatever other reason you were there, was a place to spend a little time during down periods. It gave you incentives to play the game. Something to engage into with a clear goal. Now what do we have to replace that? Roulettes and Hunts Trains, content that were already there. I think there are some crazy grinder in the pack, but overall, I think it boils down to "I want to play but outside reapeating roulettes at nauseam (I can't stand any of the 90 dungeons anymore)". It's been month that outide caping my tomestone and doing the Wonderous Tails, I basically do nothing. Bozja and relics were the things that avoided that feeling during ShB. It seems to me that why they are so often brought in.

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Originally Posted by Morphiana

That's fair, so what would you like to see?

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I would very much like to see a new series of exploratory zones that take after Bozja and Zadnor for the relic questline. I would like for these zones to continue the Ivalician storyline that was unceremoniously (kind of) terminated via the Field Notes. There is a wealth of material they can draw from FFXII, Vagrant Story, and Tactics Ogre in order to accomplish this.

The relic questline should still maintain 2 options for progression in and out of the content, but the relic-dedicated content such as CEs/CLL/Dalriada like events should be the most efficient way to progress the relic as opposed to running fates/old alliance raids. I would like the first exploratory zone to release by the .25 patch, if not earlier due to the lack of long-lived content early on in expansions. No more free relics for tomes. Tome relics exist. People can get those if they want.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

but the fact is that many players have strengthened the Manderville Weapon this time to the highest level ever

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Oh wow! what a revelation! more people have gotten the free weapon we hand out every patch. What a twist!

On the 6.0 "final day" trial: This does not address the underlying issue with all capstone trials - They should be looking at all capstone trials. Making an adjustment in that, for example, the boss cannot die before transitioning is still bad. Granted, this is an assumption I am making, but they have done the same in the past, e.g., with Gaius.

On Alliance Raid difficulty: I mean, it's a fair point, Alliance Raids, you're dealing with massive gaps in player skill, to be honest. I think the current version of Ivalice is a decent point, even if a lot of it is just sponge.

On criterion rewards: I'm glad they're looking at increasing the reward. Still, I personally think they should restructure slightly how people get these rewards. e.g., after x number of runs I know I am guaranteed to get everything. Making that a little uncertainty would be best, e.g., lockboxes with a greater scope of rewards.

On Relics: I mean, yes, the sentiment behind this is good, but they have gone completely bonkers in that direction. Under no circumstances should someone be able to log in and immediately have everything for the relic as soon as the quest is complete. There should still be some effort required. A good balance between this is to create more 1-time steps (and I don't mean quests). e.g., Go complete a checklist of duties x number of times. In fact, for people getting the Resistance weapons, I would argue that on-patch, it wasn't really a significant amount of effort at all, really - If you took away the one-time stages. The initial relic was a little painful, yes. But subsequent relics were a joke. It created that middle ground for players. People who wanted a grind had it in the form of one-time-only steps. People that wanted something on the easier side for collecting them all, were also catered to.

They need to understand they'll never please everyone. That is literally every single relic series they have gone with.

On DC Travel flocking to a single DC: I hope they eventually develop a cross-DC party finder.

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Originally Posted by EgilTheStressedMage

Oh good, we’re entering the “Paper Mario Sticker Star” phase of this game.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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I'm so hoping the TTYD remake incentivises them to make Paper Mario fun again. That being said, Sea of Stars is absolutely amazing with it being a cross between Crono Trigger and Paper Mario.

Watch them tune the next Ultimate raid to MSQ difficulty, and then proceed to be suprised that more people cleared this ultimate, compared to the others

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

On the 6.0 "final day" trial: This does not address the underlying issue with all capstone trials - They should be looking at all capstone trials. Making an adjustment in that, for example, the boss cannot die before transitioning is still bad. Granted, this is an assumption I am making, but they have done the same in the past, e.g., with Gaius.

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That's so weird, isn't it? So Thordan dying mid-monologue or whatever is fine, but Meteion isn't? I get that you can't please everyone, but how would that change be controversial in a story-driven game? So everyone who dares to not play on release gets a shittier experience? No idea what they are thinking with that one. lol

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

That's so weird, isn't it? So Thordan dying mid-monologue or whatever is fine, but Meteion isn't? I get that you can't please everyone, but how would that change be controversial in a story-driven game? So everyone who dares to not play on release gets a shittier experience? No idea what they are thinking with that one. lol

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They need to address this in particular because at the moment it runs counter to their mantra of "its ok to take breaks, you can come back at any time!" Not when you risk the experience being gimped if you dare take time off or start late. It also ruins the natural learning curve [miniscule as that might be] that you would experience doing these fights during your game progression because they're so undertuned you can sleepwalk through them.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

They need to address this in particular because at the moment it runs counter to their mantra of "its ok to take breaks, you can come back at any time!" Not when you risk the experience being gimped if you dare take time off or start late. It also ruins the natural learning curve [miniscule as that might be] that you would experience doing these fights during your game progression because they're so undertuned you can sleepwalk through them.

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Very true. But it has been like this for literally years. Why change it now? I mean I think it's a very needed change but what brought this about? Didn't bother them with every other capstone fight.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Very true. But it has been like this for literally years. Why change it now? I mean I think it's a very needed change but what brought this about? Didn't bother them with every other capstone fight.

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Because every other capstone fight is not the culmination of everything in the game since the beginning, and don't a include a cutscenes of the other characters midfight. It's more obvious there is a problem with this one than with the others. (That said, I agree with you other would also benefit having that, but it's pretty obvious why this one was the one they tackled and not the other).

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

Because every other capstone fight is not the culmination of everything in the game since the beginning, and don't a include a cutscenes of the other characters midfight. It's more obvious there is a problem with this one than with the others. (That said, I agree with you other would also benefit having that, but it's pretty obvious why this one was the one they tackled and not the other).

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That's very subjective at the best of times. If you play HW Thordan/angry dragon is the culmination of the current story.

You don't make every chapter of your book less exciting so the last chapter can shine more. That's kinda weird.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

My takeaway is that they are listening to feedback

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That is hilarious to say. They are listening to their data. And they clearly aren't listening to feedback if the think only JP has issues with DC travel.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

Ho boy. This doesn't look good for the future.

We've told it many times, for month... There is 2 new thread on the subject per day... It's about having long running content available, objectives on the long term, and yet they achieved to still miss that.
The "Young people" part made me smile. I'm pretty sure the average player age in mmo is pretty high. I hate that trend that consist of let's do things a way it will bring young audience/more casual audience in and give nothing to do for the mmo crowd, which is the historic heart of the playerbase. God they're lucky the correct alternatives don't really exist in that market...

their focus on completion rate is baffling. I don't know what to add.

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Young people aren't going to play a slow tab targeting 2.5 GCD MMO. He's not going to attract anyone. The same goes for FF16, they failed to attract any serious action game fans. The combat in FF16 is flat out inferior to God of War. There's literally no reason to play it as a young action game fan.

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

Young people aren't going to play a slow tab targeting 2.5 GCD MMO. He's not going to attract anyone. The same goes for FF16, they failed to attract any serious action game fans. The combat in FF16 is flat out inferior to God of War. There's literally no reason to play it as a young action game fan.

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Basically this. As much as I loved XVI I am under no delusions about its gameplay flaws and the writing issues that plague its later segments. Overall it suffers from very XIV-like problems likely caused by the same issues in direction/production but to a lesser degree from my perspective, because nothing could ever come close to how Endwalker let me down as someone who has played XIV since day 1 of ARR's launch.

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

Young people aren't going to play a slow tab targeting 2.5 GCD MMO. He's not going to attract anyone. The same goes for FF16, they failed to attract any serious action game fans. The combat in FF16 is flat out inferior to God of War. There's literally no reason to play it as a young action game fan.

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You unironically said "young action game fans"? lol What's next? Do people have to stop playing games past 30 since, y'know, gaming is for children?

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

You unironically said "young action game fans"? lol What's next? Do people have to stop playing games past 30 since, y'know, gaming is for children?

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He's referring to Yoshi-P's comments in recent interviews. Yoshi-P has cited many of the game's recent changes as an attempt to appeal to 'younger gamers'.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

He's referring to Yoshi-P's comments in recent interviews. Yoshi-P has cited many of the game's recent changes as an attempt to appeal to 'younger gamers'.

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I have several ideas that may have some appeal to the demographic that he seems to want to please. Give us jobs that feel like they're complete unlike current SMN and accommodate for actual diversity of playstyles rather than having them be clones of each other that share mechanics like DRK and WAR. Have dungeons and especially capstone trials not be pushovers.

And to stop completely and utterly with the cringe ads that have come out during Endwalker like the live action commercial and infamous cocomelon-style tutorial series. People like me do not like being demeaned that way and if you give me the ick with a poorly put together costume as opposed to some of the actual decent cosplays I've seen from XIV, don't expect us to want to click the link. That white mage ad that occasionally still appears when I'm scrolling through instagram stories is enough to spook me when I'm on my phone late at night.

Just because we're young also doesn't mean that our sense of humour is at whatever level Hildibrand/the open sesame Nophica sequence from Myths. Same for the all the food scenes this game insists on pushing including the eyeroll worthy taco cat moment in the DT trailer. If what we're looking for is a fantasy mmorpg we see that and get turned off. We want a game that takes itself somewhat seriously and isn't embarassing to watch play out on our screens.

FFXIV doesn't feel like itself anymore. It feels more like an SNL skit. We somehow went from the writing in Heavensward-Shadowbringers to this.

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Originally Posted by OgruMogru

They need to address this in particular because at the moment it runs counter to their mantra of "its ok to take breaks, you can come back at any time!" Not when you risk the experience being gimped if you dare take time off or start late. It also ruins the natural learning curve [miniscule as that might be] that you would experience doing these fights during your game progression because they're so undertuned you can sleepwalk through them.

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I mean, this makes CBU3 seem either lazy or negligent.
They acknowledged there are complaints about particular boss fights not scaling properly and becoming jokes, and their answer is to just fix the newest one?

Just think about this: DT will surely attract more people. They're gonna fix the one boss that's gonna take new players an eternity to reach and I'm sure by the time they do it either the queue will take an eternity or it will be a point at which power creep will make it stupidly easy again. I bet they're just planning to make the final phase of the fight an invulnerability phase which isn't thrilling.

I have no idea why they decided to go and rework Ultima and Ascian Prime into some of the best battles in the MSQ and then gave up. They just "fixed" the beginning and the end and left everything else in the middle to rot.

I feel like he's missing the one commonality with games that are popular with younger gamers and that's that almost all of those games are free to play. P2P MMOs will never be as attractive to young people no matter how much you reduce the grind or improve the graphics.

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Originally Posted by hobostew

I feel like he's missing the one commonality with games that are popular with younger gamers and that's that almost all of those games are free to play. P2P MMOs will never be as attractive to young people no matter how much you reduce the grind or improve the graphics.

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I also feel that the comments he made in an interview pertaining to F2P models was spot on:
"F2P is an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content, and a playerbase which changes dramatically in size and revenue from month to month."

If people feel like the game is bad enough catering to lowest common denominator adults, then just imagine the hellscape if it pivoted to lowest common denominator youths.

And that's nice and all but it doesn't change that trying to appeal to young people by removing the grind isn't likely to have any effect on amplifying the game's appeal when the initial barrier of entry is there.

Also, how old is that comment? Is that 10 years ago Yoshi-p or recent?

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

I also feel that the comments he made in an interview pertaining to F2P models was spot on:
"F2P is an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content, and a playerbase which changes dramatically in size and revenue from month to month."

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That's the Yoshida that brought me into this game, a far cry from recent one. I mean we're already starting to feel like F2P with how neglected the game feels.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

He's referring to Yoshi-P's comments in recent interviews. Yoshi-P has cited many of the game's recent changes as an attempt to appeal to 'younger gamers'.

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I think Yoshi might need to see what the younger gamers play now a days thats are not a mmo

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Originally Posted by Theodric

He's referring to Yoshi-P's comments in recent interviews. Yoshi-P has cited many of the game's recent changes as an attempt to appeal to 'younger gamers'.

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Indeed, we have lots of players in their 30s and 40s (and consider, many of those people would have been in their 20s-30s in ARR or while playing other MMORPGs like WoW).

So he wants to appeal to today's 18-30s. But I do see plenty of people that age playing already. A strength of this game has been how it grows by word of mouth. A friend brings in a friend. A partner makes their partner play.

And what even puts people off usually? Are they even complaining about relics being too hard to get? What they usually complain about is the MSQ and how long it takes, too much story and not enough fighting, or difficulty forming social connections (which Endwalker's solo content doesn't help with).

Are their interests different to the older generations? No, because anywhere that people look for friends and mention their age, they all say the same thing regardless of age. Whether people are 20 or 35 they either do extreme/savage or gpose.