Zepla about FFXIV Relic and Square Enix not taking any Risks

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Seems better than paying something so it can continue to live in your head.

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Feel free to stop repeating that tired excuse already. As people have pointed out, showing the door to consumers with criticism doesn't lead to improvement. If everyone who critisizes the game leaves, who will be left to provide feedback for the devs? The white knights are more than happy to watch the game die, they'll be happy if there's no content whatsoever as long as they can afk in their houses or Limsa, or do 10 year old content for no reason other than to do it.

I am not a Mr. Happy fan but I think he hit the nail on the head on a lot of his points about the issues with EW in general as well as the problem with the relic and how it just compounds on everything else. It feels like SE is doing nothing to encourage people to play their game this expansion with there being no reason to do anything but the daily chores to accomplish most everything.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Who is Zepla?

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A streamer. Or someone with a microphone, a webcam, and an opinion if you prefer.

I think criticism would be better received if it was well presented and not in such a way where it seems to focus more on theatrics and shock value.

The general atmosphere on the forums aren't really constructive to criticism and based on a lot of the behavior here I'd gather the dev's don't even come here at all, and just leave these forums for people to vent and can otherwise ignore most of the posts here.

I feel the same way about how the posters here widely treat one another - full of insults or just a general tone not really conducive to listening to one another.

How dare you bring up a content creator on the forum. Didnt you read your forum contract about how you are required to hate content creators? :(

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Shadowbringers as an expansion sucked. There was barely any content, Viera and Hrothgar were promised updates, and never got any until the end Yoshida said they were "looking into it". AT LEAST Shadowbringers had a little bit of content, Endwalker effectively has no content.

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I thought that was because of the pandemic that we were getting less content, Endwalker doesn’t have much of an excuse but Shadowbringers despite everything was still pretty solid at least story wise, I had a lot of fun maybe because of friends, maybe because Emet was just that entertaining but yeah.
I was waiting for the Viera updates but to be fair at this point I don’t even hope for it anymore because I don’t believe we will ever get hats or new Viera hairstyles or an actual hempen chemise that’s not a copy.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

Honestly I've been shocked just how entrenched the argument that one of the best things about the game is in fact how little content is being added is becoming

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It's the freedom of accessibility people like. Which I can appreciate, especially for those with a very limited amount of free time. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that... except when they expect others who want actual reasons to play the game to agree with them. If you don't have the time to do everything, cool. Make choices on what content you like most and put the rest aside. What irks me is they want content to basically be easily completable in all of a weekend so they don't feel they're missing out when they play other games. Which is fine... for them but for the rest of us, we're left with a hollow game. Like I said in my response, Endwalker is the first time I feel I have to play other games regularly because even if I wanted to spend more time on FFXIV, I have nothing to do.

And before someone rushes in with the "take breaks!!!!" or "why don't you unsub then!?!?!" I want to actually play FFXIV. No, not every hour of every day, 365 days a year. I'd like a five month patch cycle to have roughly half that length of content. I don't feel it's unreasonable to expect 2-2.5 months of lasting content over a five month period. Note I said "lasting content," i.e., having things with longevity not five hundred different new things.

For example sake, Island Sanctuary should have lasted at least two months, propped up with different ways to interact with your animals, crops and the general upkeep you'd expect from a farming simulator. Sure, it was never going to be as robust or innovative as Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing but nobody should expect that. You can still implement the core ideas and build off them. After all, Yoshida openly claimed the dev team themselves were inspired by actively playing Animal Crossing during the pandemic. So it's downright baffling that supposed inspiration resulted in the barebones, mobile game knockoff that is Island Sanctuary. Seriously, IS is more on par with Farmville than Animal Crossing. What's sad is you had more customization options in Farmville.

Just make each step cost 100k gil, and we can all move on with our lives and play other games. :)

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Originally Posted by SassyAssassin

I thought that was because of the pandemic that we were getting less content, Endwalker doesn’t have much of an excuse but Shadowbringers despite everything was still pretty solid at least story wise, I had a lot of fun maybe because of friends, maybe because Emet was just that entertaining but yeah.
I was waiting for the Viera updates but to be fair at this point I don’t even hope for it anymore because I don’t believe we will ever get hats or new Viera hairstyles or an actual hempen chemise that’s not a copy.

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Oh, the pandemic was a good excuse, I am sure. Unfortunately, that isn't the case anymore, and the patch schedule has only gotten worse. It was a nice thing to say at the time though, to snuff out complaints.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

The massive homogenization and gutting of a lot of jobs for one

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To be fair I have nothing to add here because Im too lazy to level up other classes so in all honesty, about this topic I simply wouldn’t know xD so Im referring strictly to the story in comparison to Endwalker

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Shadowbringers as an expansion sucked. There was barely any content, Viera and Hrothgar were promised updates, and never got any until the end Yoshida said they were "looking into it". AT LEAST Shadowbringers had a little bit of content, Endwalker effectively has no content.

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For Shadowbringers the base expansion MSQ carried the whole expansion, all of the patch MSQ was terrible except for maybe 5.3. The Viera and Hrothgar launch was embarrassing, probably still wouldn't have head gear to this day if some devs hadn't worked behind Yoshida's back to make it happen for launch. They put a lot of resources into crafting and gathering content that took away from battle content. Bozja was decent enough, the trial series was okay, even though the story was pretty bad. The Nier stuff was awful, at least we got some decent glams out of it, the actual raids were okay, except the last one was dreadful, but I maintain it all had no place in the XIV universe, they just wanted to cash in on the Nier Automata popularity. But like Sturm pointed out, compared to Endwalker Shadowbringers had a wealth of content.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Let's not forget that when the expansion launched there were issues with...basic mathematics. Summoners losing dps during Phoenix phase, one of WHM's spells upgrading into a damage downgrade, etc.

FFXVI better be worth everything that FFXIV players have gone through.

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Imagine if being a regular XIV subscriber gave you a Square premium account that allowed for discounts and access to free SE games as a thank you for paying for nothing for 5 months straight haha

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Oh, the pandemic was a good excuse, I am sure. Unfortunately, that isn't the case anymore, and the patch schedule has only gotten worse. It was a nice thing to say at the time though, to snuff out complaints.

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Didn’t Yoshi P say at some point that he was thinking of ending 14 or something before endwalker? And now he said we will get ten extra years or so? Maybe that’s why he’s been focusing more on 16 than anything else. I think there’s a video somewhere but I don’t feel like watching hours of interviews to find that one thing so take it with a grain of salt.

I'm actually not going to bother with 7.0 until I see what the release schedule is like for content. If it's another island sanctuary facebook clicker simulator and dead on arrival variant/crit dungeons, I'm not buying it. The 6.x series of stories have been abysmally boring.

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Originally Posted by SassyAssassin

Didn’t Yoshi P say at some point that he was thinking of ending 14 or something before endwalker? And now he said we will get ten extra years or so? Maybe that’s why he’s been focusing more on 16 than anything else. I think there’s a video somewhere but I don’t feel like watching hours of interviews to find that one thing so take it with a grain of salt.

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He's never said anything about ending XIV. That's just what some idiots kept repeating when Yoshida said that the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story arc was ending.

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Originally Posted by Sheriyana

He's never said anything about ending XIV. That's just what some idiots kept repeating when Yoshida said that the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story arc was ending.

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Welp misinformation after misinformation then, Im just waiting for the next live letter to see if I get a hat or something other than a pancake thrown at my forehead

A big thing was, a lot of people started the game in ShB. There is a good amount to experience for a new player for awhile. Older players would have noticed what was happening first.

I could swear this very same debate is currently raging in at least three different threads not named this one, right this very moment. I suppose it could be indicative of a bunch of grumpy complainers and whiner-babies who just want to play Final Fantasy XIV all day long and who have insanely high standards for what qualifies as content.

But probability, arithmetic and good old-fashioned intuition and experience tells me that it's far more likely this is indicative of an issue Square ought to address. People yearn, they do not receive, and then the dissent begins. Fix it, please. Might be some of the more sour users on here would actually have praise for your product.

I don't think that SE needs to take some sort of huge risk. That's too vague of a thing to say as well.

Let's keep it simple. Relics being done through a Eureka type system is good. SE is throwing too many weapons at me. More than I need.

I've had no reason to do Mount Ordeals. I had the 630 tomestone weapon pretty quick. Then before I could consider getting 625 weapons from Mount Ordeals for my alt jobs, I could just give them all 630 relics with barely any effort.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Relics being done through a Eureka type system is good

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Is this a fairly universally accepted thought?

Taking risks?

Yes, and no.

Nope in the regards to they have not flushed out relics as well as they could have and still remain on a fairly rigid patch schedule.

Yes, in regard to the fact if they didn't take risks then they probably would not have gone for Island Sanctuary nor criterion/variant. Anything which follows outside of what they have historically done is a risk. Whether the risk in the long run for IS and the dungeons remains to be seen.

If they were interested in playing it safe they could just give the players exploratory content ad nauseum for eternity.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I can't stand streamers. I think they're one of the worst things to happen to gaming - but that aside, her concerns are very valid and shared by many here.

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^ This. The only FFXIV streamer I can stand is Xenosys Vex, and even then I only watch his clips, I don't think I could actually watch a full stream. That being said, Zepla's concerns are indeed valid, regardless of whether or not she's a streamer.

However, it does feel like streamers are only expressing these concerns now that it isn't unpopular to do.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

^ This. The only FFXIV streamer I can stand is Xenosys Vex, and even then I only watch his clips, I don't think I could actually watch a full stream. That being said, Zepla's concerns are indeed valid, regardless of whether or not she's a streamer.

However, it does feel like streamers are only expressing these concerns now that it isn't unpopular to do.

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I can't stand any FFXIV content creator, none of them are entertaining to me (from what little I have seen). But yes, valid concerns are valid concerns, regardless of the source.

I don't disagree, previously they would have been cancelled by the community for criticism, as far as I remember. :eek:

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

Is this a fairly universally accepted thought?

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Personally I had expected an ARR/HW like relic myself which for as much people argue it is just a tomestone dump now that ignores stuff like umbrite/crystal sands, books, and light steps.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

Is this a fairly universally accepted thought?

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No. Many people hated Eureka. In fact even when everyone was in there, seeming to have the time of their life, when I actually asked them, they said it was an awful experience. Yet they seemed to be having fun to me based on the laughing that was going on in my linkshells and FC? And when I went in there, I was having fun too.

We had a lot of people saying they preferred the old way of getting them from old content like in Heavensward and ARR, at the time, causing SE to try and find a middleground with Bozja where we could do it either way.

Then they just went completely the tomestone way with this expansion, and now the scales are tipped in the opposite direction from Stormblood so people who liked the Eureka way are now the ones disappointed.

At least Bozja gave us the option to do it purely through Bozja if we wanted to restrict ourselves to new content.

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Originally Posted by Xeronia

Personally I had expected an ARR/HW like relic myself which for as much people argue it is just a tomestone dump now that ignores stuff like umbrite/crystal sands, books, and light steps.

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Umbrite/Crystal Sands are basically just tomestone dumps, Books are tedious busywork (there's a reason why they never came back), and light farming is just basically farm X content for Y drops in another form. Looking back, you can see that future relic quests basically just used the skeleton of ARR/HW relic quests. Which...may explain why a lot of them have been pretty much repeats of the same things at the bare bones. A shame this one is just the tomestone dump, but I'd love to see them force people into the higher level Alliance Raids. Forced to do Dun Scaith, Orbonne, and Paradigm's Breach for the drops, if only to reinvigorate the amount of people running them.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...9295/image.png
/tencharacters

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

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Eureka and Bozja really got the community together and.. doing things.. There really isn't anything else in FFXIV like it. At the time Eureka was a blast, because everyone was there doing it. People were cooperating with eachother for a common goal, and even if people didn't like the content, they liked just being there talking to people.

Man that video was a slog. Like 20 minutes of her just saying the same things over and over again. I don't even disagree with her, but it's never been more obvious that XIV content creators are running on fumes and need to drag their shit out and then beat the dead horse until it's pulp.

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Originally Posted by Burmecia

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...9295/image.png
/tencharacters

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A lot of the things people like in the game are actively being removed at the behest of those insisting everything is fine, though. I liked Bozja. I liked Eureka.

People leave feedback to get more of what they'd like to see and most MMO's at least throw more of a bone to account for varied tastes.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

No. Many people hated Eureka. In fact even when everyone was in there, seeming to have the time of their life, when I actually asked them, they said it was an awful experience. Yet they seemed to be having fun to me based on the laughing that was going on in my linkshells and FC? And when I went in there, I was having fun too.

We had a lot of people saying they preferred the old way of getting them from old content like in Heavensward and ARR, at the time, causing SE to try and find a middleground with Bozja where we could do it either way.

Then they just went completely the tomestone way with this expansion, and now the scales are tipped in the opposite direction from Stormblood so people who liked the Eureka way are now the ones disappointed.

At least Bozja gave us the option to do it purely through Bozja if we wanted to restrict ourselves to new content.

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I can admit to hating Eureka when it came out. After I got into the NM trains in Anemos it actually started to be fun but then Pagos came out and that was such a miserable experience that I didn't touch Eureka until the nerfs and character buffs in Shadowbringers. Now it's actually a lot of fun, especially at max level. Shame the weapons themselves look very underwhelming or I might go for more of them.

Bozja was pretty good overall, in terms of the base stuff I'd say Eureka now is better but I think Castrum Lacus Litore is some of the best content the game has to offer. Dalriada is pretty good too and Delubrum is fun if people actually use their lost actions so the runs don't take an hour each. They future proofed Eureka way better, now Bozja must be next to impossible to do with no one doing the 3 parts I just mentioned.

But yeah, people like to have real goals and content to focus on, doing the same roulettes you're already doing every week is not something new for you to do. This relic is noncontent, might as well make it a login reward with how little focus and effort it takes on your part.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Umbrite/Crystal Sands are basically just tomestone dumps, Books are tedious busywork (there's a reason why they never came back), and light farming is just basically farm X content for Y drops in another form.

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Except that you could get Crystal Sand from pretty much any content, be that crafting, gathering, raids, old and current extreme primals, etc.

The same goes for light farming to a lesser extend, sure it was all combat content but which was entirely up to you, frontlines gave light, dungeons gave light, raids gave light (A9S was technically the most efficient IF you had a group that could clear it reliably and quickly), even FATEs gave light.
Even books would've been acceptable if you could actually pick up more than one, the annoying part was finishing a book only to find out that the next one you picked up sent you to almost the same places so you could've already completed both if the game let you.


But instead of building upon those systems while ironing out the parts that made them annoying they instead chose to just make you farm tomestones.




I was actually one of the people that wanted the older system back for a change.
I did Eureka while it was current, I did the NM trains, I did the naked reflect farm for days to reroll my weapon until it had 725 crit and 155 sks, I slogged through Bozja's drab environments to do god knows how many fates in there for a bunch of books and I was tired of it.
But what we got is not the old system.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Except that you could get Crystal Sand from pretty much any content, be that crafting, gathering, raids, old and current extreme primals, etc.

The same goes for light farming to a lesser extend, sure it was all combat content but which was entirely up to you, frontlines gave light, dungeons gave light, raids gave light (A9S was technically the most efficient IF you had a group that could clear it reliably and quickly), even FATEs gave light.
Even books would've been acceptable if you could actually pick up more than one, the annoying part was finishing a book only to find out that the next one you picked up sent you to almost the same places so you could've already completed both if the game let you.


But instead of building upon those systems while ironing out the parts that made them annoying they instead chose to just make you farm tomestones.

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I thought the animus books were great in concept, they made you do so many types of content, I'd love for something like them to return. But as you said, either let us grab more than one book at a time or at least give us an option of books that we can choose from and with content that doesn't just get repeated across multiple books. Maybe even let us pick like 3 out of 4 or however many options of content to choose from to complete a book, like for one you can choose to skip fates or skip dungeons etc. It wouldn't even have to be specific fates, like make it be 5 fates in a zone or something like that.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Man that video was a slog. Like 20 minutes of her just saying the same things over and over again. I don't even disagree with her, but it's never been more obvious that XIV content creators are running on fumes and need to drag their shit out and then beat the dead horse until it's pulp.

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That's how it's been for a long while. There's content drought 5 hours after major patch launch, need to get that content from somewhere.

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Originally Posted by Sheriyana

That's how it's been for a long while. There's content drought 5 hours after major patch launch, need to get that content from somewhere.

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This is definitely the sort of case where, given how the state of these relics and overall Endwalker content is being condemned from all sides, warrants a response as soon as possible. The next Live Letter is the natural place where this should occur, but given how little feedback seems to make it through, it is doubtful anyone in power will realize something is wrong until it's too late.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Eureka and Bozja really got the community together and.. doing things.. There really isn't anything else in FFXIV like it. At the time Eureka was a blast, because everyone was there doing it. People were cooperating with eachother for a common goal, and even if people didn't like the content, they liked just being there talking to people.

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When Pagos came out you didn't have time to type in shout chat or any chat for that matter or you'd drop the kill chain and get kicked from the group. That was wild, some people praised it back then too. But outside of Pagos, Eureka was good content.

It's just not a Relic weapon system anymore. It's just tome weapon, it's no different to the Moonward weapons or Radiant weapons or Lunar Envoy weapons.

Even if it used a system like the Moogle tomestones, where you're rewarded specific tomestones via certain content just for the Relics, it would be enough to qualify as Relic weapons.

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Originally Posted by Sheriyana

I think Castrum Lacus Litore is some of the best content the game has to offer. Dalriada is pretty good too and Delubrum is fun if people actually use their lost actions so the runs don't take an hour each.

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I agree that these raids are some of the best content in the game (even if I am still to this day burned out from farming them 50 times). It is very unfortunate if people can no longer do them with a large group without echo stacks, honor buffs and lost actions making them easy.

Needing a really good group of 8 people for Castrum was a perfect concept. It allowed the majority of casual players there to get carried, but allowed the 8 really good players to do something with high stakes. That is how they should do large scale raids generally in my opinion. It worked. Now it gets destroyed too easily.

Imagine if alliance raids were like this. 16 people would always be able to get carried, but 8 people had to do a high-end fight with high stakes to allow them to progress. Over time, some of those players who get carried would come out of their shell and join the party of 8 when 1 spot is left and then they would become good at it. Castrum prooved this concept works.

It also helped that everything in the raid was telegraphed once, but never again. This is also something that could be done in certain content that telegraphs a lot.

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Originally Posted by Sheriyana

Feel free to stop repeating that tired excuse already. As people have pointed out, showing the door to consumers with criticism doesn't lead to improvement. If everyone who critisizes the game leaves, who will be left to provide feedback for the devs? The white knights are more than happy to watch the game die, they'll be happy if there's no content whatsoever as long as they can afk in their houses or Limsa, or do 10 year old content for no reason other than to do it.

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How many years have certain posters been complaining about the same things? What has come of those complaints in that time?

If the content that is getting released isn't satisfying to you for some reason, that's a fair statement. What you enjoy is subjective to you. Let them know how the equivalent content in the past was satisfying to you and why the new content is letting you down.

But if you're truly unhappy with the overall state of the game, repeating feedback already given does nothing. The best criticism you can leave about a game occurs when you stop paying and playing. You're saying that you've had enough. The game quality has suffered so much in your eyes that it is no longer worth your time or money. Enough other players quit playing, leaving similar feedback, and the corporation will finally acknowledge there are problems.

Very few here in the forums defending the game are white knights. They'll acknowledge that there is room for improvement in the game where a white knight will deny that any faults exist. But where you and others are no longer enjoying the game, they still are. Despite the problems they're still having fun and don't see that changing any time soon. The things you see as problems likely don't have a negative impact their game play and so they aren't concerned.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

A lot of the things people like in the game are actively being removed at the behest of those insisting everything is fine, though. I liked Bozja. I liked Eureka.

People leave feedback to get more of what they'd like to see and most MMO's at least throw more of a bone to account for varied tastes.

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But what percentage of the player base felt the same way? Participation doesn't always align with satisfaction when there's a highly desired reward at the end. I know of more players going into Eureka this expansion than going into Bozja/Zadnor yet neither group is very large compared to those I know that are doing other content.

Then there were the players who were complaining in Shadowbringers that Bozja/Zadnor replaced what could have been a new Deep Dungeon, which is what they enjoy. So they got their new Deep Dungeon while the exploratory zone fans missed out this expansion.

I can't see either of those groups being happy with just "a bone".

Cannot say I am much of a fan of Zepla, and I for one loved Endwalker and am still enjoying the patch content, but each to their own! Would be boring if we all agreed on every aspect of the game. I do agree with the notion that SE should take more risks and the game has a habit of ‘playing it safe’. I hope 7.0 is more of a change from what we have seen, but no MMO or series is perfect.