Thoughts about the LL?

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

So, are we going to get to play the new DD in August, or are we going to have to wait until some time like October..?

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September or October.

I am simply curious about the direction the story will take, as it is the final chapter of the current story arc. It seems that WOL is playing an active role, and overall, the story looks interesting, but I suppose it is best not to keep too high an expectation beforehand.

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Originally Posted by Auro_Seldaris

What CSIII thinks will happen: "This will prioritize healers as the only job class that can truly perform raises on demand, providig an expanded role for them in parties. Improved healer gameplay!"

What will actually happen: Two nigh-immortal Warriors will take turns occasionally being able to pick two DPS up off the floor.

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Their new cooldown is gonna be six minutes so I dunno about that. They'll only be usable during combat in "casual" 4-man duties, and most bosses in that sort of content only take two or three minutes tops unless the healer dies early-mid fight, dragging out to five or six minutes(or wiping) when the healer dies early-to-mid into to pull.

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

Am I the only one who sees that Yoshi P. no longer behaves like a producer or like someone who loves this game?
But more like a Z-list celebrity pop star who just tours the world and lets himself be celebrated?
[...]
No, I'm not burned out by this game; I've opened my eyes ...

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It was always about himself from the very beginning, he has a massive ego that grew even bigger with the entirely manufactured success of the game. He never, ever cared about the franchise or the players, some people are just now starting to realise that they have been deeply tricked.

My thought is that, unless i read things wrong, they're foolishly making another space zone instead of injecting new life into the current one by building on it; creating two post expansion crafting/gathering zones and splintering whatever community is involved in the content.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

My thought is that, unless i read things wrong, they're foolishly making another space zone instead of injecting new life into the current one by building on it; creating two post expansion crafting/gathering zones and splintering whatever community is involved in the content.

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There's barely any community interaction in CE anyway. "Splintering the community" here just means there's fewer bodies per zone. Once they balance FATES there's basically no importance to that.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

There's barely any community interaction in CE anyway. "Splintering the community" here just means there's fewer bodies per zone. Once they balance FATES there's basically no importance to that.

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There tends to be a lot of community interaction when people are actually in the same zone, but every new thing requires a new zone and any community that could exist is hobbled at the knees.
XIV has a serious problem abandoning content as soon as the zerg-rush is over. It wouldn't be perfect, but not just abandoning a zone to create another might go a long way for the whole "MMO" aspect of their game.

It all needs to happen and be released faster and more frequently.
Small changes add up when they happen more often. Why is the updated housing still taking this long to pop out? It's literally the bread and butter that keep exhausted players from literally quitting the game.
Four months at a time for *small changes is not appealing; it's just enough to engage player count for their quarterlies to make it through the year and scrape by with another mid-success.
They can do better, but will Square Enix allow it? Probably not. Onward to the end of 2025, ladies and gentlemen, and then onward to a "thank you for playing our game" with Yoshida's NPC into 2026.


*With a grain of salt I say 'small' because despite how much a deep dungeon or even a field operation seem to be, people are blazing literal lines of flame and kicking up a lot of smoke with how much they're consuming them and the rate they WILL be consuming. It doesn't offer longevity in the grand scheme, hence 'small'. The ACTUAL small details, such as giving Hrothgar/Viera hats and allowing them to toggle the ears off/on to save on effort and time, should have happened much further back and should be one drop in a jug of water. We're getting a bottle and being told to find succor in it for the next four months. That bottle will be drained within a fourth of that time, and then the players will want for a refill elsewhere off the game, which is not a solution to the problem. It should also be noted that in spite of 'other things you could be doing' in this MMORPG, such as Savage, many folks would rather play a different game than beat their heads against a wall to 'learn' something that will be progressively-moot cometh future content, in a group of players who WANT to beat their heads against a wall to feel a sense of victory over big-brain flashy mechanics. Folks are back out working, not locked indoors during a quarantine anymore; we don't have time or patience for that. We can be patient, however, for promising content that is communicated to us clearly and not vaguely hinted to in a "maybe" string of answers (although understandably Yoshida can't answer most of those questions because he's not supposed to answer directly or else it will set Square up for fulfilling a promise they don't intend to keep; that's the whole reason behind the ambiguity). I digress; patch content is "something", but I can't say it's a Promise of a GOOD Tomorrow. Just that tomorrow will come and go.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Yea give me your thoughts about the LL

Me for my part, i actually enjoy some of the QoL Changes especially the one with the Phoenix Dawns.

The DD looks quit promising too, and i think the change with the additional boss at the end is really cool, you can deceided the difficulity on your own, now gotta see how the rewards are in the hoards.

The fact that there are more "safe checks" is really good too, maybe they really bringing out a good DD this time

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Where can I find the source of them changing how Phoenix downs work?

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

There tends to be a lot of community interaction when people are actually in the same zone, but every new thing requires a new zone and any community that could exist is hobbled at the knees.
XIV has a serious problem abandoning content as soon as the zerg-rush is over. It wouldn't be perfect, but not just abandoning a zone to create another might go a long way for the whole "MMO" aspect of their game.

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I admit I did not spend a lot of time in CE, but when I was there I saw no community interaction outside of brief shout conversations. The most of *that* I saw was during a progress fate (I forget the correct name for them) where everyone was voicing exasperation over how terrible it was. Gatherers and crafters simply do not interact with one another there outside of being bodies in a FATE.

Really excited about DD, love Sphene but so ready to just be done with the DT story, and the 4 month patch cycle is crushing me.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

I admit I did not spend a lot of time in CE, but when I was there I saw no community interaction outside of brief shout conversations. The most of *that* I saw was during a progress fate (I forget the correct name for them) where everyone was voicing exasperation over how terrible it was. Gatherers and crafters simply do not interact with one another there outside of being bodies in a FATE.

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It must vary per server then because Hyperion chat was popping off all the time in CE. That's most of why I enjoyed it so much despite not caring much about crafting/gathering.

Postponing housing again, much higher item limits and possible ways to decorate proper so you get a free Z axis and more.... feels so neglected...

It has been a thing since Dawntrail was promoted for the first time before 7.0.... I don't get the delays, unless they are really FOR ONCE going to sweaten the deal, but it is long time to keep people hostage like that.

Bit late to the party but there were we a few things in the LL that made me feel a bit more optimistic about the game:

Number one is the new design philosophy of designing content so it can be enjoyed by everyone. It does seem like a wasted opportunity to come up with new content that's going to be ignored by the majority of the playerbase, so I'm glad they're going to come up with ways for more people to enjoy things. I guess that has to be baked in from the beginning of the design process, so I'm not expecting big changes soon, but I'm really interested to see what they do with it.

The quantum difficulty fight at the end of the DD is a really nice innovation. My big fear in future is that by scaling difficulty they only ever mean a scale from EX to Ultimate, which would be really stupid and pointless (like having criterion and criterion savage both savage level, which was a ridiculous decision). They should really be looking at ways to bridge the gap between between normal and EX if they want to make content for everyone to enjoy. If you want to work your way up to ultimate you can already go from EX through the 12 savage floors, so there's already a progression in place from EX to the top. However, there's a massive, yawning gulf from normal to EX. I just hope that their promise to make "content for everyone" coupled with "quantum" fights with adjustable difficulty means they'll finally acknowledge that gulf (yeah I've tried some EX and I would love to do more but it's so miserable to sit around in PF for hours because you're not good enough to clear in week 1 that I gave up. Give people a better chance to clear with half the mechanics, less boss health, and a longer enrage then more people would buy in to it).

Lastly, the DD just looked really pretty and I like how accessible it is for either solo players or people who want to go in as a party.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Really excited about DD, love Sphene but so ready to just be done with the DT story, and the 4 month patch cycle is crushing me.

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I think this is a fundamental issue that came along with DT. When one is not even looking forward to the next patch because they are fatigued with how the story has progressed and will continue to progress, the entire game would feel unappealing, regardless of the long patch cycle. Granted, each patch also offers many things to do, but it is not sufficient to fill the initial gap left by the mediocrity and seemingly slight improvement of the writing.

Here is the bottom line -

When they extended the time between each patch, the justification for that was that we were in the midst of COVID and they needed more time to work. At that time the community was understanding, because many of us were honestly going through the same stuff. Learning how to function in a remote work world (or in my case, for others to learn to function in it), lack of general social contact, overall feelings of isolation leading to depression leading to reduced work output.

The world has returned to normal. The patch timeline has not. And it's time for it to go back to what it used to be - and with more content per patch. If they have to hire people to make that happen, then so be it.

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Originally Posted by Atma

The world has returned to normal.

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Unsubstantiated rumour.

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If they have to hire people to make that happen, then so be it.

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In all likelihood this is why patch cycles are longer now. They hired a bunch of new developers and did some internal reorganizing. It takes years for new developers to produce as efficiently as developers who've been on a project for 7+ years.

The thing I took away from it was the extremely relieving change in direction from hardcore and casual being prioritized every other patch to designing content for both every patch. Especially if the patch timelines are staying. I'm hoping it's to cut down on crunching.

Having an optional superboss attached to content built for everyone is a good start.

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

So, are we going to get to play the new DD in August, or are we going to have to wait until some time like October..?

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The x.35 patch is usually about 2 months after the patch so probably early October.

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Originally Posted by Atma

The world has returned to normal. The patch timeline has not. And it's time for it to go back to what it used to be - and with more content per patch. If they have to hire people to make that happen, then so be it.

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Covid itself is not impacting the world the way it did, but the world itself has fundamentally changed and is most certainly not "back to normal". The myriad sporadic efforts to get people to "return to the office" and the fierce pushback it gets are a testament to that.

Also, someone on here went through the details and pointed out that between its initial release and patches, DT will have the most content we have ever had in an expansion. Each of us individually doesn't have to find all of that content personally interesting or engaging, but we're already getting significantly more content than in past expansions.

What were the housing updates they were supposed to cover? Is it a new housing area or an extension to the existing housing item limit? I think the latter but I've been a bit out of step with the news.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

Covid itself is not impacting the world the way it did, but the world itself has fundamentally changed and is most certainly not "back to normal".

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That’s not what we were promised.

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DT will have the most content we have ever had in an expansion.

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Here’s a fact you might not realize: the previous “content” we got, Cosmic “Exploration”, is almost entirely botted. In fact, the whole thing can be automated from start to finish. This is intentional because the developers refuse to add an anti-cheat. So while you can do this the hard way, rest assured that you’ll be the only one. As such, we can remove that from the list. All other forms of “content” are either 10-minute one-and-done instances, like dungeons/alliance raids, or dismal failures like Chaotic (how was your Christmas?). Occult Crescent is the direction that Square Enix HAS to move toward. But it’ll be October until we get the DD or any other content lasting longer than 10 minutes. And given the latest numbers, many people aren’t waiting.

https://files.catbox.moe/gy8qoz.png

As it stands, Square Enix barely has the money to survive. They’ve cut off every other AAA and AA project they have because they are broke. We are now getting endless remake slop because re-releasing old games is literally ALL this company can afford. And that’s because their primary revenue stream, FFXIV, is failing.

So is Dawntrail still a success?

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

Here’s a fact you might not realize: the previous “content” we got, Cosmic “Exploration”, is almost entirely botted. In fact, the whole thing can be automated from start to finish. This is intentional because the developers refuse to add an anti-cheat. So while you can do this the hard way, rest assured that you’ll be the only one. As such, we can remove that from the list. All other forms of “content” are either 10-minute one-and-done instances, like dungeons/alliance raids, or dismal failures like Chaotic (how was your Christmas?). Occult Crescent is the direction that Square Enix HAS to move toward. But it’ll be October until we get the DD or any other content lasting longer than 10 minutes. And given the latest numbers, many people aren’t waiting.


As it stands, Square Enix barely has the money to survive. They’ve cut off every other AAA and AA project they have because they are broke. We are now getting endless remake slop because re-releasing old games is literally ALL this company can afford. And that’s because their primary revenue stream, FFXIV, is failing.

So is Dawntrail still a success?

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In the short run, DT would be considered a success. However, when you factor in all the patches, it would not share the same amount of success as that of SHB and EW. Main concern would be the trajectory of the game itself, as it seems that a future decline would be possible given the information.

FFXIV isn't far enough gone to consider a "failure" yet despite the clear downward trend. We're currently hovering around Stormblood's numbers, which was considered a huge success in that era.

Companies globally are reconfiguring because they all hoped and prayed that the Covid boost would remain, or at least that more players would remain. The AAA gaming industry as a whole is experiencing a large downturn because the world is back to work and money and time is tighter.

Plus, ShB and EW had a massive amount of WoW players that were in a much worse position than FFXIV players are now. (Imagine three Dawntrails in a row). They've gone back to WoW after Blizzard cleaned up their act and finally got out content that's up to player's wants.

Also, as conspiracy theorist this may sound, crunch culture is slowly dying, and so much of the past content was made under that type of environment. Workers putting in 60 to 90 hour work weeks just isn't as common anymore. It's been a push in some Japanese cities to even reduce the work week to four by law because of how bad it is in Japan to work obscene hours.

You're absolutely right that SE is REQUIRED to only develop safe bets. And they are. It's just so much more than "DT bad."

When people talk about FFXIV being a failure, it's pushing it.

But I think it's wrong to give them a pass and just say "Well, they had numbers like this before, it's just the hypetrain leaving" isn't it a bit worriesome that the hypetrain IS leaving in the first place? Why don't people who usually say this WANT the game to get better or innovate? Why do people want the game to remain a stagnant blob that never evolves into anything better? Why do you people want the game to remain the exact same from patch to patch. It takes FFXIV YEARS to include any QoL that other MMO's sometimes add in the next PATCHES.

I swear it causes physical pain to Yoshi P to even talk about adding any new QoL features or fixing things such as friendslist. I can imagine him sighing to himself and drinking five glasses of wine at home if someone even mentions chat bubbles to him again. That mustve been REALLY PAINFUL for him and these devs. To actually do some work.

I don't think XIV reached a dangerous low *yet*... That's boiling down to how they'll steer the game in 8.0, in every aspect. In fact, the Fanfest will be a crucial selling point to that expansion, which makes me think if this is related to not even having the Fanfest announcement yet.

If I could compare, it feels like Dawntrail is closer to WoW's Warlords of Draenor "low" than Shadowlands, which was the bottom of the barrel for that game.

The reason why the game feels like it this is where we just came from. Int he Shadowbringer and Endwalker the game was hype, we were getting to and did the climax of the story for over 10 years. The problems we have with the game (housing, QoL, jobs feeling the same, etc.) were there; we just talked about the MSQ, this or that, and pushed the problems in the background. We were having fun on the rollercoaster.

When DT launched, we got new characters, a new story, and the whole pace of the game slowed down. Dawntrail is some people's very first MMO story reset. When the game pace slows down to begin the new story for the next X amount of years. And... we got nothing to talk about it, so we talk about something else.

Remember all those problems we had with the game in ShadowBingers and Endwalker, they are now FRONT AND CENTER! We got X,Y,Z wrong, people saying dead game, too long patch cycles (i watched the Live letter when they announced that they would ge to from 4 to 4,5 months, and people seemed okay with it in chat), ect, ect.

Dawntrail is, unfortunately, the expansion people will hate the most, even though honestly, it has some of the best content, good raids, good dungeons (not you deadwalk), casual and midcore content, and quite a bit of QoL and system improvements.

But with the MSQ being the first impression and loud ones saying it was bad, it's going to have a bad reputation because of it, but it is better to judge it after 7.5 or 7.55 when all the content is out to see how it is.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I don't think XIV reached a dangerous low *yet*... That's boiling down to how they'll steer the game in 8.0, in every aspect. In fact, the Fanfest will be a crucial selling point to that expansion, which makes me think if this is related to not even having the Fanfest announcement yet.

If I could compare, it feels like Dawntrail is closer to WoW's Warlords of Draenor "low" than Shadowlands, which was the bottom of the barrel for that game.

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Comparing to WoW is a bad metric in terms of subscriber numbers. Even on it's ABSOLUTE WORST year, WoW still had more subscribers than probably the peak of 14

But spiritually I agree, Dawntrail is the Shadowlands of 14. Endwalkers rush job started the downfall imo. They just don't have enough patience to focus on a solid expansion anymore, they need to make it a forced two-parter rush job with a very divided story.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Comparing to WoW is a bad metric in terms of subscriber numbers. Even on it's ABSOLUTE WORST year, WoW still had more subscribers than probably the peak of 14

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Depends on if you're talking subs or active players. During WoW's darkest times of Shadowlands and one of FFXIV's brightest periods of ShB, they surpassed WoW as the the MMO with the most active players. WoW 'cheats' in this regard by selling 6 month subs with special mounts/etc to get people to pay for subs even if they are not actively playing, or do not play for the entire timeframe.

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But spiritually I agree, Dawntrail is the Shadowlands of 14. Endwalkers rush job started the downfall imo. They just don't have enough patience to focus on a solid expansion anymore, they need to make it a forced two-parter rush job with a very divided story.

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Dawntrail is more the Warlords of Draenor of 14. We need a Shadowlands of 14. Wait, I know what you're already typing, but hear me out.

While Shadowlands was incredibly poorly implemented, it was what WoW rather fundamentally needed - they needed to break things, shatter molds, redesign entire systems from the ground up. This is what is desperately needed for 14 right now - an expansion where the developers unabashedly say "Things are going to break. Things are going to not work out the way we intended. Class balance might be trash for a while. But things are going to get different - so that they can get better."

WoW did that and re-emerged with Dragonflight, one of it's best received expansions in ages. Had they not done so, WoW would be in an equally dire state as FFXIV is in right now. We NEED a Shadowlands (but... y'know... not as bad. please...)

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Originally Posted by Atma

Depends on if you're talking subs or active players. During WoW's darkest times of Shadowlands and one of FFXIV's brightest periods of ShB, they surpassed WoW as the the MMO with the most active players. WoW 'cheats' in this regard by selling 6 month subs with special mounts/etc to get people to pay for subs even if they are not actively playing, or do not play for the entire timeframe.



Dawntrail is more the Warlords of Draenor of 14. We need a Shadowlands of 14. Wait, I know what you're already typing, but hear me out.

While Shadowlands was incredibly poorly implemented, it was what WoW rather fundamentally needed - they needed to break things, shatter molds, redesign entire systems from the ground up. This is what is desperately needed for 14 right now - an expansion where the developers unabashedly say "Things are going to break. Things are going to not work out the way we intended. Class balance might be trash for a while. But things are going to get different - so that they can get better."

WoW did that and re-emerged with Dragonflight, one of it's best received expansions in ages. Had they not done so, WoW would be in an equally dire state as FFXIV is in right now. We NEED a Shadowlands (but... y'know... not as bad. please...)

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We don't need an SL or even WOD. What is required is a quality that can match that of WOTLK, which was something that SHB offered. It brought people into the game because there was a fantastically written story that drew people in. Granted, there were changes such as removing TP which was a good choice, but the story, in this regard, was the main focus and draw that caused a larger playerbase.

they spent so long in the DD and it wont even be out for 2 more months lol