Are we expecting TO MUCH from 8.0?

If it makes you feel better basically every complaint and talking point about the current state of things that we English players discuss is discussed on the Japanese speaking side.

The only thing that seems to be different is the confusion as to why we seemingly put in so many more weekly hours but have considerably lower high-end content clear rates. Combat and job design being tailored for the current top end content mostly stems from the fact Japanese players actually do it en mass and it's not as niche like it is for Western players. The percentages that do and don't raid is pretty much flipped between regions.

wow houseing 300 little med 600 large more they copyed ffx14 with carptry ect all skills it use to be just 2

ShB sets the bar too high, (IMHO) any expansion after that feels.... like water. Drinkable but taste plain. BUT still good and drinkable water though! Heheh.

ShB didn't set the bar too high. ShB set the bar to the quality of storywriting we had in FFXI. What we're seeing now are the results of a dev team who got too comfortable and felt they could get away with a lot of nonsense because of the “Yoshi-P can do no wrong” fanclub, aka the loud minority.
The forums lost a whole bunch of battles to people who are not here anymore people who would die-hard defend any slop given to us by the dev team and now we're the ones having to sit here through the disaster.

What do I know anyways, I'm just a delusional 1.0 player and there's nothing wrong with Dawntrail and Wuk Lamat is the best character ever made. I never cared for raiding coming from FFXI; we focused on beating a game to experience good quality story and cutscenes. Dawntrail offers none of that.

A story that bounces all over the place with a switcharoo that makes no sense. It saddens me a lot knowing Yoshi-P has golden staff from the FFXI dev team, and despite that, we still can't get good FFXI features here that would be groundbreaking to the newer generation who know nothing about MMORPGs outside the “WoW formula.

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Originally Posted by FudoMyoo

ShB sets the bar too high, (IMHO) any expansion after that feels.... like water. Drinkable but taste plain. BUT still good and drinkable water though! Heheh.

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Do not take this personally but this is the worst possible way to think about story writing in games.

Just because this is an MMO does not mean you cannot give the story the same love and attention a singleplayer game could have. It is jarring to jump from indie titles and even other AAA games to FFXIV and feel like this is 2010 when writing was not a focus at all and you were mostly focused on the gameplay. But it is not that anymore. They have writers on the team that are experienced, they have a whole host of game libraries and even movies to look at - hell, even if you want to say they do not want western influences, okay, there's a boatload of japanese titles that tell insanely good stories! Shadowbringers was good. I did love it, but even it had shortcomings. Pretending like a having fun experiencing a story could never be replicated is crazy work.

This game has so, so many unfinished plot points. Touching on any of them would be a great jumping off point. FFXIV plays in a constantly shifting, multifaceted world, even without the existence of the other shards. I bet you a lot of people even just here in the forums could come up with an interesting expansion even without writing training.
It just does not compute to me why SE has this fanbase that will just eat up any slop they vomit up like it's the god's nectar and then turn on any people speaking dissent as if they are blasphemers. It's a big part of what has been holding this game back. The community is actively protecting bad practices. It is the exact same behavior you can observe in Pokemon fans. It's making the games worse, not better.

FFXIV needs to evolve with the times. Just write a good damn story and then build the quests around it. Set up proper pacing, character development and plot points that feel like they have a real impact on the player.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

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Interesting to hear, thank you for that input, it does give some context to what is happening. But the fact alone this that has to be communicated by you, a private person, is a problem. The devs just have massive blinders on when it comes to EU and US players.

I can also pretty easily explain why the raiding gap exists. The western players that love raiding play WoW.
This is not to shit on FFXIV, it's just that WoW has always been the creme of the crop when it comes to cutting edge for MMO group content and it happens to be a western game that has heavily catered to western audiences until making the jump to china. There is a massive variety of content balanced around all classes (jobs) and they are constantly pushing for the optimal difficulty to be challenging to their highest end players while also offering step by step increases to work your way up to there. The way WoW handles gearing up and progression is very different to FFXIV and they have been innovating in that field for years. Decades even at this point. That is why the common consensus is that you play WoW for the gameplay and FFXIV for the story.

I can't speak on the japanese demographic as a european, I don't really have friends there or in any of the east asian countries. From my observations over the years though I have noticed that the hardcore dedication to games tends to be much stronger over there versus in the west and they will perfect anything through sheer power of will despite how hard it might be. It's honestly impressive, I could never. However, catering to that part of the playerbase will inevitably lead to the less hardcore players being alienated. I don't think instance design and group content is going in a good direction. The game will not be able to sustain itself off just the japanese base, at least not if they want to keep making money off the franchise.

I hate to harp on it too much but currently we are seeing a massive shift and revamp of all systems in WoW. Not just that, they did housing and it is, on beta even, already better than what FFXIV has had for years.

We keep being told 'it can't be done' while watching other games do what we are begging them to. It is so bloody sad because I love this game. I really fell in love with the world and characters but actually playing feels like a chore, like a toxic relationship I am just too hung up on to quit. And the player numbers represent this, too.

This focus on one specific part of the playerbase has to stop.

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Originally Posted by NecroprincessCleo

i mean healer mains have been in denial for longer than 7 years; it kept getting worse and worse with the effort they put into healing jobs. So sadly, yes, it does to be exact it took the story going downhill for people to accept the parts of the game that have been trash and have been for a long time, plus the average person in ffxiv community is a white knight who won't accept anything negative towards the game

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Pretty messed up for the numbers to constantly keep going up all due to cope and white knighting. Imagine going to your management and trying to convince them that your game design is actually garbage and the only reason you were once successful was because of denial and fanaticism.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Pretty messed up for the numbers to constantly keep going up all due to cope and white knighting. Imagine going to your management and trying to convince them that your game design is actually garbage and the only reason you were once successful was because of denial and fanaticism.

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Ill be honest, "yes this is my opinion" but i feel like the game was perfect in Heavensward and stormblood, sure story issue at phases but overall was amazing after that it start to go downhill," in my eyes anyways. shadowbrings story was amazing yes, some the fights were really fun yes but the jobs and combat sucked which we ignored "well most people ignored due to story and fun music this was also the time period where wow refuges overwhelmed ffxiv cuz shadowlands sucked badly in wow lol

yes yes you all are expecting way way to much.

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Originally Posted by MsMisato

yes yes you all are expecting way way to much.

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I mean lets look at facts

its taken them what 4 months for each new patch this expansion, and if you look at the desperation they are showing like with the glam thing... I think even the highest expection is still low compared to what they honestly owe us at this point with all the .... yaa