FFXVI has now officially proven to have taken over Yoshi's time

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Originally Posted by Lecru

We have always had the 14 hour broadcast around the time of the Anniversary. Now, upon him working on XVi and all the issues XIV has had because of it (Just go back and look at the release of EW among other things and quality and even him saying he took too much on) it's just in our faces. We're not even getting the nice 14 hour broadcast until NEXT YEAR even though our Anniversary event in game will be soon. Come on man.

EDIT: It's not even like, an "Off" year. But literally 10 years and the Expac we wrapped up our starting journey.

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I am glad you found something new to complain about. This seems very important and you should probably post more threads. I am sure the general forum troll population would gladly back you. Keep at it.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I am pretty convinced that it is Titanman/Gaius. Just lately it has become weirdly frowned upon to call his alts out for some reason.

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Being real I don't think he's an alt. Not that it matters really. No one likes the whole holier than thou attitude some folks have here (on both sides) and he's a shining example of it. Dude thinks he's a forum god or something and it's honestly sad to see. He expects others to do and stick to what he himself doesn't n I don't get it. (Nor do I think he realizes it cause he's to caught up in being correct). He'll keep paying for xiv though no matter how much issue he has with the game so in the end SE wins regardless.

Btw Decay stop replying to me as ik you are. I can't see it bud so figured id help you save time.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

I am glad you found something new to complain about. This seems very important and you should probably post more threads. I am sure the general forum troll population would gladly back you. Keep at it.

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I kindly remind you that no fewer than 4 forum regulars have been permabanned while at least 6 or 7 have been temp-banned because of aggressive language, slander, causing drama, harassment, and/or derailment. The moderators are taking action and it is for the best that, instead of writing more bad-faith posts like this, you treat the "complainers" with respect and dignity and contribute to a more positive and discourse-conducive forum environment.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Being real I don't think he's an alt. Not that it matters really. No one likes the whole holier than thou attitude some folks have here (on both sides) and he's a shining example of it. Dude thinks he's a forum god or something and it's honestly sad to see. He expects others to do and stick to what he himself doesn't n I don't get it. (Nor do I think he realizes it cause he's to caught up in being correct). He'll keep paying for xiv though no matter how much issue he has with the game so in the end SE wins regardless.

Btw Decay stop replying to me as ik you are. I can't see it bud so figured id help you save time.

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I think his posts are based

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Originally Posted by Lefanis

I think his posts are based

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First post and this is your response. Now YOU I would say are 100% an alt of or connected to (presumably him) and that's beyond sad if true...keyword IF.

I don't see the so called white knights n bad faithers (not a word but rolling with it xD) do this stuff interestingly enough.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

First post and this is your response. Now YOU I would say are 100% an alt of or connected to (presumably him) and that's beyond sad if true...keyword IF.

I don't see the so called white knights n bad faithers (not a word but rolling with it xD) do this stuff interestingly enough.

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It's a good thing likes on these forums mean nothing or otherwise the self-elected moderator of the forums would get his way in accusing all those in opposition of their opinion as bad faith forum posters.

Trolls vs SE's white knights be like:
https://i.imgur.com/hBfZD67.jpg

Both parties are dumb in different ways, but at the same time, both can make valid points. Denying others' valid points because they're in "opposite faction" is idiotic no matter what.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Adding to this, the two minute meta is both a problem and a symptom of wider problems with job design. Jobs are becoming more samey for several reasons, one of which is making them fit this unified damage profile: A minute and a half of filler, followed by 30 seconds of dumping everything. Another culprit is inflating potencies on finisher moves. It moves more and more damage into that two minute window, and the multiplicative effect of crits, buffs, potions, etc moves more of your total damage contributions onto those big spiky hits. If you don't crit, whatever you did skillfully outside that two minute burst has a lot less importance. Ironically, in the name of making things more consistent to manage, it's transferred more of everyone's damage profile over to an RNG stat.

The 2 minute meta gets a lot of well-deserved flak, but it's not the source of its own problems. It's a downstream effect from CBU3's sledgehammer approach to stupidifying and homogenizing jobs. Lord knows Heavensward was janky, but instead of pursuing the interesting bits and working on the jank, they worked on deleting jank and smoothbraining the interesting bits. Stripping out RPG elements so everything is just DPS or DPS cost opportunity. "Refining" the hard content recipe down to a lot of stacking and spreading with occasional one-off interesting mechanics. Randomly throwing massive number buffs at jobs to get their play rates up. Every job they've put their "rework" fingers on since then has pushed it hard toward "press the buttons as they light up" pancaked skill ceiling design. I don't specifically want Heavensward combat back; I wish they had leaned in an entirely different design direction than they did after Gordias. It seems like CBU3 decided "welp, our playerbase is too stupid to have interestingly designed classes or content, so anytime we tinker with things after this you'll get back a job that could be macroed to one button".

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Your and Kosachis posts are both exceptionally excellent and I thank you for taking the time to spell it out clearly for the average player why it’s an issue.

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Originally Posted by Deo14

Trolls vs SE's white knights be like:
https://i.imgur.com/hBfZD67.jpg

Both parties are dumb in different ways, but at the same time, both can make valid points. Denying others' valid points because they're in "opposite faction" is idiotic no matter what.

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Trolls exist to make the white knights look dumb. It's difficult to tell if they even believe in the valid points they present or merely just want to make the white knight look dumb. Often succeeding at doing that. The factions exist because nobody can have a civil conversation with each other and have to constantly treat the other as being an uneducated buffoon for not understanding their PoV. Rather, it's not that they don't understand, it's that people cannot make civilized valid arguments without mudslinging people with buzzwords and phrases. If people dropped the holier than thou behavior, they'd might be surprised that their points get further at convincing people. Nobody likes to feel ignorant for having the stance and opinions they do, even if they are ignorant for having them. You don't convince a flat earther by calling them stupid, you convince them by reasoning with them why they are wrong, in a polite way.

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Originally Posted by TheDecay

(1): The "genre-external" does not only consist of players willing to try out FF14 because it's "easy". Players from shooters, action games, tactical games have, in my anecdotal experience, found FF14's early game gameplay too unchallenging and slow to want to continue playing the game. [...]

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Ah, to be clear, I think that this is absolutely correct, in case I came across wrong.

FFXIV definitely does not offer much to "gamer" players with its initial combat experiences. (I use "gamer" here just to mean, "someone who enjoys playing games for the mechanical gameplay", and not in any other loaded sense)

And this has especially-exacerbated over time, as more and more basic complexities at the early levels have been stripped away, both intentionally and incidentally, and more and more "actual" combat gameplay (in terms of systems, considerations, and rotational breadth) have been heavily-backloaded into the top-end gameplay (which is not a "new" observation in these discussions, but bears repeating for the sake of context).

Partially, this is thanks to SE's obsession with trying to "reward" reaching very high expansion levels by just unlocking basic Job features and gameplay.

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At the same time, I think there may be an underestimation of the number of potential players who are drawn in specifically because there is the promise of not having high pressure or "complex" (taken in a relative sense, here) systems to fight with or figure out along the way, and combat design that is essentially as approachable and forgiving as single-player turn-based games.

So there's "genre-external" — as a single collective superset of "not normally an MMORPG player/fan".

And then specific subsets of that — such as, as you listed, Shooters, ARPGs, action, adventure, etc...

...but also an entirely-different crowd coming from other places, like single-player JRPGs, Animal Crossing/community management, simulators, visual novels, etc.

And I think those very different genre-external sets will tend to prioritise very different aspects when evaluating whether this is "an MMORPG that I actually like"... or etc.

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So I think it's correct that FFXIV's initial X hours of "gameplay" are some combination of boring, underwhelming, or confusing to a definite chunk of incoming "gamer" players (which does not have to be the mythical/stereotypical "elite gamer", but just "anyone" that enjoys the mechanical gameplay aspect of games).

I don't honestly see how that idea cannot be true, given how objectively paper-thin the early FFXIV mechanical experience is at this point, and how severely tuning changes, Duty Support adjustments, and years of potency-refactoring/bloat have served to water-down the leveling content.

Instead, I'm just saying that SE may be running numbers, or rolling dice, and deciding that the "n" players that get fed up and leave because the combat gameplay seems bizarrely-limited, are outweighed by the "m" players that are one of:

a) Would be happy with more, but aren't perturbed enough to stop, due to other factors being more important to them
b) Really don't care that much either way
c) Genuinely like the "nonthreatening" and "almost impossible to do wrong" early combat systems (perhaps because they feel that it doesn't intimidate or interfere with the rest of their fantasy experience, etc)

I have no way of objectively proving this, and it's also not meant as an implicit invalidation of the players that legitimately do bail / complain because they feel like they are doing barely anything (mechanically) for way too many hours of game progression.

I'm just trying to reason-out why SE keeps going balls-in on this direction, rather than braking and course-correcting even slightly.

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There is also another consideration, which is that XIV has honestly underwhelmed a lot of new players with the early mechanical experience from Day 1 all along.

And so SE/CBU3/Yoshida/etc, may simply not perceive this as a focus of concern, or a design problem — see the now-infamous, "If you are seeking more challenge as a healer, consider doing Ultimates" statement.

For example, even back in HW, I distinctly remember Rouletting into leveling content with Healers coming from other games, like WOW, who would frequently ask things like, "Why is healing in this game so easy/boring?" and "Does the healing ever get more interesting here?" and, etc.

And even back then, a lot of those players would lose interest and wander off, either during the leveling process, or after reaching endgame and realising that they were still spending most of their time DPSing.

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Originally Posted by TheDecay

(2): I think you underestimate the number of players who quit FF14 because of (a) low job/gameplay complexity and (b) a perceived lack of content. [...] I've met many players in other MMOs who talk about FF14 unprompted with me, and [...] what largely seems to drive former FF14 players into other MMOs is its perceived lack of challenge.

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Well, but those are "genre-internal" players who aren't finding what they've come to expect from the genre, becoming (understandably) frustrated or underwhelmed, and then returning to an environment that feels more in line with their expectations.

I say this not as a dismissal, but on the assumption that "genre-external" players unsatisfied with XIV's challenge would seem more likely to return to their originating genre (eg, Shooter, Survival, MOBA, etc) than to start cycling through alternative MMOs.

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Originally Posted by TheDecay

Most players will not actually tackle Savage and Ultimate, and the MSQ and normal endgame content is the source of their primary perception of the game.

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I think, though, that in that case, those players have always been a large part of not just FFXIV, but modernised MMOs in general — those who are drawn forward like fluid in a straw by the clear, constrained focus of "leveling up" and "completing the storyline", and then kind of "lose their momentum" once opening up into the endgame.

Those players — still excited from their leveling / story-completion high — will attempt to dabble around a little bit in the more open endgame environment for a time, but since it lacks the concentrated driving factors of leveling-up plus a long, linear story-arc, their interest soon wanes, and then they wander off.

As I understand it, this is a phenomenon that MMO designers have fought with for a long time, because they can't just give you "infinite leveling content".

At some point, for resource-efficiency/feasibility, an "endgame loop" has to be established, and that loop mentality tends to only be compatible with only so much of the population, while the initial leveling segments tend to be more universally-enticing to a very broad selection of players — as seen in how MMOs tend to see massive spikes in sales and play-rates during expansion releases, followed by sharp and/or steady declines once all those players start to complete the leveling story and hit the expansion's "endgame".

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But conversely, if someone displeased with the early gameplay actually manages to sit through the process long enough to reach endgame, then that should be the point at which their interest begins to pick up and remain focused, right?

So if they're reaching endgame and still dissatisfied with the gameplay or lack of challenge, and also not tackling Savage/Ultimate, then they're either

a) Choosing not to seek it out (in which case the developers can, perhaps, be blamed for not directing players more clearly into the content), or...

b) Probably never going to be satisfied with what FFXIV has, and more importantly, is-willing-to, offer.

There is also the legitimate argument that FFXIV tends to deliver content in only 2 stark flavors: "Excruciatingly trivial" and "Very hard" — but I think this has a lot more to do with resources devoted (or not) to producing successive difficulty gradations, than to specific class rotational designs.

In that case, SE may be making the calculation that the total retention loss from mechanically-disappointed players is not significant enough to justify designing around it. (I'm not trying to argue whether this is a good thing for the health of the game — I'm just trying to reason-out what SE's motivations are, because they clearly aren't stopping this trend)

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Originally Posted by TheDecay

(3): [...] What I disagree with is the level of simplicity targeted to achieve this. Stormblood had a healthy high-end content participation rate too, as PF matured and became a legitimate way to participate in such content. [...] I think Stormblood struck a very good balance as most jobs had a low skill floor for players to adequately participate in high-end content, while having a rather high skill ceiling on many jobs to satisfy high-end raiders.

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I can't personally argue with most of this — I found Stormblood overall "tough but fair" at the time, and I don't — anecdotally — recall talking to a lot of players who were any more unhappy with how their Job played as they are today (as opposed to more focus on just vexing balancing decisions that implicitly constrained comps, such as Piercing Debuff or Samurai's undertuning).

Both Jobs and content could be frustrating (PFing Midgardsormr was certainly an experience, and I don't exactly long for a return of DRK's Dark Arts RSI), but it also felt like there were clear and comfortable paths by which to improve and refine (excepting the inevitable outliers that were clearly "overdesigned" for the era and more HW-like, such as SB MCH).

And, again anecdotally, I cannot really recall talking to a single Healer who expressed feeling threatened by what SB design expected of them — I really don't see how, for example, taking away simple mechanics like Aero 3 or Shadow Flare or Time Dilation made any serious difference at all to the ability for players to function and concentrate in the Healing role.

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Originally Posted by TheDecay

(4): I actually don't believe long-term prestige is a concern for FF14. [...]

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All good points, and perhaps SE also sees it the same way — ie, the spectacle of watching players clear Ultimates is not, from their perspective, affected or enhanced by how sophisticated a given player's Job execution is, vs. the mechanics themselves, the team coordination, etc.

It's true that a lot of the most (as it were) sophisticated aspects of FFXIV Job gameplay have historically tended to be largely "invisible" in the immediate moment, and only apparent when analysed numerically by external tools.

In that sense, it may be something that SE sees little payoff in continuing to develop further.

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Originally Posted by TheDecay

The reason I think low complexity is damaging to FF14 in the long run is because [...] While many of the gameplay-focused players continue sticking with FF14 because, let's be real, the MMO landscape is pathetic, it creates real opportunity for a new entrant to capture its unsatisfied players very easily, and I think this is the real long-term danger for FF14.

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This is a pretty interesting point, and I think you highlight one of the few serious dangers that SE could take from the situation.

Unfortunately, SE — like most businesses — seems to live in the here-and-now, and I also suspect (with zero proof, lest it come across wrong) that Yoshida (or higher management) may have already made the shrewd assessment that FFXIV will have zero realistic competition at any near-future point, because the MMO genre has one of the most dramatic barriers-to-entry for new potential products of possibly any gaming genre in existence.

Even Dragonflight, which has somewhat "redeemed" WOW in many ways, has failed to seem to really dent FFXIV very strongly, despite the fact that Dragonflight offers significantly more robust mechanical gameplay than XIV, especially in the Healer role.

And other MMO competitors, even when the raw gameplay itself is promising (eg, arguably, Lost Ark), universally seem to fail to capture their audience for very long — either due to pernicious maintenance systems, excessively-aggressive monetisation practices, underwhelming long-term content, unsatisfying or generic world presentation, or etc.

FFXIV may simply be feeling relatively-invincible at this point, with the assumption that they're basically retaining "as many as they're going to retain" each cycle; that frustrated veterans will inevitably return for lack of any serious equivalent; and that there is more to gain from broadening "accessibility" than there is to lose by disappointing players looking for more depth of gameplay investment.