Shadowbringers starting to feel like a budget expansion

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

And for the love of Hydaelyn: If players aren't happy with the way they game is currently, it's not on them to come up with solutions.

It's perfectly fine and rational to say "I don't like X part of the game". I may or may not be able to explain why, but I'm not a game designer and I don't have to come up with a solution to fix it.

Why? Because even if I did, SE has their own processes and very rarely listen to the player base unless backed into a corner.

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Lets be frank though. If SE listened to the whims of the player base, this game would be horrible. 99% of us are not game devs, have any background in game design, story telling, art direction, or other components needed to make a compelling game. Most of us just play games in our free time. We know what we like as individuals, and what we dont, but that doesnt make us qualified to design games ourselves.

You wouldnt know how to make a good pizza from scratch simply because you like eating pizza.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Lets be frank though. If SE listened to the whims of the player base, this game would be horrible. 99% of us are not game devs, have any background in game design, story telling, art direction, or other components needed to make a compelling game. Most of us just play games in our free time. We know what we like as individuals, and what we dont, but that doesnt make us qualified to design games ourselves.

You wouldnt know how to make a good pizza from scratch simply because you like eating pizza.

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True, but there is nuance to even that.
You're right that the average person wouldn't know how to make a pizza from scratch just because they like pizza... but the average person can still offer critiques about the pizza, and you will find common ground among critiques. If your pizza sauce is too sweet, it will get complaints; now this doesn't mean that people are telling you to put no sauce on the pizza (and they shouldn't have to point that out in their complaint), but rather that the kind of sauce you put on there isn't to the liking and the recipe might need to be changed slightly.

So SQEX doesn't need to listen to us on how to fix their game, but they do need to listen to us to properly assess what the issues actually are and work on fixing those issues.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

So SQEX doesn't need to listen to us on how to fix their game, but they do need to listen to us to properly assess what the issues actually are and work on fixing those issues.

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I've been here for a long long time and it doesn't matter what the relic or what the relic stage this forum has panned them all. From atma to umbrites, to dungeon drops, to crafted hand in's, to light grinding, to Eureka to this SHB's first step. There is nothing new here. Complaining about how it's terrible constantly is the normal state of affairs. It's ok if this was something new but the devs are used to this i'm sure and expect to get the standard complaints.

I'm sure they use other metrics to see how the content is doing. How many people are participating etc. This easy first step might in fact be a way to get a lot more people hooked on the process.

The problem here with this forum is that everything is bad. There is very little hey you did a good job and we like it. It's simply this sucks most of the time or you should have done this and you didn't. Give me this, give me that... about sums up what this forum does on a daily basis so one can say it's constructive criticism but it's not really when all they do here is complain.

Grmplf. The game is plain bad. Not more not less. I'm... probably some kind of masochist to play it. :D :p

Positive feedback and gushing about what we like usually floats up to reddit, or the other sub forums.

When a game is doing good, its the natural thing to happen.

Sure, most of these forums are usually filled with complaints, but that's a good thing. As long as its worded in a civil and readable manner, its constructive criticism, and shows that people still care.

Even more so, since if they ever wanted to, they could collate forum posts to in-game account history en-mass and get some usable data out of it (if its not a thing yet?).

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

No Diadem/Eureka - Good god. Does no one remember how much people complained about Anemos before the train become a thing? Or how bad Pagos was? How Eureka, like Diadem, was trash content no one liked and time wouldve been better spent on other content? How grindy and brain dead it was? How some people compared Eureka to Diadem and said Diadem was better?

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People like to bring this up a lot. The way that people hated Anemos as a reason why Eureka 2.0 (Or more accurately Diadem 3.0? Or would that be 4.0 given Ishguardian Scrips uses a new Diadem first?) being neglected is good.

However, the reality is that Eureka was actually AMAZING in concept, but majorly hamstrung by a failure in IMPLEMENTATION.

I say this as someone who hated Eureka, including Pyros and Hydatos (Which many Eureka lovers say was so much better and fun... But no, it was more FATE Trains. Oh with shiny new buttons to use!)

If they had taken their experience with Eureka, combined with player feedback in regards to it (More than just the "Plz no Relic in Eureka!" which they currently have used) and improved it, then it's still possible for Eureka content to be closer to its potential.

Like, there are many things Eureka did wrong.

Such as the dumb arbitrary leveling system that meant that helping friends wasn't possible because exp leeching (As well as making 90% of the world content literally harmless once you leveled up to max for the zone).

The fact that the mode revolved entirely around FATE Trains, meaning the content heavily relied upon playing during prime time when it was populated (Which also often meant that the Trains became too crowded to be fun, where AoEing enemies to spawn FATEs would result in most of the train not even being able to attack something, while going elsewhere to farm towards another FATE could result in the Train killing the NM before you can come back to get participation).

Not to mention some pretty horrendous environment design that seemed to be intentionally making life more annoying (Such as terrible layouts making moving around the map awful, stupid dragons you have to /walk past (Especially when you're rushing to get to a FATE to get participation) as well as level locked mounts and aetherytes)

However, there's stuff that Eureka did right. Such as it gave consistent, casual combat content. Meaning there was always something you could hop into for as long as you wanted. Tired after a long day at work? Jump into Eureka for an hour. Weekend with no plans? Spend all day in Eureka. This was especially notable due to how good it was for getting Tomestones, meaning that casual players could easily grind out tome gear on their schedule (This could be grinding out the entire weeks worth of tomes on a Sunday evening. Something that Daily Roulette bonuses doesn't allow)

Eureka also provided a myriad of rewards. Bunny Fates, specific NM rewards, lockboxes. There was TONS of stuff to work on, not just the Relic. (Though, the terrible design was that FATEs scaled based on the number of people in the instance, rather than number of people DOING THE FATE. So people farming Bunnies, grinding Light, leveling via mob chains, doing Challenge Logs etc. Would all work against the FATE Train by making the FATEs tougher...)

It also was a place that allowed the gathering of more than 8 people. All working towards similar goals. That's a social aspect that is sorely lacking in the rest of Duty Finder XIV. Since so much content is literally shoved into tiny instances of 4/8 players (With the occasional Alliance Raid for up to 24 people!) while open zones are pretty barren given that there's so little to do there (Outside the occasional Hunt Train where like 50 people come and zerg a Hunt monster then move on to the next one), the zone with a massive number of people in it is amazing for making the game more sociable (Ishguard sort of gets a lot of people in the same zone, but from my experience it tends to be more crafters AFKing through their Macros... Diadem is fairly sociable though)

So yeah, sure, Eureka was absolute trash on arrival and wasn't that great going forward (Especially given Pagos was already in the works before player feedback from Anemos was given). But outright dismissing the notion of Eureka content purely based on the idea that a new Eureka would be a copy/paste of the existing one is a bit silly (Then again... This is the XIV team... Wouldn't be surprised if they did simply copy/paste it. That's how they create new Dungeons/Raids/Crafting content anyway)

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Lets be frank though. If SE listened to the whims of the player base, this game would be horrible. 99% of us are not game devs, have any background in game design, story telling, art direction, or other components needed to make a compelling game. Most of us just play games in our free time. We know what we like as individuals, and what we dont, but that doesnt make us qualified to design games ourselves.

You wouldnt know how to make a good pizza from scratch simply because you like eating pizza.

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Ehh... That's a poor analogy.

I mean, you don't need to be a world reknowned proffessional italian chef who's lived their entire life in Italy and worked in a bunch of Michelin Star restaurants to be able to say something like, putting Strawberry Jam on a Pepperoni Pizza would not be a good combination.

Heck, in the service industry it's often a customer focused line of work. Maybe it's just me, but I recently watched like a ton of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and a lot of it was him telling head chefs that what they're making isn't what the customers want (While the head chefs were all like "My food is the bestest! I've worked alongside the best chefs in the world and won awards for my cooking so I know how to make food!")

Same is true for video games. While yes, most people won't know the intricacies of game design such as being able to code the damn thing, or compose the music in accordance to what is happening in the game, just like your average pizza eater won't really know how to spin a good pizza dough.

It's still quite possible for a layperson to judge the result of a game or pizza. If a game lacks something, or has issues with the flow or enjoyability those can be pointed out by a player then the devs can listen to that feedback and use their knowledge to implement it into their game.

Just like you can complain about a pizza being too doughy, having a weak sauce or toppings that are not complementary to each other (I.e. Pineapple on a Tomato Sauce Pepperoni Pizza would be not so great... However, Pineapple on a BBQ Sauce pizza with Ham and Bacon? That's pretty good) and it'd be up to the chef to use their knowledge to think about how they'd make the dough and what toppings they'd put together.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

Ehh... That's a poor analogy.

I mean, you don't need to be a world reknowned proffessional italian chef who's lived their entire life in Italy and worked in a bunch of Michelin Star restaurants to be able to say something like, putting Strawberry Jam on a Pepperoni Pizza would not be a good combination.

Heck, in the service industry it's often a customer focused line of work. Maybe it's just me, but I recently watched like a ton of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and a lot of it was him telling head chefs that what they're making isn't what the customers want (While the head chefs were all like "My food is the bestest! I've worked alongside the best chefs in the world and won awards for my cooking so I know how to make food!")

Same is true for video games. While yes, most people won't know the intricacies of game design such as being able to code the damn thing, or compose the music in accordance to what is happening in the game, just like your average pizza eater won't really know how to spin a good pizza dough.

It's still quite possible for a layperson to judge the result of a game or pizza. If a game lacks something, or has issues with the flow or enjoyability those can be pointed out by a player then the devs can listen to that feedback and use their knowledge to implement it into their game.

Just like you can complain about a pizza being too doughy, having a weak sauce or toppings that are not complementary to each other (I.e. Pineapple on a Tomato Sauce Pepperoni Pizza would be not so great... However, Pineapple on a BBQ Sauce pizza with Ham and Bacon? That's pretty good) and it'd be up to the chef to use their knowledge to think about how they'd make the dough and what toppings they'd put together.

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In some way, Melichoir is right. Still poor analogy but, right. However the main problem is the community itself. The community wants this and that. Half the community says yes, other half says no. And it keeps branching from there on what the community wants and what they agree on and disagree. SE has to take all this in and make decisions on what the community has said. And even though they try to do stuff, there will always be that part of the community who vehemently doesn't like it and will constantly whine while you have a other part of the community who says it's decent or not bad at all. All in all, you can't appease everybody, no mater what SE does.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

In some way, Melichoir is right. Still poor analogy but, right. However the main problem is the community itself. The community wants this and that. Half the community says yes, other half says no. And it keeps branching from there on what the community wants and what they agree on and disagree. SE has to take all this in and make decisions on what the community has said. And even though they try to do stuff, there will always be that part of the community who vehemently doesn't like it and will constantly whine while you have a other part of the community who says it's decent or not bad at all. All in all, you can't appease everybody, no mater what SE does.

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Though, this is where you have to make a decision based on your target audience.

If we keep using the pizza analogy; this would be something like, you make a pepperoni pizza. But a bunch of vegetarians come along and say they don't like it.

Now, in this case, vegetarians clearly aren't the target audience of a pizza with a meat topping, so how much do you put stock in their feedback to it?

Ideally, if you wanted to be the most popular pizzeria, you'd still make the pepperoni pizza that's aimed towards people who like that kind of pizza. But you'd also offer other pizzas such as margherita, mexican green wave, double cheese etc. So people who don't like pepperoni pizza have things they would like to order.

As opposed to the SE method of dealing with feedback where they make a pepperoni pizza. But then a vegetarian says they don't like it, so then they remove the pepperoni. Then a vegan says they don't like it, so then they remove the cheese. Then someone with celiac's says they don't like it, so then they remove the dough. Meaning that all they're left with is some tomato sauce. It might be really good tomato sauce. But no-one is going to have a satisfying meal just eating a bowl of tomato sauce.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Yeah, 1 year of content with them saying "Hey were cutting back on stuff" and havent exactly told us the reasoning behind this at this time, leaving lots of room for speculation. Speculation is fine and dandy, but it's not a good way to decide the merit of something.

This is like saying "You know, Ive only watched half this movie, therefore I can judge how complete or worthwhile it is by only watching half." Which is a stupid position to take considering that the ending of a movie can really make or break things. There are plenty of movies in which the movie is going fine, get to the end and it ruins the movie, and conversely, the catch at the end of hte movie makes the entire thing so much better.

The point Im making is that it's fine to have thoughts on what we've been given currently. But there's a pernicious thought process that were somehow being jipped content unfairly because no deep dungeon and 1 less dungeon per major patch, with the complete disregard for quality of content or potential reasons for certain content being scaled back. I dunno, but it seems to make more sense for me to be like "Hmm Ill judge whether this xpac is ultimately bad or good when I can see the whole picture, and not before."

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That's kind of a crooked reasoning because a movie is meant to be enjoyed in its entirety, while FFXIV patches are meant to be enjoyed as they are delivered. And then, the expansion is ultimately "reviewed" once the next one is coming. Having something crazy good coming in 5.55 would not make up for the "draught" of 5.1 to 5.5 at all for instance. Each patch has to stand on its own (meaning providing gameplay) and live to its purpose (gear up in even patches and catch up in uneven patches). And I'm generous in that distinction here because there are players who already know uneven patches are not interesting if there is no ultimate coming up for instance.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

Though, this is where you have to make a decision based on your target audience.

If we keep using the pizza analogy; this would be something like, you make a pepperoni pizza. But a bunch of vegetarians come along and say they don't like it.

Now, in this case, vegetarians clearly aren't the target audience of a pizza with a meat topping, so how much do you put stock in their feedback to it?

Ideally, if you wanted to be the most popular pizzeria, you'd still make the pepperoni pizza that's aimed towards people who like that kind of pizza. But you'd also offer other pizzas such as margherita, mexican green wave, double cheese etc. So people who don't like pepperoni pizza have things they would like to order.

As opposed to the SE method of dealing with feedback where they make a pepperoni pizza. But then a vegetarian says they don't like it, so then they remove the pepperoni. Then a vegan says they don't like it, so then they remove the cheese. Then someone with celiac's says they don't like it, so then they remove the dough. Meaning that all they're left with is some tomato sauce. It might be really good tomato sauce. But no-one is going to have a satisfying meal just eating a bowl of tomato sauce.

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Correct. Although sometimes that target audience is a hit or miss with them. Feedback and criticism is so all over the place with the community on what they want. I'm sure SE has mental break downs trying to figure out what the community really wants. It's a never ending battle but eh, most of the stuff ain't that bad like how some people put it out to be.

Opinions differ, I enjoy SB lore the most. That's all that matters to me in any FF series.

So far I m really disappointed with the replayability of Shadowbringer. The story is cool but almost everything else is fun only the first time you complete the content and/or feels like heavily recycled stuff (such as trials and raid mechanics feeling as if they were already used elsewhere). The game design starts to feel really dated compared to the competition (even wow with its terrible BFA expansion) feels more compelling than playing FFXIV at level cap.

If SE doesn't step up on a game design standpoint I m not sure the game will remain as popular in the long run.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

For someone throwing around the phrase "coherent logic", what you've written after is a bit jarring.

To brake down your post:

• Gender lock is fine, because they said it will be gender locked.
  
• Lack of content is not a problem, because they could be working on something big even now! We don't know! We might get something interesting and lasting in 3 months, 1 year after ShB release!
  
• They are a company, they divert funds to other games, so its totally fine if we get the minimum valid amount reinvestment.
  
• If we have issues, we shouldn't complain, feedback is useless, if we want to influence the games direction, we should just unsub.

Sad thing is, that last one might just be true.

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First off break*

Second, yes. It's not a gender lock when there's no gender that's "locked" behind anything. They don't exist in any form right now. Expecting that they'd be there is your own fault.

Third, again yes. They could very well be working on new content. I don't know why you people think everything needs to be out right away. Have patience. You're acting entitled.

Fourth, we have no control over what they spend their earnings on. None. If you're unhappy then act with your wallet and stop playing the game. Actions speak louder than words.

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Originally Posted by Arngrim_Greyashe

First off break*

Second, yes. It's not a gender lock when there's no gender that's "locked" behind anything. They don't exist in any form right now. Expecting that they'd be there is your own fault.

Third, again yes. They could very well be working on new content. I don't know why you people think everything needs to be out right away. Have patience. You're acting entitled.

Fourth, we have no control over what they spend their earnings on. None. If you're unhappy then act with your wallet and stop playing the game. Actions speak louder than words.

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At this point, I just kinda feel bad for all of the amount of energy you waste trying to defend genderlokcs. I saw ur posts a while ago and yeah, it sucks that people were rude to you once because they wanted male viera and they attacked you for being excited for male hrotgar, but thats just that one person, I dont udnerstand why to this day u keep trying to go against the removal of genderlock for that reason. Well, tbh, the forums are free and for evryone to use so do what you please the most. Also the passive-agressive ness in this post is completely unnecessart. This person wasn't rude to you in any way

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Originally Posted by Arngrim_Greyashe

First off break*

Second, yes. It's not a gender lock when there's no gender that's "locked" behind anything. They don't exist in any form right now. Expecting that they'd be there is your own fault.

Third, again yes. They could very well be working on new content. I don't know why you people think everything needs to be out right away. Have patience. You're acting entitled.

Fourth, we have no control over what they spend their earnings on. None. If you're unhappy then act with your wallet and stop playing the game. Actions speak louder than words.

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Sigh we are doing the termanology again ok, we are gender locked in to playing female for Viera and male for Hrothgar thus the term gender lock is appropriate can we move past this please sheesh.

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Originally Posted by Arngrim_Greyashe

It's not a gender lock when there's no gender that's "locked" behind anything. They don't exist in any form right now. Expecting that they'd be there is your own fault.

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How is it people's fault that they expected the male sex for a new race being added, in a game which took the decision to do away with prior gender-locked races? You can dispute the terminology but it makes no difference to the substance of what is being argued... I think this is a nonsensical argument and the only real defence that can be advanced for it is interviews dating back to 2013 (pre-dating artwork later released in 2014 with both sexes depicted) and how much credibility people placed on certain leaks... their official communication gave no reason to expect just one of the two sexes.

I mean you can rationalise this however you please, but many people are disappointed in the absence of female Hrothgar and male Viera and are also disappointed with what did make it in due to limitations they have.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Correct. Although sometimes that target audience is a hit or miss with them. Feedback and criticism is so all over the place with the community on what they want. I'm sure SE has mental break downs trying to figure out what the community really wants. It's a never ending battle but eh, most of the stuff ain't that bad like how some people put it out to be.

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The thing is though that they are very bad at communication. As far as game development and player feedback goes, it's a 2 way street. 95% of the time, it is us trying to give them feedback and they have nothing to really say in return. Or they are just outright dismissive. They would benefit from giving us the illusion that they are listening at the very least, like official polls and more active forum/community mods. Actively engaging with the player base directly would go a long way.

The male viera thing and female ronso thing just baffles me because it's not like the past FF games went out of their way to show them to us before, yet suddenly everyone just expected that they should be there in this one and got their panties in a bunch when it turned out they weren't. Why? Idk, just because?

People didn't even complain that much about mithra and galka in FFXI, despite doing basically the exact same thing.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

The male viera thing and female ronso thing just baffles me because it's not like the past FF games went out of their way to show them to us before, yet suddenly everyone just expected that they should be there in this one and got their panties in a bunch when it turned out they weren't. Why? Idk, just because?

People didn't even complain that much about mithra and galka in FFXI, despite doing basically the exact same thing.

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Uhm... I'd be willing to concede male Viera, as they're mentioned in side-content that never left Japan: The Ultimania presents them as isolationist and male and female Viera have separate villages and only meet to mate. However, the Ronso point is flat out wrong: there are plenty of female Ronso in both X and X-2, you see them on Gagazet, you see them in Blitzball, you even see one perpetually by Kimahri's side in X-2. We KNOW what female Ronso look like (Hrothgar, however, are not Ronso on a technicality, but are based around Ronso).

There WERE some petitions for male Mithra and female Galka, although much less loud or visible. And there were louder voices asking for their implementation in XIV 2.0... and we got them...

The development team were well aware that gender locked races were not a particularly popular thing. They were also aware - or rather they should have been aware - that the push for viera to be added was in no small part due to people wanting to see the men; which can be seen throughout the older threads that were calling for viera to be added in the first place.

It speaks for itself that the male viera thread that arose in the aftermath of the gender lock announcement boasts the highest number of 'likes' on a single thread ever around these parts. The number of people expecting them was not a small number and it also wasn't unreasonable to expect them to be added when the development team removed the gender lock on other races that were formerly gender locked such as miqo'te and highlanders.

The lack of character customisation options, especially for male characters, has also been a common complaint for many years. It's interesting that some people post in threads such as this and pretend as if that isn't the case and have a strong track record of trying to downplay such things at every possible turn.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

The thing is though that they are very bad at communication.

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Do you have a single fact to back that up?

https://youtu.be/aoOI5R-6u8k?t=9m7s

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Originally Posted by Gula

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

https://youtu.be/aoOI5R-6u8k?t=9m7s

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A lot has changed since 1.0 and 2.0. In my opinion they have lost a fair amount of that inspiration since then. I just call it as I see it, nothing more. What I see may not be what you see, and vice versa.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

A lot has changed since 1.0 and 2.0. In my opinion they have lost a fair amount of that inspiration since then. I just call it as I see it, nothing more. What I see may not be what you see, and vice versa.

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I'm inclined to wonder how much the lack of communication has to do with the language barrier and feedback being gathered from Twitter and Reddit rather than the official forum. It's exceptionally rare to see our community representatives post on this forum, for example - and there's a number of major issues that are objectively worthy of an official response that have been gathering dust for months now. One key example being the lack of access on the part of European players to the Fat Black Chocobo that was offered up as a promotional item to Japanese and American players.

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However, the Ronso point is flat out wrong: there are plenty of female Ronso in both X and X-2, you see them on Gagazet, you see them in Blitzball, you even see one perpetually by Kimahri's side in X-2. We KNOW what female Ronso look like (Hrothgar, however, are not Ronso on a technicality, but are based around Ronso).

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I don't remember seeing any, and I've played through X several times. If they're there, they sure aren't obvious. (Also, X-2 is terrible-fanfiction-tier and I refuse to acknowledge its existence.)

And let's be real, they're Ronso. It's even their name on the First.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

I don't remember seeing any, and I've played through X several times.

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There's a handful sprinkled throughout both games, not necessarily in plain view but they're very much present.

I'm not the biggest fan of X-2 either, though just because I dislike something it doesn't suddenly avoid being canon...

i do remember female ronso's in x n x-2 pretty sure there was a female ronso on the ronso bltzball team and in x-2 there was a female ronso who hung around kimahri maybe i think.

Ah yes let’s compare an expansion at patch x.25 with 2 expansion that’s have already finished, great idea.

Let's also not pretend they didn't make concept art of both male Viera and female Ronso/Hrothgar. Mention of them in the actual lore in FFXIV means they do exist.

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Originally Posted by Aeos

Ah yes let’s compare an expansion at patch x.25 with 2 expansion that’s have already finished, great idea.

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If we limit the comparison to content in patches between x.0-x.25, the result isn't that much more favorable.

Many might not remember but there was a very similar discussion in SB too before Anemos came out in 4.25. Then came Anemos, and people had to start complaining about that instead. Content release escalated after that, and the "long" drought was over.

Instead of shortening the drought between x.0 and the release of long term content (usually meaning the relic), they decided to lengthen it every expansion.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

Many might not remember but there was a very similar discussion in SB too before Anemos came out in 4.25. Then came Anemos, and people had to start complaining about that instead. Content release escalated after that, and the "long" drought was over.

Instead of shortening the drought between x.0 and the release of long term content (usually meaning the relic), they decided to lengthen it every expansion.

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In Heavensward, 3.1 was also notorious for being like that too. People complaining about lack of content (people complaining about a Gold Saucer minigame) and the long wait. I'm not too surprised it happened again.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

In Heavensward, 3.1 was also notorious for being like that too. People complaining about lack of content (people complaining about a Gold Saucer minigame) and the long wait. I'm not too surprised it happened again.

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Personally, I wouldn't say I'm surprised, more confused, that let alone improve on a situation that regularly comes up, they somehow managed to exacerbate it each expansion.

Much like how they seem to have a long standing issue developing good content, that can tie down a large amount of people for extended time periods, without driving them mad in the grind at same time.

Makes me wonder if they see these as issues at all.

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Originally Posted by Aeos

Ah yes let’s compare an expansion at patch x.25 with 2 expansion that’s have already finished, great idea.

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If there is more content at the end of an expansion and if the release of an expansion means the players will be content starved until more than one year into the expansion ,then I think there is an issue with the release system.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

In some way, Melichoir is right. Still poor analogy but, right. However the main problem is the community itself. The community wants this and that. Half the community says yes, other half says no. And it keeps branching from there on what the community wants and what they agree on and disagree. SE has to take all this in and make decisions on what the community has said. And even though they try to do stuff, there will always be that part of the community who vehemently doesn't like it and will constantly whine while you have a other part of the community who says it's decent or not bad at all. All in all, you can't appease everybody, no mater what SE does.

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Maybe it would be finally time for them to create surveys? Of course its not easy to read feedback with different languages and cultures..but other than posting our opinion on the forum there is nowhere else to do it..and since people are individuals there is no easy fix for it..but you can still create something that should at least be enjoyable by a larger part of the community..dont create the only big battle content in one expansion with a couple of new zones and the relic weapons behind it and then make it into something that only niche players will play..thats just throwing out money and time..Surveys could also give them the feedback if people only went into it because of rewards or if they truly enjoyed it..

They are also often trying to invent the wheel again..people wanted pet battles..we get LoV from that..I really doubt that the majority of people writing about it wanted something like that and oh surprise its death on arrival content..look at Diadem and the second version of it..they did not took in much of the feedback of the forum and it was even faster death than the first version..maybe they should listen more to us..because just reading the basics of a idea seemingly does not work out for them quite often..right now I am not even sure if I should be happy about the "farm/ranch" content that might be coming..knowing SE it will be far away from what people wanted..of course if they manage to surprise me in a good way I do give compliments too..

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

If SE doesn't step up on a game design standpoint I m not sure the game will remain as popular in the long run.

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And this is sad part about it, as I said before, this was supposed to be our biggest expansion to the date, with a lot of improvements, new type of battle content, fixing old mistakes and making alot of QoL changes.
Not much people will stay in this game if they wont fix their midcore content, changing all raids to extremes type of content not helping either, you can't compare full designed raid with just a boss on a circle where you magically spawn out of nowhere, for newer players this feels very cheap. Millions of players wont back you up if there's nothing much to do for average MMO player and you need to sub only once per 3 months.
Last hope is that they reworking ARR to feel more fresh and up to the date, because if they'll just cut off some quests and add flying, that will bring even more questions where the funds go.

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I'm not the biggest fan of X-2 either, though just because I dislike something it doesn't suddenly avoid being canon...

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Yes it does. It worked for Star Wars too.

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Originally Posted by yukiiyuki

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I understand your point, but people are not forced to rush as many do. I'm often frightened to see people hurry that much, as if there be some kind of world first reward when there is absolutly nothing of this kind... Back in ARR, people were progressing quick for a part of them but NEVER it has been this rush thing there is now for each extension.

I'm probably in a very small minority here and don't expect many to agree, but having played since 1.23+ players have been saying X expansion feels like a budget expansion since HW. Why? Because the content has become predictable and there's no real innovation to gameplay elements. They've forced them self into a corner because of how the gameplay is, which forces linearity throughout most of the game and doesn't enable any new ways of playing. We, the players are still going into X content to perform X rotation for the job we play.

Can anyone list something innovative that has changed the way we play? I can only think of Pyros, Hydatos/Baldesion Arsenal. But overall the gameplay was still FATE based, but it was nice to at least have logos actions for variety and made it feel a bit fresher. Outside of those instances though, there's not much innovation that hasn't already been there since ARR.

- Dungeons: still play the same, they're linear, offer almost 0 challenge at all. It really does feel like the least engaging kind of content at end game.

- HoH/PoTD: Again, very lackluster, it's good to be able to play jobs at higher levels than what you have, but outside of that? Just mobs that die too fast, okay for leveling, but is it actually engaging? Not in the slightest until you get to the higher floors where you actually need to engage in what items you have, traps and roaming mobs etc. It's a time investment to start to begin the content.

- FATES: still offer awful experience since they were nerfed to hell back in ARR, but again, they're a snooze fest and promote lazy playing. Odin was probably the only engaging FATE when it was more relevant. But again, they've only put in the bare minimum with FATEs now by adding in gemstones. Before that, there was never a reason to do a FATE unless they stick more relic drops behind them. But no one actually wanted to do that. The backlash from Atma drops was pretty bad and the dev team took it as a joke and re-added the exact same relic drop system in HW.

- Minigames: are very limited; we were supposed to get more Chocobo race courses back in HW when they announced flying. Still waiting for them to this day. Lords of Vermillion was an example of the devs not listening to what the players wanted. I remember vividly players asking for a minigame where we could use our minions and battle other minions (something akin to the dream eater battles in Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance), instead they developed this huge strategy game that has very little incentive to do it or even get into it.

- Maps: Outside of finding the damn thing there's still very little engagement in the battles or how the dungeons pan out. Go to a room, kill some mobs, pray to RNG gods that you progress.

- Ultimates/Savage: Probably the most engaging content we'll get outside of 24 mans (which are fun the first few times, but begin to feel monotonous), the only problem with either of these is the time investment, they offer engaging gameplay in the form of mechanics and knowing your job. Players that don't want to commit to raiding though and that seek engaging battle content will probably struggle to find anything remotely close to this (extremes maybe?)

These are just a few things; at the core of the game. Of course there's crafting and gathering but there's only so much I can do before I, personally get bored of that too and as this game is more heavily focused around battle content, it seems more easier to judge it on those aspects instead and becomes easier to see why players begin to feel like the game has been having budget expansion after budget expansion. Because the devs simply don't know how to make meaningful, engaging, long term content with a proper reward system that isn't a glamour and doesn't end up as a FATE styled system. The budget for SB was supposedly much higher than it was for HW and we still saw drawbacks there too. It doesn't matter how big the budget is at this point, until the devs actually release engaging content that require more than half a brain cell, with meaningful long term rewards then the game will always be in this strange place of mediocrity with potential for insane greatness that will never be realized unless they try to innovate past what they did for ARR.

I'd just like to point out that my opinions and thoughts are purely on gameplay elements of content. I love the story and think it's the best part of the game, I just wish the content could live up to the potential of the story.

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Originally Posted by Lily_Skye

this patch feels like the selfie camera patch in world of warcraft warlords of draenor

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The selfie camera patch was a major patch. This is a mini patch. 5.2X as a whole brought us main scenario quests, a raid, a dungeon, two trials, the beginning of the relic weapon quest line and also crafting and gathering content including relic tools, Ishgard restoration, ocean fishing and a beast tribe.

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Originally Posted by Sora_Oathkeeper

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Of course there is some kind of routine, I'm not the last who somehow feel the need of something really new.

But...

Same game, extensions are predictables, devs are lazy.
Some changes and surprises, people lose their marks and somehow think if they have to learn everything again... they want to do it in a new game, not in the old one that suddenly changes...

That's why some people start to talk we need a whole new game and not just an overhaul. If we have lost the discovery feeling, the only way to get one again is a brand new game. And there's nothing on the market that's doesn't look as some bad WoW copypast (or worst, bad TESO/BDO copypast when it is not an ArcheAge... made worst).

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Originally Posted by Eldevern

I understand your point, but people are not forced to rush as many do. I'm often frightened to see people hurry that much, as if there be some kind of world first reward when there is absolutly nothing of this kind... Back in ARR, people were progressing quick for a part of them but NEVER it has been this rush thing there is now for each extension.

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Part of the "Rush" problem isn't so much that people are actively trying to "Rush" content, but that content drips in so slowly that people jump on whatever new thing that is released because they... Actually want to play the game.

Back in ARR, it was less noticeable, due to many people were exploring the entirety of ARR content which was quite a lot of stuff to do. Different classes to level (Especially for Cross-Class skills), a plethora of side quests, the post 2.0 fetch quests x10000000...

Now, aside from people who are explicitly rushing (I.e. Week 1 Savage raiders, whom have to skip NM cutscenes to get more time to spend progging Savage), it's simply, new content gets added meaning there's something to do. People then go do the 1-2 new things that has been added.

It doesn't help that literally every tier comes with a new set of catch-up gear, so you can quickly get enough ilevel to start doing the brand new content nearly immediately, especially with how the game likes to throw tomestones at you constantly. Meaning that gearing up after taking a break between content drops is negligable.