XVI and XIV implications

I liked XVI quite a bit.

1. I play single player titles for the story and thats what I got.
2. I wanted a darker story and thats what I got.
3. I'm a graphics junky and I got excellent graphics.
4. Gameplay wasn't boring to me because I was progressing towards an end, but it was rather easy and mindless. Something I don't mind when I'm just playing for the story.

So, I would rate XVI 9/10 IMO, great job, not perfect but still great. Also, considering the buggy messes game releases are now a days the game was surprisingly polished, albeit not perfect. A lot of work goes into that so it must be acknowledged.

Unfortunately to me XVI has reinforced my belief that CBU III or whoever is making all the decisions for this unit, maybe Yoshi P is solely responsible, maybe not, is better suited to making single player titles than MMOs. Both of these games are polar opposites in what most people look for in games and while CBU III design philosophy delivers in a game with a set end and people wanting to see the story without wasting too much time travelling or mastering combat and exploring it falls extremely short on an MMO game where the story matters but guess what.... People play them to waste time, master the combat and do spend time crafting and exploring. And so this easy to digest, quick to master and get through approach kills a lot of joy from XIV imo.

Anyways, implications:
1. CBU III knows how to make good graphics, this is a great sign for graphics overhaul. Won't be near XVI levels, but they know how to make things look good, so their experience on the subject matters.

2. Systems will keep getting easier and more basic because that is what CBU III does well, ease of use. Job complexity/depth is probably going away forever.

3. Exploration and creativity is not going to get fostered or done well for the rest of XIV's life imo. CBU III enjoys heavily guiding and restricting players to exactly what they want them to do and nothing else. Seen in XIVs linear design and further reinforced in XVI.

And that sums it up. I am not sure I feel excited for the future, but hopefully I can get proven wrong, or that CBU III reads this, and tries to change their design philosophy for the MMO. It is time to try something new after all...

A giant lobby where everyone just sits around doing nothing after the MSQ and insta queuing to linear dungeons over and over again is really tired imo.


I would buy another single player title and would be excited for it from CBU III, however. It's just the MMO outside of MSQ mode that needs work or they can't do.

It's weird to say, but I would almost prefer the smaller chunked XVI type maps over what we have in XIV now. It's clear they know how to make a visually stunning game with great mid-sized areas. Give me more of that in XIV.

XVI gutted a lot of what we expect from FF games in general, and that alone scares me for both future FF games, and XIV. It did introduce some sick boss fights, so if we ever keep anything from CBU:III I want it to be some form of boss DDR combat.

I actually had the opposite opinion. I thought CBU3 was better at making MMOs than single player games. Not saying FFXIV is great, but between the two I would rather play FFXIV than FFXVI. Considering 16 has a lot of elements from FFXIV, it reinforced my opinion that it doesn't work for a single player game. Linear dungeons was one thing for an MMO, but for a single player too? That draws a line for me.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

1. CBU III knows how to make good graphics, this is a great sign for graphics overhaul. Won't be near XVI levels, but they know how to make things look good, so their experience on the subject matters.

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FFXIV with FFXVI graphics would be a dream for many players. I know we already can't expect that, like you said, but to have FFXIV's graphics meet XVI's graphics even halfway would be a huge improvement. This is one of the updates that I'm looking forward to the most for 7.0.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

2. Systems will keep getting easier and more basic because that is what CBU III does well, ease of use. Job complexity/depth is probably going away forever.

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I really hope not. Hopefully someone at CBU III eventually starts listening to player feedback.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I actually had the opposite opinion. I thought CBU3 was better at making MMOs than single player games. Not saying FFXIV is great, but between the two I would rather play FFXIV than FFXVI. Considering 16 has a lot of elements from FFXIV, it reinforced my opinion that it doesn't work for a single player game. Linear dungeons was one thing for an MMO, but for a single player too? That draws a line for me.

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I think the problem is they have a weird mix of both? They have a lot of archaic MMO systems in both games, and they water them down so you only really get the boring bits of them and use them for 'storytelling'. But it's also clear that they want to focus on single-player storytelling and spectacle in general.

They often do away with gameplay to make sure you can enjoy the stories they tell. But this obviously conflicts with the fact that they're.. A game.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I actually had the opposite opinion. I thought CBU3 was better at making MMOs than single player games. Not saying FFXIV is great, but between the two I would rather play FFXIV than FFXVI. Considering 16 has a lot of elements from FFXIV, it reinforced my opinion that it doesn't work for a single player game. Linear dungeons was one thing for an MMO, but for a single player too? That draws a line for me.

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Interesting xD. Yeah I can see where you are coming from, since my focus was on what's happening next on the story I never really paid attention to the linear surroundings as much as I do when I play an MMO. I feel FFXVI could have easily been a 10/10 game if they adopted an open world design, Witcher 3 levels of side quests and world depth and a decent gearing/attribute system instead of full on auto pilot. Really those were the elements that I missed the most. The rest was great to me.

I can only imagine they didn't do that because of the testing and Q&A + balancing work it would entail, which I don't blame them but.... You're not going to get 10/10 if you are not going to go the extra mile.

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Originally Posted by R041

I think the problem is they have a weird mix of both? They have a lot of archaic MMO systems in both games, and they water them down so you only really get the boring bits of them and use them for 'storytelling'. But it's also clear that they want to focus on single-player storytelling and spectacle in general.

They often do away with gameplay to make sure you can enjoy the stories they tell. But this obviously conflicts with the fact that they're.. A game.

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This is a very accurate take on the subject TBH.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

I really hope not. Hopefully someone at CBU III eventually starts listening to player feedback.

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I believe thats already the problem. they HAVE been listening to player feedback.

"this is too hard" "this is too complicated" "I want my job to dps as much as other dps all the time"

sad part is, we dont know WHAT part of the player base they are listening to, but the way the game is going did not pop out of a vacuum. people do not like grouping, so we get more solo content... they just need to be more clear about where this "feedback" is actually originating

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I believe thats already the problem. they HAVE been listening to player feedback.

"this is too hard" "this is too complicated" "I want my job to dps as much as other dps all the time"

sad part is, we dont know WHAT part of the player base they are listening to, but the way the game is going did not pop out of a vacuum. people do not like grouping, so we get more solo content... they just need to be more clear about where this "feedback" is actually originating

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You're absolutely right about this.

First "mainline" final fantasy i enjoyed playing since the 10 so i would say it's a win for me.

That being said, i hope they will ... refresh ? the current formula of FF14 since it's getting old in many regards (dungeon linear design and combat gameplay mainly for me.)

Some of what we see in XVI makes you wonder why we can't get it in XIV. For example, solo hunts that... aren't a complete striking dummy. Combat without telegraphs in normal content. Perhaps even the combat itself. Universal voice acting (granted, they had 7 years to work on this whereas there's only 4 months for XIV). The graphics, which I know they want to scale down to PS4 for FFXIV, but still.

But a lot of things in XVI design are in the same style as XIV actually. The sidequests are pretty similar in design (some may disagree, but as someone that does the sidequests, they tell you about the life of the people in the area and how they are affected by MSQ events in XIV as well). The zones are, well, zones that have loading screens like in XIV. There are scenarios that the main story takes you into that are similar to dungeons in XIV and then there are boss battles that you can do a bit later, similar to trials in XIV. You teleport back and forth between areas and return to a home area regularly like in XIV instead of being forced to travel back and forth on foot.

Did XVI benefit XIV at all already? Yes. We see people biting apples in XVI and that technology was obviously brought over to XIV where we see the scions eating burgers and things. Also possibly the UI changes that XIV previously had such as quest display settings. Probably other things but I haven't thought about them yet.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I actually had the opposite opinion. I thought CBU3 was better at making MMOs than single player games. Not saying FFXIV is great, but between the two I would rather play FFXIV than FFXVI. Considering 16 has a lot of elements from FFXIV, it reinforced my opinion that it doesn't work for a single player game. Linear dungeons was one thing for an MMO, but for a single player too? That draws a line for me.

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IMO FF16 has given me the opinion that CBU3 is better suited to making games that aren't RPGs as both this title and 16 are missing nearly everything expected of a title in the RPG genre. At the same time it could also mean that CBU3 isn't making the games they want to and instead are making the games that financial investors that have never played a game in their life say will make the most immediate profit.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

IMO FF16 has given me the opinion that CBU3 is better suited to making games that aren't RPGs as both this title and 16 are missing nearly everything expected of a title in the RPG genre. At the same time it could also mean that CBU3 isn't making the games they want to and instead are making the games that financial investors that have never played a game in their life say will make the most immediate profit.

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I think they are just using their experience of what people complain about. For example, people complained about having to travel everywhere on foot in FFXIV 1.0, so all the way in XVI they seem to have kept this lesson in their hearts and allowed you to teleport everywhere, taking away from the standard RPG experience of having to journey around on foot.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I think they are just using their experience of what people complain about. For example, people complained about having to travel everywhere on foot in FFXIV 1.0, so all the way in XVI they seem to have kept this lesson in their hearts and allowed you to teleport everywhere, taking away from the standard RPG experience of having to journey around on foot.

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Abundance of fast travel points IMO is one of those things claimed to be a QoL improvement that really was just an appeasement for lazy gamers that chose to spend more time whining about it than just playing the actual game. It also essentially invalidates the effort in crafting the world since they're also making it so people don't see 90% of it because they're just bamf'ing all over the place like they're Nightcrawler. Having randomly interactable NPCs has also become pointless because they auto mark every quest NPC on the map for you even if you haven't gotten to that area to reveal the map yet and then auto mark every quest destination for you removing any need to actually pay attention to quest dialogue or details.

However it goes far beyond that to large amounts of literal game mechanics being removed like element factors, physical vs magical resistance, status effects, buffs/debuffs, equipment diversity and options, etc... For FF14 it's basically devolved to make numbers bigger while playing DDR with your fingers and pressing skill keys in a specific order. For FF16 it's essentially timing dodge key presses while hitting attack buttons when not dodging. What abilities you use don't matter mechanically because everything has the same effect on anything so it just boils down to which ones you like using.

At what point do we use the guise of QoL to get rid of all game mechanics? :confused:

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Originally Posted by R041

At what point do we use the guise of QoL to get rid of all game mechanics? :confused:

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Autoplay already existed in older F2P mmos and in mobile games nowadays.

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Originally Posted by R041

It's weird to say, but I would almost prefer the smaller chunked XVI type maps over what we have in XIV now. It's clear they know how to make a visually stunning game with great mid-sized areas. Give me more of that in XIV.

XVI gutted a lot of what we expect from FF games in general, and that alone scares me for both future FF games, and XIV. It did introduce some sick boss fights, so if we ever keep anything from CBU:III I want it to be some form of boss DDR combat.

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If you ignore that those mid-sized areas are vast stretches of void devoid of activity interspersed with small towns that you can explore in half a minute, sure.

None of the big cities are explorable just like in FF13, which started the trend of the franchise locking you out of cities to save time making assets.

As for those boss fights, it's probably a matter of taste but while the underlying base combat can be fun the boss fights are all spectacle and none of them give you a feeling of mastery unlike in Souls/Sekiro or the GoW Valkyries/berserkers, where by the time you win you truly feel like you earned it.

If this is the best CBU3 can do I'd rather they pivot to making TV shows.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

FFXIV with FFXVI graphics would be a dream for many players. I know we already can't expect that, like you said, but to have FFXIV's graphics meet XVI's graphics even halfway would be a huge improvement. This is one of the updates that I'm looking forward to the most for 7.0.



I really hope not. Hopefully someone at CBU III eventually starts listening to player feedback.

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It will continue to be a dream for the distant future. FF16 level graphics are not mmo friendly and would work against it more then for it. MMO seek to be accessible to as many players as possible. Graphics like FF16 would restrict how many can actually play the game. One of FF16s cut scenes in graphics mode has reported caused ps5s to overheat. Just think what a hunt with 50 players and FF16 level graphics would do..

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Interesting xD. Yeah I can see where you are coming from, since my focus was on what's happening next on the story I never really paid attention to the linear surroundings as much as I do when I play an MMO. I feel FFXVI could have easily been a 10/10 game if they adopted an open world design, Witcher 3 levels of side quests and world depth and a decent gearing/attribute system instead of full on auto pilot. Really those were the elements that I missed the most. The rest was great to me.

I can only imagine they didn't do that because of the testing and Q&A + balancing work it would entail, which I don't blame them but.... You're not going to get 10/10 if you are not going to go the extra mile.

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I seriously doubt they can pull a Witcher 3 type game off.

But FF16 is horribly balanced anyways. FF mode is about as easy as normal mode and exploration gives you crap that you aren't going to use and the only reason why finding treasure chests would even be worth it is for gil bugs and gil to complete the orchestrion roll (though even that seems pointless when quests just shower you in gil).

Also there's a reason people say Benedikta is a hard fight (it really isn't because you can just ungabunga and R1 your way out of everything) and it's because you only have one eikon at that time.

The moment you have three, you have enough CC that normal enemies even the minibosses are completely irrelevant. You are able to pretty much cycle primal attacks non-stop (saving them for stagger phase is a huge DPS loss btw) and just eat some damage to keep uptime because the boss will die sooner than it can deplete more than a single hi-potion. And once you get Titan it's gg really, just counter and keep uptime. It's really ridiculous and idk who made this system.

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Originally Posted by Shinkuno

Autoplay already existed in older F2P mmos and in mobile games nowadays.

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Might as well make FF14 and FF16 autoplay so I can eat dinner while watching the character run to point X for 20 seconds and watch another 8-minute cutscene or some shit

I think FFxvi is gonna lead cbu3 into making their next mainline FF game an action mmo tbh . If what I see in Chrono Odyssey is what gaming might progress to w/ Gfx and scale in the future I have no reason not to think this might be the direction they'll be going with . I actually won't mind it as FFxvi is almost the same a DC Universe Online , you could use like 10 different weapon types which all had unique action combos while you could choose 6 abilities that were on cds from multiple skill trees. It was actually some of the most fun I've every had especially as far as pvp is concerned .

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Originally Posted by Ath192

3. Exploration and creativity is not going to get fostered or done well for the rest of XIV's life imo. CBU III enjoys heavily guiding and restricting players to exactly what they want them to do and nothing else.

A giant lobby where everyone just sits around doing nothing after the MSQ and insta queuing to linear dungeons over and over again is really tired imo.

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This gradually beat down my hope. I started out as a super fan. ARR was pretty good for a 2013 game done to a rushed schedule with expectations of a much smaller playerbase. The game began to thrive, the playerbase and revenue grew massively, they've had 10 more years to map out its evolution.

Evolution never came. The MSQ chain that started in ARR just continued on forever in much the same manner. Through that we unlock dungeons, they are all formatted the same way with corridor and 3 bosses, worthless loot. We still collect tomes and replace all of our gear each new season with basically the same stuff but +30 item level added. Any new ideas get isolated in side content bubbles so they can't affect the rest of the game.

Games used to only do this in their dying days, the maintenance mode. Maintain the old systems and just plug content into that template. This game has done it the entire lifetime, stick within the rigid walls of the template they launched with, same core content delivered in the same familiar pattern.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Games used to only do this in their dying days, the maintenance mode. Maintain the old systems and just plug content into that template. This game has done it the entire lifetime, stick within the rigid walls of the template they launched with, same core content delivered in the same familiar pattern.

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Yeah, SE is sticking to a formula that works out for them and doesn't bring on too much risk. Probably the only way to spur any major change is if the players vote with their wallets.

One way or another. by the JP Fanfest next year (also with other sources), we'll probably have more of a confirmation about the way XIV is going to sail. People here say that they'll stick to their formula no matter what, but that's true until it's not, and 7.0 - with all it represents with new beginnings - will be a decisive point for veterans who are not quite satisfied with the state of the game right now.

Which is my case. If the formula repeats in 7.0, I'll probably just play for the part that I like, which is the story, and unsub until the last patch, so I can experience the rest of it without breaks.

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

It will continue to be a dream for the distant future. FF16 level graphics are not mmo friendly and would work against it more then for it. MMO seek to be accessible to as many players as possible. Graphics like FF16 would restrict how many can actually play the game. One of FF16s cut scenes in graphics mode has reported caused ps5s to overheat. Just think what a hunt with 50 players and FF16 level graphics would do..

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I'd say they should have learned their lesson on that with FF14 1.0. The game was so overtuned it was eating the hardware of anything running it that wasn't a top tier gaming PC at the time. ARR actually scaled the graphics back.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

I'd say they should have learned their lesson on that with FF14 1.0. The game was so overtuned it was eating the hardware of anything running it that wasn't a top tier gaming PC at the time. ARR actually scaled the graphics back.

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There were a lot of contributing factors to the laggy feeling of 1.0. I bought it on launch day and could play it on my laptop on medium graphics 30 FPS. It was a 1K Dell XPS 1645. The problem was that the menus rendered server side, so you know that awful ping we have in this game? well... Apply it to most menus in game and all of a sudden it will take you 3 seconds to even open up your character profile.

Not saying it wasn't a heavy game but the truth is a lot more convoluted than just high graphics. It was a gorgeous game however.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

I'd say they should have learned their lesson on that with FF14 1.0. The game was so overtuned it was eating the hardware of anything running it that wasn't a top tier gaming PC at the time. ARR actually scaled the graphics back.

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Vanguard saga of heroes had hefty pc requirements. Add on the fact that it was eq2 style mmo and the number of people who could actually play was small by comparison to other less intense mmos.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Abundance of fast travel points IMO is one of those things claimed to be a QoL improvement that really was just an appeasement for lazy gamers that chose to spend more time whining about it than just playing the actual game. It also essentially invalidates the effort in crafting the world since they're also making it so people don't see 90% of it because they're just bamf'ing all over the place like they're Nightcrawler.

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I disagree with this. The world of Eorzea is huge at this point and having to fly/walk everywhere would be a massive chore. Hell, even doing MSQ is a massive chore because you have to walk places. The blame for that lays squarely on how the zones are designed and the fact that there is hardly anything of interest in them. Just bunches of enemies who will aggro onto you if you get too close and...that's it. If you want me to travel through the world, give me something to do. A huge help would be allowing us to enable gathering node detection skills to be on without having to switch to the appropriate job. Walking from point A to point B would feel a lot less like a waste of time if you could gather something useful along the way. I know they tried to make dynamic events with FATEs, but they, for the most part, failed miserably. At least the older ones have fun lore tidbits you can discover (like that girl whose boyfriends get eaten by sand worms so often she doesn't even bother remembering her names anymore), I guess.

Besides, if you made people walk/fly everywhere, the only thing that would happen is people would take the shortest possible route. They wouldn't explore the zones anyway. If you want your players to be doing exploration, you have to give them incentive. Looking at other open-world games, this is usually achieved through stuff like collectibles or achievements. RIFT encouraged you to go to weird nooks and crannies because you could get artifacts. Genshin Impact hides chests with loot all over the place and has something you can gather scattered all over every zone. These two aren't really an option for XIV unless they are willing to make a major overhaul, unfortunately. What they could do are achievements. Climb the highest mountain, visit all the hidden caves, etc. But then I guess they would have to update the achievement vendor first.

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Originally Posted by R041

It's weird to say, but I would almost prefer the smaller chunked XVI type maps over what we have in XIV now. It's clear they know how to make a visually stunning game with great mid-sized areas. Give me more of that in XIV.

XVI gutted a lot of what we expect from FF games in general, and that alone scares me for both future FF games, and XIV. It did introduce some sick boss fights, so if we ever keep anything from CBU:III I want it to be some form of boss DDR combat.

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I just want to toss out a game like Ghost of Tsushima where exploration in an open space was done very well. Given all the sounds, visuals, and mechanics going on.. exploration was so seamless it disturbed me that it was one of the first times I felt it to that tier. Like, sure I play GoW and I know it's a good game with a lot of polish, but playing GoT was like "this exploration is good enough it bothers me". I think in part it helped there was so many things of value not of check boxes. Say ubisoft is the king of checkboxes. Plz staph that. FFXVI hardly had 'valuable' exploration or 'useless value' exploration, thankfully they designed their game knowing that wasn't something they were selling lol (the maps are simple and nothing is really hidden), it would have been nice though, still, if they could refine that.

Even IF they were going to keep really linear maps* I would hope they can improve their side rewards, like side quests and reducing the number of items on the map (but making them more valuable to offset that). The quests that did things like give you more potions, or stronger potions, was nice and I wish they can think of more "oh, cool!" rewards (something GoT did well, as they were usually glamour or actual things you'd be using for important value that was pretty obvious- unlike say FFXVI which is like "we gave you crafting material!! you wont know it but it will be helpful / IF / you decide to go new game +).

*(that are not really 'clever', that doesn't mean 'bad', just.. say a GoW linear map unfurls itself in puzzles, /fun/ backtracks, and overlaying, vs like a corridor you run down that is very pretty with some fights in it.. like we talked about in some DMC games)


Ultimately I wouldn't agree that I want zones like FFXVI if we are talking gameplay, because I didn't particularly think they were very interesting in terms of gameplay level design, but if you meant visually then yeah well I think the game is very pretty and that includes how they showed the world. World is purty, the level design allows the world to look purty, which is a good thing that doesn't just 'happen', buuuuuuuuuuuut the reward structures and interactions mechanically, gameplay wise, were lacking (imo). Which ranges from rewards, to just how you have to navigate the space mentally (as a puzzle), to the sheer movement itself (like a few times I was looking at a 2 ft barrier that made me go 100 ft in another direction cause my chocobo and bro-man couldn't jump, or swim, it).

I also think FFXIV could use improved exploration mechanics too though lol (and to your point FFXIV's dungeons are very pretty and are more similar to FFXVI's design style, they clearly know how to make a corridor exceptionally good looking). I have made posts on exploration ideas a few times.. and I have a promise to someone I need to fulfil to make a post on it.. Just got back into the states though (don't really like saying "I don't like something" without saying what I think would be examples of it doing better- lazily / real quick I'd mention GW2 but I'd hope to make a better post than that).

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

I disagree with this. The world of Eorzea is huge at this point and having to fly/walk everywhere would be a massive chore. Hell, even doing MSQ is a massive chore because you have to walk places. The blame for that lays squarely on how the zones are designed and the fact that there is hardly anything of interest in them. Just bunches of enemies who will aggro onto you if you get too close and...that's it. If you want me to travel through the world, give me something to do. A huge help would be allowing us to enable gathering node detection skills to be on without having to switch to the appropriate job. Walking from point A to point B would feel a lot less like a waste of time if you could gather something useful along the way. I know they tried to make dynamic events with FATEs, but they, for the most part, failed miserably. At least the older ones have fun lore tidbits you can discover (like that girl whose boyfriends get eaten by sand worms so often she doesn't even bother remembering her names anymore), I guess.

Besides, if you made people walk/fly everywhere, the only thing that would happen is people would take the shortest possible route. They wouldn't explore the zones anyway. If you want your players to be doing exploration, you have to give them incentive. Looking at other open-world games, this is usually achieved through stuff like collectibles or achievements. RIFT encouraged you to go to weird nooks and crannies because you could get artifacts. Genshin Impact hides chests with loot all over the place and has something you can gather scattered all over every zone. These two aren't really an option for XIV unless they are willing to make a major overhaul, unfortunately. What they could do are achievements. Climb the highest mountain, visit all the hidden caves, etc. But then I guess they would have to update the achievement vendor first.

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Empty world design is a result of the over abundance of fast travel. It's far easier to get away with when very few people actually explore or travel around areas to see it. The initial ideas and incentives didn't work out the way they hoped and it was decided no more effort was needed because people just teleport everywhere and only stick around in most zones long enough to connect the quest marker dots.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Empty world design is a result of the over abundance of fast travel. It's far easier to get away with when very few people actually explore or travel around areas to see it. The initial ideas and incentives didn't work out the way they hoped and it was decided no more effort was needed because people just teleport everywhere and only stick around in most zones long enough to connect the quest marker dots.

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100% agree. Fast travel is the reason the game is so barren and design is so poor. Everyone does it so no need to put effort. This is like cities designed for cars in America, they barren and unwalkable because everyone drives everywhere. The consequence is there are very few places to see.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

100% agree. Fast travel is the reason the game is so barren and design is so poor. Everyone does it so no need to put effort. This is like cities designed for cars in America, they barren and unwalkable because everyone drives everywhere. The consequence is there are very few places to see.

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Part of me wonders if they didn't do fast travel newer players would be turned off or people wanting to play it and not fancy doing the wow method of flight paths etc. We have to in some way understand the old style of play isn't as popular anymore and that's because the times have changed and gaming has changed. Most people that like the old systems are likely early to late 30s or in the 40s. We are a diminishing player group and games must try and foster new interest, that doesn't mean they couldn't compromise a middle ground because I agree the world needs it, they craft these spaces and as soon as you've done the 'story' of that area and your aetherial wind spots then the rest of your time spent there is purely an aerial view...unless your hunt training which even then is stop and go. 16 proves they can craft super detailed landscapes that are very pretty (not going into linearity here just the visual storytelling of the map) I hope with the graphics update and with 7.0 they design areas that make people want to explore and they improve on systems like FATEs and treasure maps to get people to want to spend more time in them. Only gatherers spend the most time in it and that's laughable if you think about it.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Unfortunately to me XVI has reinforced my belief that CBU III or whoever is making all the decisions for this unit, maybe Yoshi P is solely responsible, maybe not, is better suited to making single player titles than MMOs.

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I agree and I actually believe because the success of CBU3, it could very well be a division that gets shifted away from XIV and into making more single player games in the near future. Who knows, maybe CBU2 and its merged Luminous Productions (FF15, Forspoken) will be a better fit for XIV? I guess that could be a good or a bad thing depending on one's opinion on the current state of XIV. Just my early morning thoughts.

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Originally Posted by Lufir

I agree and I actually believe because the success of CBU3, it could very well be a division that gets shifted away from XIV and into making more single player games in the near future. Who knows, maybe CBU2 and its merged Luminous Productions (FF15, Forspoken) will be a better fit for XIV? I guess that could be a good or a bad thing depending on one's opinion on the current state of XIV. Just my early morning thoughts.

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Its not how that works though...like if they weren't suited to making 14 what it is we would be in constant decline and we aren't its just a vocal minority on the forums saying their piece. If we take before WoW exodus numbers to now its a steady increase because the wow inflation doesn't really count as natural growth. On top of that....CBU3 is big enough to house multiple projects or as many as Yoshi P is willing to take on. It would also be years before you would see anything again because pre-production etc could be years and that's even if they do go onto anything else. I think for this they saw an opportunity to spread their wings and make something and that will give them experience etc that can come back into 14. People assume just swapping people would make an impact when it would take multiple years to see any effect and I can honestly imagine the 14 team to be loyal to Yoshi P so it would cause more damage then good and that would reflect in work place and into the product.

I sort of wish it was all doom and gloom because then I could actually agree with people however with the knowledge of the industry from friends who are developers, artists etc I'm just more middle ground reasonable...trying to understand both sides rather then everyone trying to be it must be X or Y.

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Originally Posted by CStrife912

Its not how that works though...like if they weren't suited to making 14 what it is we would be in constant decline and we aren't its just a vocal minority on the forums saying their piece.

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I could be wrong, but the people on the forums are more referencing a drop in quality of content in EW, not really player population.

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I think for this they saw an opportunity to spread their wings and make something and that will give them experience etc that can come back into 14.

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I think they already have more than enough experience from their years with FF14. FF16 is more of a show to SE that YoshiP can make them the big bucks.

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People assume just swapping people would make an impact when it would take multiple years to see any effect and I can honestly imagine the 14 team to be loyal to Yoshi P

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People swap all the time:

FFXI changing its producer again.

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics...85/detail.html

This article mentions FFXI's dev team downsizing while most move on to bigger things. I wonder where they are going or what they plan to work on?

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fu.../1100-6512609/

Wouldn't it be crazy if FFXIV got the XI team and CBU3 moves on to single player games? ;)

Again, just theories and what ifs. I don't want it to come off as doom and gloom.

I finished XVI and the game is as difficult as you want to make it.

The skill tree hearkens back a bit to the old sphere grid used in FFX, but sections of it are not visible until you get past the hard locks on the story.

Think the combat is too easy? Take off all the assist rings and slap on the damage bonus and cooldown reduction ones instead. Add in manually controlling the dog. (I'm going to do this on my second play through because Torgal landing auto Precision Sic seems to block a magic burst.)

The combat feels less about easy/difficulty and more about optimization. You can one button mash your way through every boss you want, but it'll take you 10-15 minutes if that is all you are doing. (And you still need to dodge, or you will die.) Play with an optimized build and you'll get it down in five minutes. And look stylish doing it.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

Besides, if you made people walk/fly everywhere, the only thing that would happen is people would take the shortest possible route. They wouldn't explore the zones anyway.

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In Final Fantasy XI, you might be running through a zone to your destination when you see (or hear about in shout chat) some powerful rare mob or notorious monster spawning, so you would detour to go fight him. There you would join a party, and after the mob died you might wind up helping some players out with whatever task they were pursuing.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

In Final Fantasy XI, you might be running through a zone to your destination when you see (or hear about in shout chat) some powerful rare mob or notorious monster spawning, so you would detour to go fight him. There you would join a party, and after the mob died you might wind up helping some players out with whatever task they were pursuing.

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Or in WoW: you take a flight point, see a random treasure pop on your minimap so when you land you get on your mount and go there. Then you see a rare spawn while questing and go do that. Or you see a cave on the map and you go explore it because there may or may not be a secret in there. FF14 players are too used to static dumbed down gameplay i guess to ever imagine that. Its clear that most people that defend this game at this point just want to watch a TV Show without looking like a "lazy person that just sits on their couch watching tv all day" so they pretend there is any gameplay left in this "game".

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Originally Posted by Shinkuno

Or in WoW: you take a flight point, see a random treasure pop on your minimap so when you land you get on your mount and go there. Then you see a rare spawn while questing and go do that. Or you see a cave on the map and you go explore it because there may or may not be a secret in there. FF14 players are too used to static dumbed down gameplay i guess to ever imagine that. Its clear that most people that defend this game at this point just want to watch a TV Show without looking like a "lazy person that just sits on their couch watching tv all day" so they pretend there is any gameplay left in this "game".

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Question? So how quickly does that sense of wonder and exploration fall out once you've done it multiple times to notice a pattern and it starts to be lackluster?

Because let me tell you, that only ever happens when the game is all magical and new to you but then reality kicks in and you start to develop your own endgame agenda and go about playing the game optimally.

Call me jaded but I'm pretty sure that sense of adventure is so easy to fall off in this day and age.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Question? So how quickly does that sense of wonder and exploration fall out once you've done it multiple times to notice a pattern and it starts to be lackluster?

Because let me tell you, that only ever happens when the game is all magical and new to you but then reality kicks in and you start to develop your own endgame agenda and go about playing the game optimally.

Call me jaded but I'm pretty sure that sense of adventure is so easy to fall off in this day and age.

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Does it matter? You are literally excusing lazyness with "but what if i dont look at every treasure 100 hours in?"

Feel free to continue to whiteknight and excuse for a company that couldnt care less about you. May as well go buy the next store item too. You are not jaded, you are just prime target for FF14. People that want to put in 0 thought, 0 effort, just sit there and watch badly animated cutscenes.