Urgently Change your Approach SE

[Khaoticsuccubus]

Their JP playerbase is larger. You can look at the forums as a clear example. This post has the support of probably everyone here - and it only has 60 some-odd likes. When a JP post has the forum support, there's 400+ likes. That's a pretty big difference. NA isn't the same size playerbase. SE wants to grab as much money as they can from us, but you are kidding yourself if you think that our subs are anything but gravy on their JP mashed potatoes.

That has nothing to do with the size of the playerbase. It has to do with the difference in mentality between NA and JP players. NA players all like to think their own opinion is special in some way and will make individual threads over and over again for each person with something to say. Even if they were all talking about the same thing. Whereas JP players will consolidate their posts to threads already made. Hence more likes on less threads vs less likes on more threads.

EDIT: Personally I think the way they release content is fine, fantastic even. 3 month large content releases like clockwork is awfully impressive. Especially when considering a certain other games 1 year+ gap in content... /shudder.

[Fendred]

I think the most important thing they could change at the moment would be how end game is handled in the long run. Raiding as it is set up doesn't conceptually mesh with the underlying theme of a Final Fantasy game, and it shows in the numbers of those attempting raids. I mean, as a return player I'd need the most ultra-flexible schedule on the planet to fit into the few raid groups I was able to find over the last three months. And TBH, it was the Final Fantasy elements and the inferred promise of taking the best kinds of group experiences from Final Fantasy games into MMORPG form that drew me to FFXIV:ARR on release. It's mostly just typical MMORPG stuff, so I'm not too happy with the direction of the game at the moment.

[Warlyx]

yeah lots of things have been a dissapoint

retainers

chocobo raising

dye the AF

housing in general

gardening

chocobo color

the whole relic upgrade

hunts

sightseeing

and im probably missing some

NEVER FORGET!

[Seif]

I am actually a little concerned what they will do to golden saucer if housing prices mean anything. "Enjoy a mini game for 500K!" lol

Sounds like a stupid concern but so is not implementing an instanced housing system XD.

Both the chocobo and housing system could have been so much more imo, I hope they relook into both as time goes on. They're not the worst thing ever and I will definitely live lol, but It is not something I'd put on a pro list for why someone should come and play, other games have done it better.

Chocobo racing I'm guessing will just be another cutscene without any actual racing. Calling it now.

[Fendred]

Warlyx,

Back when I first saw those slides, the first thing I thought was that 1, 3, and 4 naturally lead to 2. I still think that is the case, but I think Yoshida is currently having issues with points 1 and 4. They need to loosen up on the defacto theme park model if the game is going to play with enough looseness for fans to feel totally happy with it, even if that means saying to hell with perfect game balance.

[Parz3val]

I forgot about the Retainer debacle lol...

Bullet points 1, 2, & 4 are all seriously lacking I think.

[Fendred]

I forgot about the Retainer debacle lol...

Bullet points 1, 2, & 4 are all seriously lacking I think.

Yeah, its more a PR thing, but I usually assume they mean "know what Final Fantasy games are about/contain" for #4, since they wouldn't want to deviate too far from their source material. Given the current state of the game, I'm more than willing to say my expectations clearly weren't grounded in reality.

[BreathlessTao]

snip

Aye, let's consider it a theme park then. What do we have? Numerous rides and attractions, to almost every one of which at least one of these is true: can't get on it on your own; additional celestial amount of tokens as fees for no real reason; either die on it or not, nobody can tell; has people queued up for by the thousands, with only a few dozens of seats available. You can grow your theme park to gargantuan sizes, if most people will only be able to get on the scattered merry-go-rounds, to gawk at the luckier minorities on other rides, they won't be having fun. Or, you know, yeah, you can forbid people from getting on certain rides, but on what basis would you do that when everyone pays the same entry fee? People don't go to theme parks to see the same one attraction over and over and over again (everyone can have favourites, obviously, that's a different matter); they go to theme parks to get on as many things as possible (and the older visitors, to see the new stuff especially, if at least once).

As for the time investment - for someone who can play 70-100 hours a week, 2-3 hours of "work" (it shouldn't be "work", it should be fun) might seem a minimal time investment; for those who can only be online 30-40 hours, or even less, sorry to say, it's a much bigger chunk of time. And yeah, I agree, hardware limits are nothing new. Which is exactly why it's baffling that we're still getting that as an "explanation" to why this can't be done and why that can't be done either and oh why that other thing is impossible as well. I'm pretty sure the number of beta applicants was / could have been / should have been an indication of things to come. The login-issues plaguing early access and the following few weeks were / could have been / should have been indications of things to come. And so on. Yet, since then, for more than a year now, it still doesn't feel like anything's being done about these issues (we don't know, because they don't tell us anything; they added more servers, that was about it, but it clearly didn't/can't solve everything).

snip

1) Let's be specific: we get plenty of "we did this" and "we're going to do that" from the developers - "updates", indeed. That's not communication; communication is a two-way street. That's just them informing us about what's ahead, it's just reports. (Check the general opinion on instances considering personal houses - from those involved, I'm quite certain the majority would have preferred that instead of what we have now.) As for the lead developer replying within 24hrs in all languages to the housing debacle (ohmahgad!) - they say they monitor the forums for feedback, and with that in mind, if you really believe they didn't know what they were about to do would cause major ××××storms, then you're just unbelievably naive. That reply was just another apology (lost count of how many apologies they had to issue by now - if you communicate, that does not have to happen this often), with no real explanation in it and showing only sign of them being adamant about going the way they want to (re: instances vs wards). Also, it was only a proper reply in the Japanese forum, where it is actually a standalone sticky of its own. Wait, even there it's only a post buried on page 14 of a thread that's currently 73 pages long. As for the other languages, it's not even posted via his account (something I'm sure is not technically impossible).

2) I'm not saying these things have no place in MMORPGs. I'm saying that gating basically every single general fun content behind these is just ridiculous (you really think chocobo dyeing, for example, should be as overcomplicated as it is? or simple glamours, for that matter?).

And I already talked about hardware limitations; as for the transparency... yeah, it's the most transparent thing saying "we're going to implement this", only to get, months later, something like "well we wanted to implement this, but we couldn't because hardware, but hey /hugs for y'all". Indeed.

Also, congrats for your PUG clears. Must have either an immense amount of patience or just immense amount of luck. My experience with PUGs, 9 out of 10 times, is that everyone just expects everybody to know everything, and when the first try is a fail, half of the group just ragequits. But yeah, good for you. /thumbsup

[Kaethra]

atma is fine (but will also be nerfed later)

You really think Atma is fine?

Would you do that 10-15 hour Fate grind for no reward at the end?

If the answer is no, then the Atma quest is NOT fine.

That's the question the Developers should ALWAYS ask themselves when adding new content: "Would we or our players do the content for the sake of doing it, even if there is no reward?"

If the answer is yes, add it in.
If the answer is no, redo the content.

They seriously need to get away from the idea of having timesinks for the sake of timesinks. Atmas are a prime example of what NOT to do. Where's the challenge in it? If I can complete one FATE, I can complete five, I can complete ten, or hundred, or a thousand. Doing them over and over ad nauseum is not fun nor challenging.

The time spent getting Atma isn't a problem. I don't care if they double or triple the time. If its fun, its worth it. But there is a serious problem with a game when you have to sit there for 10-15 hours (spent at once or spent broken up over a couple of ssessions) not having fun.

But if you want to prove me wrong. Feel free to do a 500 Fate grind (without the Atma quest) and post it on youtube or twitch. We'd have found one person in all of AAR that likes doing that.

[SongJoohee]

I find it really concerning. Rather than enticing people to pay by making the game fun, they made most things since 2.2 a grind to keep people playing, so many features since have been such a disappointment. On top of that, a lot of the things they've implemented have been implemented so poorly they end up annoying more players than it pleases.

Relic Upgrades since Atma and on have been just awful, rather than being a challenge of skill, they opted to make it a grind, what was so bad about Relic being the entry-level weapon for Coil I don't know, but apparently it was so bad they decided to make it a side grade (and now BIS) that just takes grinding willpower rather than knowing how to play your class and job properly. The Nexus upgrade isn't so bad, but having a grind weapon you can obtain through a lot of Fates and Cape Westwind be BIS over Raid Gear, even if it's for months, is just insane.

Big Fishing was hyped up, I got concerned when they were barely showing anything about it in Live Letters, ended up just being more fishing.

Materia Transmutation was a bizzare one. It's an okay idea, swap materia you don;'t want for a chance at a better piece, but it ended up being a trap - haha, now you've traded all your materia to the transmuter trying out this new system, the next relic upgrade you'll be happy to know, involves a lot of materia.

Sight Seeing logs were said to be "like jump puzzles from GW2" and ended up being more like the vistas from GW2 with weather and time requirements that ended up just wasting your time because of bad luck.

Initial Housing Prices. The Leviathan Mirrors Debacle. Hunts were a catastrophe. Chocobo Training. Personal Housing is just the latest thing to join a long list of failures from SE.