Urgently Change your Approach SE

[Lemuria]

I feel like this game has lost some of its shine in recent months.

Everything feels like a very slow climb. Daily quests are basically my mainstay method of levelling up, getting better equipment and generally progressing to higher tiers. With that in mind, I just log in, do dailies, and log out. Games don't need to be grindy, they just need to be fun. Is this really so alien a concept in the world of MMOs?

[Warlyx]

gold saucer is going to be just YET ANOTHER menu where u click / click ....and watch a CS, is going to be sooooo fun i hardly cant wait !

[Aldora]

Sure, some of us may understand programming and may understand that it takes time to implement features from a theoretical level, but we programmers have no possible way of knowing how that effects this specific application since not one of us has any domain knowledge for FFXIV's servers or engine. I believe it's quite safe to assume no one has that knowledge in this player base outside of the few devs that play, and they most certainly won't be the ones posting here. Just because something may seem like a small tweak on the outside does not mean for one second that the underlying system could possibly handle that "tweak" without a serious overhaul.

Being a programmer myself it makes me know one thing for sure. I know that I know nothing about this game's architecture. I can theorize possible ways systems may work on the back end, but it likely won't be the way it actually works.

I honestly can't tell you how often I've seen this happen where I work now and at past jobs. It's never as simple as you think it will be. Suggest ideas, changes, tweaks, new features to your hearts content, but I see no reason we can't be a bit more respectful about it.

I agree with Tiggy here.

From a development standpoint, I still think it’s amazing what the FFXIV Team has managed to achieve since the moment they decided to turn this ship around, in order to salvage whatever they could from 1.0 and turning it into ARR.

I take my hat off and take a deep bow for the team, for bringing us a game which has been played by many so far.

It is true that the recent patches mostly consisted of features and content that required a large amount of grinding. It is something that the “old guard” is used to, but times have changed. The gamers of today do not wish to grind hours upon hours to get the items/upgrades they want, since the gamers from the past have full time jobs, a family, a social life outside of the game or simply can’t put in the same amount of patience and effort they had years ago. The same applies for the gamers of today.

Personally, i don’t think that’s wrong in any way. We are still “just” playing a game and playing a game means that should have fun playing it. Every single player out there has it’s own idea of having fun. One player has fun tackling End Game content like Coil. Another player has fun competing with other players through PvP. And another player wants to earn as much money as they can by selling their gathering/crafting services and stimulate the economy. There are plenty of players who have fun, just trying to get vanity gear or the latest minions.

Each and every one of those players want to have a certain amount of content to keep themselves busy. Since we have such a wide variety of players, we need to the same amount of variety to keep as many of the players happy.

Its a humongous task for a team such as the FFXIV team to generate enough content for each “discipline”/”variation” and deliver them at a pace so that these specific players will not have to wait more than 6 months for the next batch of their desired content.

Don’t get me wrong, even though i think that i have more then much content to do (to the extent that i do not have enough time to actually do all of it), i do feel that there is not enough content to keep everyone busy and satisfied. The content is being consumed by the playerbase a lot faster then it’s being “crafted” by the FFXIV team. In my personal opinion, i feel that the only way for the FFXIV team to solve that problem, is to expand the FFXIV team in the kitchen in order to cover more ground (content wise) with each patch.

Also, i’m not going to deny that systems have been implemented in a way that it feels that they were cutting corners in order to release it as fast as they can or to artificially prolong the lifespan of the content. Sometimes i get the feeling that the FFXIV team is testing certain design idea’s by implementing it in a certain way to see if the community thinks that this particular implementation is acceptable or not. For instance, the whole Zodiac Brave Questline uses all kinds of grinds like the Low Drop Rate grind (Atma stones), the objective related grind (the books for the Animus upgrade), the daily grind (the daily Expert Roulette for the Mysterious Maps), and the spirit bond grind (the Nexus grind).

Based on the feedback we give, they will either scrap the idea for future content or adjust/evolve it so that it uses in various future content.

I do want to repeat what i’ve said in several threads, as well as what others in this thread have said as well. Even the simplest of “fixes” or idea’s, might be the hardest one to implement. And i’m not just talking about coding wise. The FFXIV team does not only have to look at the coding side of it, but also the effect it might have of the the performance of the game, if it follows the vision they have for the game, if it were to limit the players too much in participating into the said content, if it could be abused by others, etc.

Also, one of the biggest frustrations of a developer is that when you fix a bug or change a feature, it would introduce more issues in a completely different (sometimes even unrelated) section of the code. A prime example would the be issue with the controller movement with the release of 2.38.



That being said, i do have faith that the (grind) content we’ve seen in the past few patches, will not set the course for every type of content which will be introduced/expanded upon with the upcoming patches. I would like to take a snippet out of the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XVII Q&A Summary (09/11/2014) to explain my reasoning behind it, supported by the development what we’ve seen from the FFXIV 1.0 Alpha up to the Patch 2.38.

Q: I've noticed a lot of the systems recently introduced to the game require a lot of time to complete (The Hunt, Zodiac Weapons, etc.). Do you plan to focus on such time-consuming systems and features in the future?

A: Considering that both patches 2.2 and 2.3 introduced new systems to the game that require considerable amounts of time to complete, I understand how it may appear that the game's direction is steering toward overly time-consuming activities. However, just as I've mentioned in previous interviews, we consider FFXIV: ARR to be akin to a theme park, and we're working to provide a wide variety of activities for players to enjoy. However, due to scheduling issues and circumstances surrounding implementation, we've been prioritizing the implementation of party-based challenges utilizing the Duty Finder whenever possible. As a result, we were a step behind in implementing systems that make use of the open world, or those that require time but can be completed at one's own pace. With the introduction of Zodiac weapons followed shortly after by the Hunt, it may seem as though we're shifting focus toward time-consuming systems, but rest assured this is not the case, and we plan to strike a balance with party-based activities as we move forward.

Also, when it comes to major patches, we plan things out on a yearly basis, and there are a lot of plans for instanced encounters based on the premise that they will be implemented with every major patch. In between these periods, the development team has been proceeding to plan various systems and features based on feedback from players, and they are calling this "adlibbing." The largest system we have planned for the future is the Gold Saucer, but it won't be skewed one way or the other with regard to what types of activities will be made available.

You can call me a White Knight, but i still put my trust in Yoshida-san and the FFXIV team to deliver content which will keep me occupied for years to come, while having fun in the process.

This kitty is here to stay. (^_~ )

[MeiUshu]

I have a question....why people that are so unhappy keep playing this game ? I mean, if you dont like something you just dont it, otherwise is kind of masochism and unless you are into it, I doubt is a good way to spend your freetime..aka getting angry at something that you visibly dont enjoy anymore.

Or, there is another solution, you enjoy what you like, and once that is ended, and you feel there is nothing else to do, you move on, I dont really see the problem.

All these blabla for a virtual game is kind of....well strange.

Mei

[Bluevann]

I have a question....why people that are so unhappy keep playing this game ?

Mostly because I want to stay with my friends there.

Secondly because it's just 10€ a month.

If the only options were "Like it or Leave", things such as a Feedback Forum wouldn't exist.

[Beetle]

All of the relic quest so far seem pretty fair. There is 1 major flaw with it and that is it requires no skill or hard challenge to obtain one. Just alot of grinding content. There is no content that are just for relics. (Example: Ifrit Extreme was ONLY given to players in 1.0. Also Each Relic levequest boss was different for each relic.) All of the relic quests is just recyled old content. Give new content. Not rehash the samething over and over.

[Eekiki]

Mostly because I want to stay with my friends there.

Secondly because it's just 10€ a month.

If the only options were "Like it or Leave", things such as a Feedback Forum wouldn't exist.

But so many of these responses aren't feedback. They're simply, "I don't like where the game is headed." To quote a wise philosopher, "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

And while it's certainly an understandable opinion to have, a.) there's nothing else to go on...what direction would they rather see the game head (saying, "I want it to be like this game or that game" is not a sufficient answer). And b.) The numbers are still the numbers, and the numbers say that the vast majority of people playing this game are enjoying it (and the vast majority of people playing this game don't bother to participate in these forums).


So, yes, to those people I would say that if they're this unhappy with the game (the OP has been posting these kinds of threads before and after every major patch for as long as he's been playing), then there's a good chance that their opinion isn't going to change in the future. It's probably for the best if they play something else.

[maxthunder1]

Part of this issue is Yoshi and Co are copying everything and pretty much anything from other games and do it very badly. Now Yoshi could take some systems from XI not just mobs, there are plenty of endgame systems that could be borrowed and improved on. For example the loot lockouts could be changed to a point system where your contribution is what nets you the points, instead of a week lock out, players could access said content every 2 or 3 days. Things like this would go a long way into improving this game.

[maxthunder1]

[QUOTE=Eekiki;2459577]snip

While you maybe correct, the fact that XIV is continuing to bleed subscriptions should speak louder and it should tell the dev's they NEED to change directions. I am not saying make everything casual nor am I saying make everything hardcore, but the theme park route definitly dose need to change, along with making old gear irrelevant so fast.

[Tiggy]

the fact that XIV is continuing to bleed subscriptions should speak louder and it should tell the dev's they NEED to change directions.

Please. Enlighten us. Where is your source for this so called "fact"? It better not be anecdotal either because that's not how facts work.