Server Bosses, Large scale PVE, Multiple Shell Fights and Dragons!

[ChiefCurrahee]

Completely disagree with this work flow model, and I think its where the current team has gotten it completely wrong. They really should've focused their efforts on creating new and engaging content like the encounters shown in this video while implementing some of the glaring omissions of core features instead of trying to revamp game systems that were arguably the best and most functional things about FFXIV.

THe work flow model is probably most definately wrong. I was merely trying to point out that, It's very time consuming to create new content. After all Time = Money.
The Polls showed that over all people were very unhappy with the state of the battle system. Argue all you want, but that facts are there. The Devs recognise this and preceeded with the change. When the devs say they are looking into cost analysis they mean time and money, not what Victor alluded to:

The devs themselves have already stated the game can't handle large scale activity on numerous occassions ... I think of how they're always referring to "cost of implementation" towards so many basic things XIV does not have. Large scale battles like that would be exponentially more costly and apparently they can't afford whatever resources are necessary to add things like a search function.

It's not that FFXIV can't handle large sized monsters or large scale combat. At this moment the time and money to bring these things to the game, isn't the right time.

What you consider "fluff" is what most people consider actual content. What you consider essential won't make a difference to people who complain there is nothing to do in FFXIV because all they will have is the same lack of content with slightly different game systems.

Remeber that post by the devs where they said it takes 6 months to create a set of armour? It took them 7 months to bring out these dungeons. There is a recent post from Yoshi saying releasing the dungeons before all the battle adjustments were finished was a risky move. But i'm sure they feel the lack of cont just as we do.

I'm not saying I don't want epic battles like this, but right now there are core mechanics that still need to be addresed. That will form a foundatin for improved gameplay.

We've heard now for months that the new team felt XIV had to be fundamentally reworked from the ground up before they could implement new content, but that's clearly not true. They dropped the R45 raid on us with largely the same class and combat system in-place and now people get to fully appreciate the flexibility and complexity of the Armoury System. Even if they had not made the "major" changes to combat with auto-attack and AoE/spell costs, the R45 Raid would've still been the most enjoyable content XIV offered by far.Now imagine if they spent all that time reworking combat and instead used it to create 3-4 dungeons similar to Dzemael? Instead, we're going to have to wait for a trickle flow of new content as they continue to simultaneously break/tweak existing game systems that arguably, worked fine to begin with. Next on the chopping block, crafting. Even though the current crafting system wasn't for everyone, I think most everyone would agree there were bigger problems with XIV that needed to be addressed.

The Devs are split into teams, You have the Chocobo team, The Dungeon team, The battle Team, the Crafting team. It's not 1 dept that shifts focus once one thing is done. As each team Completes a project the move onto the next. When the time is right those completed projects will be patched in. But Some completed projects might depend on other projects being done too. Like Battle Reforms. For all we know the Ifrit battle might be done. But is waiting on the Battle team to finish thier project.

Once many of these changes are in place, you can expect to see ramped implementation of content into the game.
What we are seeing now in the next few months is the fruit of the devs labor from that last 6 or so months.
The point is, They have to build a foundation. They had to rebuild the house of FFXIV from the ground up. W/O a solid foundation the bigger you build the less stable it becomes.
Disagree with me all you want. But the truth is the Devs will devote time and money where it is needed first to build the things the players want. Not the other way around.

[Chiz]

THe work flow model is probably most definately wrong. I was merely trying to point out that, It's very time consuming to create new content. After all Time = Money.
The Polls showed that over all people were very unhappy with the state of the battle system. Argue all you want, but that facts are there. The Devs recognise this and preceeded with the change.

Yes, Time = Money which is why you wonder why they are spending time "fixing" things that aren't explicitly broken or working far better than features that are completely MIA. The Players Poll should've been a guide only, the fact of the matter is, the questions were skewed in a direction that funneled change in a certain direction. Also, you imply the vast majority of players actually know what is good or what will make the game better. The impression I got from the Players Poll was that players wanted a differentiation of class roles and abilities, the main thing preventing that was a lack of challenging content to emphasize the differences in classes. Enter R45 dungeon where THM can't tank everything, melee get punished at close range by AoE, and tanks need to tank and that certainly isn't a concern anymore is it? If anything the content has punished some classes far too much further emphasizing class differentiation in favor of ranged and magic classes. All with the same classes we had from Day 1, with a few minor tweaks.

When the devs say they are looking into cost analysis they mean time and money, not what Victor alluded to:

It's not that FFXIV can't handle large sized monsters or large scale combat. At this moment the time and money to bring these things to the game, isn't the right time.

I agree right now isn't the right time, but once they put the multi-claim system in place there's no excuse for them not to put content like this in the game.

Remeber that post by the devs where they said it takes 6 months to create a set of armour? It took them 7 months to bring out these dungeons. There is a recent post from Yoshi saying releasing the dungeons before all the battle adjustments were finished was a risky move. But i'm sure they feel the lack of cont just as we do.

Yes I do remember that post, and while it may take that long for them to create one set of unique armor, that certainly isn't the case for items that use the same art assets. One example would be Templar's Falchion in the latest release, or even the items that use the same skins/textures with different colors in the same dungeon. Speaking of which, its been around 6 months since that post about "Evil Armor" and BLM AF, yet still no armor, which clearly indicates there are moving parts that are bottlenecking the process....more on this later.

I'm not saying I don't want epic battles like this, but right now there are core mechanics that still need to be addresed. That will form a foundatin for improved gameplay.

The only mechanic missing right now is the multi-claim system, after that's addressed there should be no excuse for them not to start moving content in this direction. Sometimes I think people overcomplicate this and try to reinvent the wheel when they have a flat tire sitting in their garage that just needs to be pumped up.

Here's an idea to get this ball rolling: Have a quest giver in Limsa that gives people a quest and alerts people when Great Buffalo goes on a rampage. This quest giver ports people right to the Buffalo and everyone can take turns wailing on it simultaneously thanks to the new multi-claim system. Everyone gets EXP and a chance for loot commensurate to how much they contribute to the fight. This gives you a sense of large-scale PvE, revisits a mob people have largely forgotten about, and should be relatively easy to implement.

The Devs are split into teams, You have the Chocobo team, The Dungeon team, The battle Team, the Crafting team. It's not 1 dept that shifts focus once one thing is done. As each team Completes a project the move onto the next. When the time is right those completed projects will be patched in. But Some completed projects might depend on other projects being done too. Like Battle Reforms. For all we know the Ifrit battle might be done. But is waiting on the Battle team to finish thier project.

Its not quite like that, you have certain departments that actually require specific "skill sets" or "talent", like the art team and programming team. The rest are largely worker drones that may have more experience working with specific game features than others, but can largely be shifted and allocated from one project to the next. The development leads are static and in-charge of their various departments, like combat, UI, content etc. and they are constantly wrangling and jockeying for allocation for this pool of worker drones. Its obvious that Yoshi-P has allocated most of this manpower toward combat system changes as that has clearly been the focus of his efforts from both his own letters and what we have actually seen in patches. Instead of allocating 80/20 in favor of combat changes, they should've gone 80/20 in favor of content.

If I had to guess there's two major bottlenecks in this pipeline: programming and Q&A. Artists are probably twiddling their thumbs and working on stuff so far in advance that they aren't holding things up. But its obvious programmers are struggling to keep up as they can't even implement the minor changes people want in a timely fashion, and the Q&A process has been cited by Yoshi-P as the bottleneck on at least 2 occasions for holding up the dungeons.

Once many of these changes are in place, you can expect to see ramped implementation of content into the game.
What we are seeing now in the next few months is the fruit of the devs labor from that last 6 or so months.
The point is, They have to build a foundation. They had to rebuild the house of FFXIV from the ground up. W/O a solid foundation the bigger you build the less stable it becomes.
Disagree with me all you want. But the truth is the Devs will devote time and money where it is needed first to build the things the players want. Not the other way around.

And again, I disagree, because the fact of the matter is, any player new or old would have a much better game experience with more content like the newly released dungeons than a bunch of revamped systems like combat or crafting with no content at all. Battle Reforms are not going to significantly change how a group of 8 tackles a particular dungeon, you're still going to have your basic archetypes like tank, melee DD, ranged DD, magic DD, healer, buffer, debuffer etc. Once Jobs and class changes go in, you'll have to make some minor adjustments here and there but for the most part, people will still be playing the same roles they are tasked with TODAY with the very same "flawed" classes and Armoury System in place that we've had since Day 1.