The Live Letter XXVI and why change is necessary.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

I think it has less to do with ff14 and more to do with recent MMOs in general. Almost every MMO/expansion is popular for a month or two before people get bored and move to the next one. If you think Blade and Soul is any different, i'm sorry but your mistaken. 2-3 months time no1 will care about blade and soul, it's just another flavor of the month MMO like RIFT, TERA, SWOTOR, GW2, and all the other MMOs that have tried to come out the last 3-4 years. When legion comes out everyone will flock to that for a month or two before dispersing to other games. It's just the way MMOs are now, they don't have the replayability that FFXI, Vanilla WoW, and Everquest had.

[Caitlinzulu]

[QUOTE=MizoreShirayuki;3495774]This was posted on the FF14 subreddit by Ayrikka and I thought it could be reposted here because it is quite valid:

Thats quite a piece of textwall. Does anybody actually read that layout disaster?

[Kaurie]

I'll admit, it was a lengthy post and I did skim a little, but I didn't see anywhere in your post where you actually address how Yoshi's direction will alleviate the problems?

I get that there are problems, and I agree that you successfully listed quite a few of them. I don't think you accurately described the cause of a lot of the problems, and I don't think that Yoshi's direction from the Live Letter will successfully address many of them.

For me personally, having a 215 weapon drop from A4S would not make me any more interested. In fact, I'd be more pissed off. Why would they gate the only 210 weapon behind the same fight as a 215 weapon drops. That's absurd.

I know your post mostly talks about raids, but I feel your topic title is talking about the live letter as a whole. I am going to copy paste my post from Reddit where I rank each of the main topics of the live letter with "Yay", "Nay" or "Meh". Meh mostly means that I am unsure how it will turn out with the limited information available, or that it will likely not succeed without some drastic changes to the current system. If I were to score based on +1, -1 or 0, the Score out of 11 is -2


Materia? Meh
Great that it is in Tomestones, but we still don't have anything worthwhile to slot, nothing interesting or game-changing. I'll be just loading up the crit materia.

Mentor Roulette? Meh
Does this give a hefty bonus? If so, is there anything to prevent people from running it and still being jerks? If not, what is the incentive to be a mentor (other than being nice).

Anima Feedback Nay
This was a big-fat nay. I appreciate him addressing concerns, but imo he didn't address the main complaint and picked a few minor suggestions that people put forth without actually knowing what their full suggestion was.

Anima next stage Nay
Slotted for 3.25 is a concern for me, this means from 3.2 to 3.25 it will be obsolete. Frustrating that I will spend weeks getting it, enjoy it for a few weeks, then it will be useless for a couple months then I will grind again.

Savage? Meh
I mean it's great that they are adjusting the difficulty and increasing the rewards. However, I think the difficulty thing is we don't want the highest savage removed, we want more challenging content added to keep us going. It's great to have something super difficult to strive for. As for rewards, I just read this as my relic will be even more useless than I am already predicting.

PVP? Yay
This I am hopeful for. I am not a huge PvP fan, but this actually may address my issues with PvP and make it fun for me. I am a little disappointed that you cannot create a full party to queue with though.

Diadem? Meh
I am unsure and withhold judgement on this. I like that he wants to make it better for exploration (my biggest gripe) but he also suggested that it is too challenging right now? I mean Diadem is anything but challenging. That concerns me.

New Dungeons? Nay
Lost City is my least favourite dungeon by far, I know a lot of people love it and I don't mean to raise up a storm of it, it's just not my cup of tea. So I am not super excited for the hard mode.

Crafting Gear? Yay
I will start out by saying I do not craft and I hate crafting with a passion in this game. That said, i think it is great that they are making crafting gear useful for the many people who do enjoy crafting

Hall of The Novice? Meh
This looks like it may help a lot of players actually gain the skill they need to play well. That said, I am not sold that it will accomplish this goal and that it may just be wasted resources. It's a potential Yay but am withholding judgement.

Items not touched on. Nay
There are a lot of things I, and others, were hoping would be touched on. There are many threads here and on the OF with concerns and no regard for them. I'd say for me the items mostly are:

• DPS Parsing
• Addon / API Support
• Summoner Egi Glamours
• Server sizes
• Funding from mog station/finances and how they are trickling down
• Inventory problems
• Armoury Problems - Wardrobe system?
• MCH/BRD homogenization
• BRD "You broke my job" - 172 page thread on official forum that started in June and is still active. Yet, no word from the Dev team on their reaction or feedback

I also wanted him to touch on this question that I posted prior to the letter:
Prior to Heavensward, you mentioned that 2.x was setting the basics and 3.x would spice things up. Do you feel that you've accomplished this goal? If not, what are you and the team working on to do so?

This was posted on the FF14 subreddit by Ayrikka and I thought it could be reposted here because it is quite valid:

I'd recommend adding in some formatting to make that copy over more legible :P but yes I do like Ayrikka's post *thumbs up*

[Kerrigen]

Excellent post. Hopefully the devs learn from their mistakes, not only for the remainder of 3.x but going forward into 4.x. I'm all for challenging content but challenging isn't what I would qualify the raid with; it was miserable.

6. Savage rendered certain raid comps useless.

Have you seen a group down a4s without a warrior? How many down it without a scholar or dragoon? People were forced into roles they did not enjoy in order to provide optimal raid comps in order to down content.

Anecdotal, but not too long ago I went and checked fflogs to see how bad it was. Less than 1% (exactly 3 groups) of all groups over there cleared A4s without a SCH. I haven't checked with WAR and DRG but I'm certain we're in the same ballpark. This is very telling of the state of content balance and this was a bummer as someone who initally wanted to tackle the new raid with an unwelcome job. I don't think it's acceptable or healthy to introduce 3 new jobs during an expansion only to have certain comps being rendered completely irrelevant (or at an extreme disadvantage to the point fingers are being pointed at certain classes when the raid doesn't succeed) as far as the hardest content go.

I personally think the dev team bit off more than they could chew and should shy away from introducing that many jobs if they can't make everything relatively (I know there will always be an optimal comp but there's sub-optimal and there's... Whatever we got) balanced right off the bat. I'd rather have them focus on consolidating the day-to-day experience to be honest.

[Kemas]

The one thing I was looking forward to (anima) is not only an insanely ridiculous time sink of epic proportions but they've confirmed that it's already going to be outdated in 3.2. This letter confirmed my worst fears and was the nail in the coffin for me. I don't have a job and as such can spend insane amounts of time in game- but only if it's fun and rewarding. That aspect is gone for me.

[Mooserocka33]

I could not agree more with every point you made. I just want to add that I feel the relic was released late to get people to keep subbing until 3.2 cause a lot of people were ready to leave. It's just crazy how many people are unsubbing. I really hope and think 3.2 will save the game I have faith in square. The only thing I didn't like is how they will make it easy. This means normal mode will be even more face roll easy then it was. Why don't they make it a kind of challenge. If they made normal mode maybe a little harder then crystal tower it would be fine. The way they made it was just u can walk in press one button fall asleep and still win with ease. I have a feeling making the raid easier we will see world firsts in like 2 weeks like usual. This is what people were complaining about. To be honest I did not find Alex that hard. I think it's just the right difficulty. A3 is the best fight square has ever made sucks we will never get that as2 and 4 were bad.

[WinterLuna]

Unfortunately a lot of small servers were already dead before Alexander was released. I transferred months before Heavensward hit due to personal reasons, but at the same time people were transferring from my old server because they couldn't find a static for Final Coil.

It wasn't just Alexander that caused this but they need to take a look at the small servers in general. A lot of them are ghost towns.

[Caitlinzulu]

Why is everyone saying that the relic will be outdated in 3.2? Because better weapons will drop from the next alex stage?
I kind of disagree, relic isnt aimed at the raiders that do alex savage. It is aimed more at the more casual player that doesnt raid. The fact there is a better weapon obtainable from alex or the new primal? is irrelevant to non raiders since they will never get one of those.
Its also not very likely that the new tomestone introduced in 3.2 will give us a new weapon to rival relic since we cant even get the upgrade item from the eso weapon outside of alex savage.
And even the upgraded eso weapon is only ilvl 210, the same as relic.

My conclusion is for raiders: ignore relic and get your alex/primal weapon, for non raiders get the best weapon in your reach with the relic.

[Faytte]

I think it has less to do with ff14 and more to do with recent MMOs in general. Almost every MMO/expansion is popular for a month or two before people get bored and move to the next one. If you think Blade and Soul is any different, i'm sorry but your mistaken. 2-3 months time no1 will care about blade and soul, it's just another flavor of the month MMO like RIFT, TERA, SWOTOR, GW2, and all the other MMOs that have tried to come out the last 3-4 years. When legion comes out everyone will flock to that for a month or two before dispersing to other games. It's just the way MMOs are now, they don't have the replayability that FFXI, Vanilla WoW, and Everquest had.

BnS actually has incredible play numbers from countries it's been live in, including JP. Fourth most played game in KR (after lol, sc2, lineage) and fourth in Japan. It has a credible esport and lots of exposure. Not saying it will break the mold of failed NA 'wow' killers but it's not the same story necessarily.

[Azazua_azura]

kinda proves that the devs listen to feed back though..

personal housing issue >> related to player feed back wantwed everything fc houses had

alex savage difficaulty >> player feed back

I think a big issues isn't the devs but player feed back. Unlike the jp server player feed back isn't centralized. players troll each other over ideas or go into flame wars.

I think we as a community need to step up and do better, stop treating this like facebook/twiiter/insert social media. If you have an idea make a thread or contribute to an existing thread. If you don't like an idea simply don't post. If you like an idea Like it and support it.

Try to be clear with the idea, don't leave devs guessing what you mean.