The Live Letter XXVI and why change is necessary.

[silentwindfr]

yeah, they listen to some feedback, but ignore most of the important one.
- we did ask for another type of endgame, no will still be raid only.
- we did ask for more content with challenge outside raid, no will still be gated into the raid.
- we did ask for more midcore content, no still focus on the hardcore mostly. since even the relic was delayed for not make the raid feel frustrated, same they redo the same exact mistake of the 2.X thinking people don't do raid because they can get same level of gears outside the raid.

the trouble is the try to defend a model where we do level by doing group content or solo and throw us into raid only that silly. the trouble with diadem is not the lack of rule, but the sole fact is a zergfest. make the exploration more rewarding? will simply evolve into a FATE party mentality, moving from one spot to another spot like a band of locust. it don't solve anything!

most of the answer concerning Savage, diadem and relic was soo bad, none did really answer most of the concern. why the savage is not done? because a lot of people simply are tired of jump roping content gated into raid!
why the people did farm diadem until the nerf? because it was zergfest and easy mode to get fast reward.
more important they did talk of the relic saying it was a way to obtain a weapon high level different of skill.... but for me i only see 1 way to get weapon outside relic.... do raid.

actually almost every trouble we did get in the 3.1-3.15 is tie to them will to make the raid the only revelant endgame content. they haven't touched to the leves system or the guildheist or the free company, most of this system hold a lot of potential that are simply not used. because they focus most of them energy to make everyone do raid. but not everyone want to run raid. and that what we can see with the savage.... the number tell them.... that it's not good and that they need to work on a new content endgame to put at the same level than raid.

when all the endgame is only used by 10% at best of the community, it's not the fault of the community but them fault to not take notice that them community don't want this sort of content. create content not adapted for the community is a failure... but they refuse to admite it!

if they had spend half the time to try to find a way to make the raid more populated instead to work to add more content for different type of player we will not be in a situation where player that don't go into raid have simply nothing to do!

[Kaurie]

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 the issue is that the devs don't properly read the feedback. A very dumbed down example of this is:

Dev. Here is a Green Apple.
Player. But I wanted a Red Apple.
Dev. OK We heard your feedback, and here is a hot red pepper.

What???

It's like the only read and listen to portions of the feedback and don't take the time to actually listen to what the problem is.

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.

I agree with this, the issue with devs not understanding our feedback may be due to unclear posts and unorganized threads.

[Arthor]

I think the dev's have forgotten their own statement that the game should be FUN, not a chore. If the content is fun people are willing to redo them, and you don't need to force someone to redo them cause there is like 12 classes to redo content on. Instead of making us redo content with our main class to "progress" in this game, the game should be fun and rewarding in a moderate amount of time and effort instead of a grind fest this new relic is. How many people do you think will be getting more than 1 relic with the current way the new relic system is? It isn't even fun or anything new.

[kog985]

What i think is, leave the raiding aside because it's really toxic right now (i don't know what about Midas when it release. Maybe we will have more fun fights and fun story to focus on?) but devs need to focus on the quality of the content that they are making and already made so it will make the playerbase doesn't feel dry and bored. My FC only have 19 members and right now only me is the one online the whole months lol, most are retire because the game doesn't feel like before to them. (Now who will help me with the workshop? ;_____; )

Reusing old content is not the smart way of developing, that only show to the viewers that you are lack of ________ or ______ (censored). For me, they are showing to me that they didn't have a proper developing road and strong planning structure, and just making things that just suddenly pop into their heads while they are sitting in the toilet or something. Why spending your time making glamouring based on players request or new hairstyles or something like that (I cursed these guys) and instead not use those times to polish the quality of your content? That is what we need right now.

[SinisterJointss]

One of the biggest problems IMO with raiding in XIV is there are only 4 new raids to do with every content patch they release with them. 4.... and its a single minded plot. People need more than that. People need many raids that progress in difficulty as you go through. At least, thats my opinion.

The content is too one dimensional. People want hard content but not in the way they are doing it, with all this scripted nonsense. How about raids where having a certain job causes the boss to do X move, or get X buff? Or bosses that actually require a stun or silence rotation? Using a silence causes boss to use this ability so you can choose to either let it use its ability or its silenced counterpart. These are just ideas winging from the top of my head. These artificial difficulty challenges are getting tiresome. You can only put a dps check in so many fights before it gets stale.

I think dev's lately are so out of touch with what gamers actually want that if they actually stepped out and played with the community, and asked them questions. Take polls, I mean - the resource is there, use it.

There are so many recycled things in this game, its getting old, fast. And that sucks because I do actually enjoy playing this game.

[Dyvid]

Just want to chime in here. If they plan to stick with the 2 dungeons a patch then it needs a change. First release one 4-man dungeon with low ilvl requirements like normal. Second though, release one 8-man dungeon with expected ilvl requirement for people who geared up through the previous patch. I would suspect the average ilvl for the majority would be i200 by 3.2. Further more 8-man gives the devs access to make dungeons more interesting; crowd contol, two group paths, and better boss fight mechanics.

The content is too one dimensional.

Well I think this come from the gaming being a little too accessible. There really isn't a clear gear progression path. We can easy clear all the new content in a day after it drops save for maybe one piece, then it's back to grind more glamour gear that we don't really need. I'm harping on this point but SE really really needs to give us a reason to upgrade our gear instead of just glamour. I'm not say we need to wipe 60 times on a new dungeon but it needs to at least feel challenging when properly geared.

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 can conside to a point here. But if our feedback is getting lost in the mess maybe SE can help us out here. How can we make it better for them on what is feedback & suggestion and what is fluff? We normal just run to the general discussion for everything. Maybe they can make a sticky thread in each forum specifically for just suggestion.

[Belhi]

One of the biggest problems IMO with raiding in XIV is there are only 4 new raids to do with every content patch they release with them. 4.... and its a single minded plot. People need more than that. People need many raids that progress in difficulty as you go through. At least, thats my opinion.

The content is too one dimensional. People want hard content but not in the way they are doing it, with all this scripted nonsense. How about raids where having a certain job causes the boss to do X move, or get X buff? Or bosses that actually require a stun or silence rotation? Using a silence causes boss to use this ability so you can choose to either let it use its ability or its silenced counterpart. These are just ideas winging from the top of my head. These artificial difficulty challenges are getting tiresome. You can only put a dps check in so many fights before it gets stale.

I think dev's lately are so out of touch with what gamers actually want that if they actually stepped out and played with the community, and asked them questions. Take polls, I mean - the resource is there, use it.

There are so many recycled things in this game, its getting old, fast. And that sucks because I do actually enjoy playing this game.

What was your view on the Thordian EX fight? That seem pretty well received by most Ive seen comment on it.

On feedback, its worth mentioning they will usually be getting conflicting feedback on almost every topic. You can see that just from looking at the threads that appear on these forums over time.

Case in point was the issue of in balance on the Male vs Female glamours. That would seem very straight forward but the thread had a lot of people arguing over the nature of those glamours, if they would female versions fitted so males could wear them, or entirely different sets just following similar themes.

No poster or thread speaks for all the community. Its arguable for anyone to even claim they speak for the majority. People might have an issue with a particular subject for very different reasons and want very different solutions. The best we can do is to try and provide our personal opinions as feedback in the most constructive and factual way we can.

Frankly, at the very least, the Live Letter showed they are paying attention, even if people don't think they are understanding the issue. Taking time for the developers to personally get involved in communicating with the fan base means time they have to take off making content and I'm pretty sure that one huge issue that has effected this game negatively that most people can agree on was that 3.1 came out too late. If we had had the 3 month cadence from 3.0 we would be having 3.2 dropping around now. However perhaps the Fan Festivals will provide a good chance for the developers to get a more direct level of interaction with fans and their concerns.

[DarkB]

- Remove gear and content lockout. Its been asked since years now. People want to play the game, not get locked out. People want to gear their classes. If you dont want to totally remove the weekly lockout, lower it down to 2 or 3 days lockdown, do the math and realize how long it takes for people to gear up 3 or 4 classes before you release a new update. Locking people out from playing and enjoying the game is very counter productive. Stop with this thing already. You wont stop people from unsubbing, do you see what happened? you got the opposite reaction where people stopped to sub because nothing to do except an incredibly bad designed savage. Lets see how many more months of failure you will need to address this.

- Introduce more content for solo|duo|trio (friend style). People are burnt out from havin to deal with static disaster, drama and hard content that cause fights, isolation and borderline players. A game should be fun first of all, this certainly is not.

- You have the ability to make gear last longer than this boring-nonsense-mind numbing-patch cycle system. Make gear interesting, keep the materia slots on everything, alternate gear and introduce new stats that actually can help you in fights. Personally i hate the patch-cycle system because it makes the game a loop, and that is what we've been experiencing. You bring your player base into a neverending loop of same content recycled with the same system, tokens, cycle, over and over and over.
It gets boring, not interesting, slow, useless. you saw how many people flocked away from this system, stop copying the bad part of other MMOs.

- The game at the moment really lack the FUN part, i know its crazy to say about a game which should be fun in the first place, but it is. Ask yourself why do you log in game and what for? it is because you have to complete a task you have been assigned to, to receive a reward. Not because what you are doing is fun and because you have fun into doing it. Think about it. This is very bad. You have to cap eso (yet you are kinda forced to). Relic system is another example of this, you force people to do somethin very tedious and not fun. Where is the fun into running 200+ times the same instance over and over? I just cannot understand this. You could have make a unique primal style fight to complete ur relic quest after a bit of grinding, for example you grind a bit and farm a bit then you are presented with a Thordan style fight, if you beat that > complete ur relic. This was way better than havin to grind old content over and over with 0 difficulty, challenge, fun.

FUN IS ESSENTIAL. There is 0 fun in game at the moment.

- Diadem. Oh lord. Anything Yoshi said about diadem makes almost 0 sense because is too vague, it also look like a U turn into diadem design, so i have no idea what to expect now, except the fact that people that farmed diadem and got already stats-broken i210 pieces would probably laugh at this.

More chances for exploration. <-- explore what? the map was already explore in its whole, are you going to remake the whole map? this means everything and nothing at the same moment.
Make a system for matching routes with different objectives such as battle and gathering focused. <-- this might be cool provided you give different rewards for whatever path is taken.
Add variation to the exploration objectives, and make it more fun to explore as an individual party. <-- this one is totally unclear
Create set rewards and make it so that farming is not the only objective. <--- another vague point
Reduce the content time, and turn it into content that does not rely greatly on player skill. <--- I dont really like when things go down to a unskilled zone but whatever..

Yet he doesnt say anything about adjusting the iLvL of diadem and since those changes will kick in on 3.2 most likely will stay the same. so again unless they inject new gear into this system, people wont even bother to run it anymore.

- Regarding relics. I believe relics should be equally strong as the last tier weapon of the hardest endgame at the moment of release. Otherwise you will just frustrate relic people. Why should someone bother to get a relic (knowing that you have to invest an insane amount of time, frustration, not fun) when you can get a better weapon by clearing the raid content? You could say "because not everyone likes to raid" But this argument is moot, since people strive to get the best and they get incentive to get it, so it will strongly penalize the relic weapon if you dont make it the same as last tier raid. Considering there will always be alternatives like primals (thordan), tokens weapon. There is no need to lower the relic compared to the last raid tier weapon if that is SE intention. Also on the next update you would have your relic expanded and you can keep increasing the strenght of it, but it will be paired with another new endgame raid content that will have another better weapon. So you keep a cycle that just frustrate people. Dont do that.

Simply have 2 best weapons, obtainable by doing 2 different paths. Relics or Endgame Raids. Level the difficulty of both paths to be quite the same and make both worlds happy.

Overall i wish they would addressed some of the most common issues with the game before, when people were vocal on forum, but this never happens. Xiv is turning back to be a flawed game like 1.0 was. They really better change direction asap, i honestly dont have high expectation because it looks like we living in a loop like patch-cycle. They dont listen > we keep getting a bad game every time, over and over.
We'll see what happens. There is way more to say, about gear, itemization, classes balance etc but things were said ad nauseam now. Devs should be aware of the issues already. Get to work and fix the game please.

[Felis]

yeah, they listen to some feedback, but ignore most of the important one.
- we did ask for another type of endgame, no will still be raid only.
- we did ask for more content with challenge outside raid, no will still be gated into the raid.
- we did ask for more midcore content, no still focus on the hardcore mostly. since even the relic was delayed for not make the raid feel frustrated, same they redo the same exact mistake of the 2.X thinking people don't do raid because they can get same level of gears outside the raid.

There will be midcore content

Trials

At long last we will be starting a new series of primal battles, the Warring Triad.

The first installment will be Containment Bay S1T7, and we’ll be simultaneously implementing the extreme version as well.

Unlike we’ve been doing up until now, we’ve decided to make it easier to understand by eliminating the “hard” mode naming, since it’s confusing that you are all of a sudden fighting against a hard mode version straight away. The difficulty will be on par with the “Hard” we’ve seen until now.

The battle is extremely flashy, and there just might be a mechanic where you can fall.
In case you were wondering, the lead for this battle is the person who was in charge of both Titan and Thordan’s Reign.

I think the issue is that the devs don't properly read the feedback. A very dumbed down example of this is:

Dev. Here is a Green Apple.
Player. But I wanted a Red Apple.
Dev. OK We heard your feedback, and here is a hot red pepper.

What???

it is more like this:

devs: here is an apple
player 1: apple is too casual, i want pepper
player 2: i find cherry better
player 3: too many trolls here. everyone know that apples are the best
devs: hmm, ok. here is a cherry red pepper in an apple
player 1: remove the apple
player 3: remove the pepper
player 2: there is nothing for me

[Eidolon]

There will be midcore content

It is more like this:

devs: here is an apple
player 1: apple is too casual, i want pepper
player 2: i find cherry better
player 3: too many trolls here. everyone know that apples are the best
devs: hmm, ok. here is a cherry red pepper in an apple
player 1: remove the apple
player 3: remove the pepper
player 2: there is nothing for me

Nah, the first one was closer, but it's more like

Here is an apple
Side A: I love apples!
Side B: I hate apples!
Side A: Well you're the vocal minority.
Side B: Well how do you know that?!
Side A: Because SE knows and listens.

One patch later, they give us an orange
Side B: I love oranges!
Side A: I hate oranges!
Side B: Well, you're the vocal minority.
Side A: How do you know that?!
Side B: Because SE knows and listens

One patch later, they release a Banana
Side A: I hate bananas!
Side B: I hate bananas!
Side C: Oh shut up you guys are never satisfied.