Yoshi-P on Character Growth

[ErikMynhier]

ooh the doomsayer's are back , i thought they died out in 2.3 or so

Gotta love them Debbie Downers. A few disgruntled players who are "bored" obviously have to much time on their hands. I like the part where he said people don't have the time for a never ending grind. I feel he is looking at those of us who play and have grown up jobs and responsibilities and rightly so. Mos games knock us with casual like its a dirty word, but damn, 36, full time job, and kids, I ain't got time for an endless grind. Like I said its nice to be recognized by DEVs as we make up a good chunk of the population now and will only get bigger as gamers on average become older.

[SendohJin]

One of the common threads of dissent on the forums seems to be the gear system, and I understand wanting options, or having BiS gear to be spread across content. But do you really want a game were BiS itself is based on the fight, and you need to have 2 or 3 meaningfully different "BiS" options to work with? That seems exhausting!

No, but there should be more than 2 sets of top end gear where 1 of them is pure weekly locked out grinding.

my simplest suggestions would be to split up armor and accessories.

no accessories in Raids only weapons and armor. Accessories can drop from EX Primals and other events.

split the augmentation items into it's own content and also have perishable materia that has unique traits like Shield Bash Recast -1, or Blood of the Dragon Potency +.

[Zigabar]

Im not a conspiracy theorist against the game. Nothing i have said about it is a conspiracy.

Hang on, I can find this!

...Here it is!

If the expansion is announced, but no fundamental changes are coming with it in the coming months, 3.5 could potentially mean the end of this game as we know it, best case escenario, we will see a lot of server merges to try to make populations get back into healthy numbers (problem i don't expect you to understand since you play in Balmung, which basically is another game than the rest of us play) worse case escenario, we going F2P because this game, if population keeps leaking, would not be sustainable with lower populations than we have, and seems that Yoshida isn't interested in fixing that.

Happy to help!

[Knahli]

As I said earlier, I think the idea is to have a game that is both "easy to pick up", and "hard to put down". You want the former so that people can get into it easily, and minus Heavensward being gated behind 2.55, XIV does a great job of that. The later though... No, this game is so easy to pick up, that it's easy to put down... I could quit today and come back for 4.4 and catch up pretty damn quickly... There's not really much here to retain my interest... I continue to play out of good faith for the developers, and just to support them, because things like the world and music are amazing IMO, it's just the gameplay where things start falling apart IMO... I could sit here and pick apart all the content in this game, but I don't think any of use have time for that... Diadem alone is probably a 10,000 word essay...

Item level, I think, is an absolutely terrible form of progression... If they want to effectively reset progression every other patch, then fine... I get why they do that, it makes the game easier to pick up... Give me some alternative means of progression though, give me something I can work on throughout the game, that perhaps has me doing all sorts of content... Relics Weapons could be that, Relic Armor would be an amazing addition... Right now though, the Relic quests are really quite bad, IMO... Zodiac quests are better IMO, they at least feel like a quest. Anima weapons are just directionless though... I get why they gave us so many options for them, but the result is just that I don't do anything to get the weapon... If I wanted a Zodiac weapon, I had to go out of my way to finish it... If I want an Anima weapon? I'm already bleeding Gil/Grand Company Seals/Poetics/Esoterics because this game throws them at me for pretty much everything... I put no extra effort into my Anima weapon, I just kept PvPing and got all the resources I needed off that... The result is that the grind just isn't entertaining... I want to actually do something for that reward... I'd liken it to climbing Mount Everest... The reward for that is in the doing, but XIV has effectively put me at the summit because, to quote my pedometer "You've climbed X flights of stairs! That's the height of Mount Everest!"

The kind of hardcore grind content you describe is certainly far from anything I am interested in, though even with that said, your posts have had my attention throughout. I'm not exactly buying into this doom and gloom rhetoric that people are spewing as a result of this interview but I think you presented your feelings very clearly in a manner that didn't come across as overly biased in either direction. So with that said, I'll look out for concepts like Relic Armour and anything similar in the future and support them a bit more strongly than I would have before. While I love this game, I feel I can understand your perspective and I certainly want to see your grievances remedied along with anyone in the same boat.

(Though I'm sorry to say that I don't believe you'll ever get your """official""" Balmung the way you'd like it).

[Lan_Mantear]

You know, I may be the minority, but I could care less if FFXIV ceased to exist today or 10 years from now. That fact is, I am currently enjoying it now. If that ever changes, I will leave it behind with fond memories like all the other games I've played before it. For now though, I will continue to enjoy it and not worry too much about what will happen in the future.

That being said, I played and loved FFXI. I still get nostalgic about it, but my lifestyle now could not support that type of time sink. If FFXIV were to become that type of time sink. I would be forced to stop playing. It seems to me that FFXIV was designed with players like me in mind. Which is awesome for me, and must suck for the rest of you. You have my sympathies. Not really.

[Kaurie]

It could also be greater than reported, as many active players havent cleared the most current patches.

Wow this thread grows fast. Sorry if this was already stated, but...

The ~600k is not based off of story completion, that number is an added stat. If you look at this image, http://imgur.com/a/c8SEI, you will see 639k active players and 442k completed 2.55, 311k beat 3.1 etc.

Unfortunately, I cannot read Japanese and cannot remember how they calculate the first column.

EDIT: Note this is not the most recent census (I don't think?). This one was ~5 months ago or so.

[Welsper59]

Im not a conspiracy theorist against the game. Nothing i have said about it is a conspiracy. Yoshida thinks is ok for players to leave his game when they get bored and then come back.

And, i think is rather obvious, that what i said was meant to be ingame, not forums.

The claims about hiding numbers (keeping it secret) and such regarding the population and their play time is pretty damn similar to what a conspiracy theorist would argue lol. "The numbers are lies" is essentially what such an argument is saying. Mind you, it's not impossible nor even improbable for them to do that, but you have no real grounds to argue on it factually without a single doubt. The reason being is proof or indisputable evidence to be provided. That's literally the same as accusing someone of a crime without any evidence to support it, where bias is likely your only driving force. Not saying you can't doubt, obviously, since it's good to question usually.

Ingame, we have people that speak various languages and play in general, so that doesn't really matter whether it was forums or not. You're quite egotistical to actually argue the matter of your word/actions being more important for keeping players in the game (across the entire player population) than Yoshida himself lol. I mean, that might be true among your circle of friends, but that's like me saying that I did more to market this game for new players than anyone making it by mentioning to friends that don't play that it's a good game. It doesn't exactly mean anything, at least not to anyone of significance to this game.

[Kaurie]

Hang on, I can find this!

...Here it is!



Happy to help!

That isn't a conspiracy. That is a negative prediction.
Conspiracy: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.

[OliviaJ]

You know, I may be the minority, but I could care less if FFXIV ceased to exist today or 10 years from now. That fact is, I am currently enjoying it now. If that ever changes, I will leave it behind with fond memories like all the other games I've played before it. For now though, I will continue to enjoy it and not worry too much about what will happen in the future.

That being said, I played and loved FFXI. I still get nostalgic about it, but my lifestyle now could not support that type of time sink. If FFXIV were to become that type of time sink. I would be forced to stop playing. It seems to me that FFXIV was designed with players like me in mind. Which is awesome for me, and must suck for the rest of you. You have my sympathies. Not really.

This made me laugh and is exactly my feeling!

[Jonnycbad]

If you break down merits in ffxi, besides group 2 merits, you were really amassing enough exp at level 75 to be ~ level 130, yet you put points in Str+5 or combat skill+21 which made you about as strong as a psuedo level 80. So it was an illusion of growth but really they were limited phantom levels at exorbitant exp costs. Group 2 merits were abilities and traits you would/should have gotten 75-80!but instead you could oick/upgrade only a few. Illusion of character development.