Why is Yoshi P turning his back on the playerbase that loves this game the most?

[Dzian]

I would question if that's not the entirely wrong reason for playing. The reward isn't the gear, it's the defeat of the boss. Gear helps towards that goal, and the subsequent fights against it. The tools shouldn't be what's the driving force behind your motivation, the actual destination should be. I don't contest that this is a common mindset though, but I will continue to protest people shouldn't be so overly glorifying of what ultimately are just a means to an end. Don't misunderstand either, getting gear is a great feeling, but to say it's the ultimate goal is quite backwards.

in it's current design the gear is the ultimate end. it's designed that way. otherwise what you'd then have is players who smash a piece of content once, and its done forever. because they've beaten it. if the destination is simply beating it then the journey is almost instantaneous. rewards are the driving force. the very game is designed that way.

if you took away all the rewards hell even all the tomestones for dailies what would happen. queue times would go through the roof. this is basically exactly what happens with content. once the rewarda aren't worth it. no one bothers..

Don't get me wrong though I do kinda understand your sentiment, but I feel that what you refer to better fits the idea of character growth. defeating that boss makes your character feel more powerfull. yet in the current design system where Yoshi doesn't want characters to grow but rather gear to grow, it a philosophy that just doesn''t seem to fit.

the other issue is that the "value" for want of a better term of defeating that boss loses all significance over time. defeating that boss might make you feel more powerful today but tomorrow that boss will be a face roll with better gears / nerfed mechanics and an echo bonus.

coil is an example of this. felt quite proud of myself after beating bahamut in t13 in 2.5 there was a sense of power. and it's now gone. helping people clear coils in anticipation for 3.4 it's quite saddening facerolling your way through bahaumt with 3 people.

this game is built around gear growth and as a result of that rewards are what matters. this is why no one raids the rewards aren't worth it. and the difficulty is meaningless

[HungryHippo]

While I agree, 6 months of the same raid content is tiring, I would debate that XI had more endgame though

Actually an expansion pack(treasure of something) had a lot more content that was viable and worth for a damn long time than whole HW had included patches. I might be wrong on this one, but I remember someone comparing. Again I don't want this game to be another XI. But it's also the fact I don't think it ever could be like it either.

If there was no LS event I could screw off and do lets say 7 man Jormugand, 6 man hydra or 5 man. I could do stuff that could give me my type of entertainment(I'm saying this because not everyone likes the same type of stuff). While I obtain fun plus rewards I like. Think of this way, we have a lot of different content in this game but the lack of fighting content is there, a huge lack. Never force people to do gathering when some people don't even like it. The most ironic thing is few people on these forum say there is so much to do, yet they barely done anything and then say in another thread gathering is boring, then tells people to do it. /Mindblown.

[Critical-Limit]

I will grant you, in XIV, seeing the same boss, on a weekly if not multiple times weekly, basis, isn't great.

This is just my opinions and I dunno if I'm minority but...

What were the best parts of XI's combat? I think randomness of TP moves.


I want FFXIV, exactly how it is. But I want the boss to be more random and unpredictable so replaying them is fun. I play fighting games competitively. You'd think fighting Fox as Captain falcon would get tiring after 14 years of it.

But it stays fresh because humans are different and will randomly change strategy. FFXIV bosses are just literally memorization and trial/error. Minus a very very few mechanics. Once you learn them you can just muscle memory them and that's when boredom settles in. Reacting or having to change strats on the fly.

Is something I'd like to see

[SwdVengeance]

snip

I just don't agree. While the tools you need to kill the boss are a goal, they aren't the ultimate goal. I never said killing the boss was the only goal either, I recognize that gear is a reward as well, however always secondary to the bosses. If gear was the point, there would be ultimately no need for the boss, because the goal could be obtained without it. No matter what path you take to get gear in this game, it requires killing bosses to obtain with the minor exception to crafted gear which provides it's own form of endgame.


To you're point of 'value', it's seems a highly flawed argument. Does one, upon graduating college suddenly feel completely high school sad? Does one find completing a marathon suddenly feel at a loss that they did a half marathon the previous year? Over time people are going to progress past challenges, and old ones will become less of a challenge because of what's gained. This problem is more complex when speaking about persistent video games, as not everything that trivializes a previous challenge is under the control of the player. This is where I feel most suddenly find loss when a previous challenge is lessened by something external to themselves. However, the feeling isn't wholly justified. The challenge was still present when they accomplished it, they still triumphed over it, and they gained something for having done it. By taking away the challenge, they don't ever take away your accomplishment. This disconnect people have with the idea that, just because a certain challenge is easier now, it somehow minimalism their accomplished baffles me a bit. The original experience is, for the most part in XIV, perfectly repeatable on almost every fight there is, via level sync/limiting your own gear. While it may not be the case with you, this is the main hinging point I feel for where people start to feel less power as a character because accessibility to accomplishing something they did, increases. The more people that accomplish something, the less powerful one feels, now matter if the challenge remains the same between the two.

At the core, this disagreement goes beyond FFXIV to apply to just about any and all video games. At what point does someone desire to replay something? If all rewards for accomplishing a game are stripped upon subsequent playthroughs, what's the point? If rewards aren't stripped away, but only the difficulty changes with no new rewards, why do it? I would again contest, it's the bosses/fights. You play the game to, well, 'play' the game. Gear only modifies you're playing, doesn't define it, the challenges you face do. Gear growth and item scaling aren't the core issue of why people stop playing or the loss of value of what one accomplishes. It's the mindset that those rewards are ultimately a definition of your characters, and in turn, your power/growth and should something outside yourself change that, you've been stripped of something.

Actually an expansion pack(treasure of something) had a lot more content that was viable and worth for a damn long time than whole HW had included patches.

Admittedly, Treasures was when I stopped playing so I can't speak from experience. However, that was the first North American based expansion they gave us, which was 3 whole years past the original launch. Content added between launch and that expansion was scarce at best. We had tons of it, but if you had seen it all you never got more. I haven't gone back and counted it all, but I would argue the amount of content we get total in XIV is about equivalent to XI during the lifespan of an expansion. Granted, I have no idea how the landscape changed after Aht expansion in XI.

snip

I wouldn't be against seeing something like this, perhaps in it's own section of content. Not really XI type encounters, but XIV designed encounters with an air of randomness to them. Though there was a reason I believe this wasn't revisited, at least in XI, there were fights where you were basically screwed should the boss decide to throw two of something at you back to back. Rng isn't often spoken well of from my experience. While I know, and empathize with your feelings about muscle memory bosses, the alternative isn't without large issues. I can see a portion of the community being extremely upset at this as it's impossible to gain perfect efficiently on due to the randomness.

[HungryHippo]

XI had 2 expansion in 3 years. Yes the game Came out later in na and EU but they were fast

[SwdVengeance]

XI had 2 expansion in 3 years. Yes the game Came out later in na and EU but they were fast

Ok, I forgot about Chains in 2004. After doing some googling to refresh the memory, I stand corrected. Though I would debate the amount of content released within that expansion was more significant than a numbered patch cycle.

[Reynhart]

At the core, this disagreement goes beyond FFXIV to apply to just about any and all video games.

XIV being an MMO is a little different. I payed XIII once to be able to play anytime I want, and it took me around 100 hours to complete.
XIV asks me to pay every month, and my playtime is around 250 days. Any system will be boring after 200+ days of doing approximatively the same thing over and over.

And when Yoshida said that it's totally ok to play something else, I'm sure he meant "Just play a few hours per week and the game will always have something fresh...but please, continue your subscription fee". Sorry, but it bothers me to pay each month for that.

The sad part is that Final Fantasy was especially famous for trying new things over and over, and not resting on the same gameplay element over the years. Nowadays, any kind of innovation will be met with serious fear and distrust.

[Annah]

The players who backed this game from day 1 are a minority now due to the path thats currently taken

That's not entirely true.. We have 500 members in our guild. About 80% have been here since day one and we're still enjoying it

[Reynhart]

That's not entirely true.. We have 500 members in our guild. About 80% have been here since day one and we're still enjoying it

So a sample of 400 people...over a playerbase of 700 000
Not relevant, sorry.

[ChocoFeru]

I'm a long-time FFXI player, and played 1.0 as well, and I don't know... Vertical progression is ok.

Horizontal progression like FFXI and even 1.0 are ok, but it's bad for newcomers. A new player on FFXI had to do all the previous work that their mates did in order to catch them. If you remember Chains of Promathia you'll know what I mean... Imagine you're new and your friends already finished CoP, and you have to redo all the work. Sure your friends can help you, but imagine somebody completely new looking for that content alone; it'll take longer than the rest since that's old content.

I'd love character progression, but I don't want people to leave the game because it's hard to catch up.