4.25 and beyond

[Vhailor]

this qoute sums up what i mean perfectly i guess this game isn't succeeding to them when the game never dips under 500k players which is the second highest mmorpg community besides wow.

It isn't succeeding to me, no.

Profit and quality are two entirely different things. Most of the time, when players are bringing up the idea of wanting to succeed in the context of FFXIV being stale / boring, it's in the context of quality, not profit. There are plenty of examples of half-arsed games that proved to be profitable - sometimes even wildly so. The Call of Duty franchise offers several examples just on its own. I want FFXIV to succeed as a game. My concern is never for a company's bottom line; worrying about that is the job of the publisher and the developer. My concern is for my general enjoyment, and the enjoyment of my friends, who are logging on less and less these days. If a company cannot deliver that with a certain title, regardless of the rationale, than the title has failed for me as a gamer.

Also, being second-highest compared to WoW really shouldn't be viewed as successful in the year 2018. World of Warcraft dwarfs the number of subscribers for FFXIV, and it does so despite being roughly a decade-and-a-half old. That's sad, and it's a massive indictment of any company in the MMO space that isn't creating an intentionally niche title - SE first and foremost, given their shameless efforts to ape WoW early and often.

[RiyahArp]

It's not so much average or hardcore, its that the game in terms of content isn't really that much different than it was at HW launch, just a bit less punishing. There hasn't been much to change up the formula, and even in a sense less; we needed the relic much earlier to give people more of a reason to do things. Eureka probably is going to be the first meaningful different content since launch.

[Joe777]

It isn't succeeding to me, no.

Profit and quality are two entirely different things. Most of the time, when players are bringing up the idea of wanting to succeed in the context of FFXIV being stale / boring, it's in the context of quality, not profit. There are plenty of examples of half-arsed games that proved to be profitable - sometimes even wildly so. The Call of Duty franchise offers several examples just on its own. I want FFXIV to succeed as a game. My concern is never for a company's bottom line; worrying about that is the job of the publisher and the developer. My concern is for my general enjoyment, and the enjoyment of my friends, who are logging on less and less these days. If a company cannot deliver that with a certain title, regardless of the rationale, than the title has failed for me as a gamer.

Also, being second-highest compared to WoW really shouldn't be viewed as successful in the year 2018. World of Warcraft dwarfs the number of subscribers for FFXIV, and it does so despite being roughly a decade-and-a-half old. That's sad, and it's a massive indictment of any company in the MMO space that isn't creating an intentionally niche title - SE first and foremost, given their shameless efforts to ape WoW early and often.

Personally I couldn't care less how another MMO is doing, nor do I have a reason to compare MMOs to each other. Like you though there are MMOs I do not enjoy due to blunders on the company's part, or due to the company itself, despite how well the game may or may not be doing or how many players it has.

[Musashidon]

They are still entitled to their opinion of course, everyone is. However, SE will indeed attempt the road that caters to an average playerbase, with said average depending on both feedback and observation. It is indeed impossible to please every player. That goes for every game out there though.

i am not saying people can't have opinions but i don't go ask for a game to be changed almost completely due to me like games that play differently.

ff14 is catered to players who can only play a few hours a day and few days a week, but people want it to cater to players who play 5 hours everyday.
while i hope one day you will get the game of your dreams it will never be ff14, it has constant grind treadmill because it caters to the players who like that sort of thing.

It isn't succeeding to me, no.

Profit and quality are two entirely different things. Most of the time, when players are bringing up the idea of wanting to succeed in the context of FFXIV being stale / boring, it's in the context of quality, not profit. There are plenty of examples of half-arsed games that proved to be profitable - sometimes even wildly so. The Call of Duty franchise offers several examples just on its own. I want FFXIV to succeed as a game. My concern is never for a company's bottom line; worrying about that is the job of the publisher and the developer. My concern is for my general enjoyment, and the enjoyment of my friends, who are logging on less and less these days. If a company cannot deliver that with a certain title, regardless of the rationale, than the title has failed for me as a gamer.

Also, being second-highest compared to WoW really shouldn't be viewed as successful in the year 2018. World of Warcraft dwarfs the number of subscribers for FFXIV, and it does so despite being roughly a decade-and-a-half old. That's sad, and it's a massive indictment of any company in the MMO space that isn't creating an intentionally niche title - SE first and foremost, given their shameless efforts to ape WoW early and often.

you are in no way required to like ff14 or think it is a great game i don't wanna seem like i am saying you have to.

what i am saying is FF14 isn't trying to be the game you want, and its succeeding very very very well despite not being what you want, it won't change any time soon and anything they add that sounds like something you would like would be butchered to cater to the casual full time life player who can't play well or often ruining it for you.

now nothing compared to wow is succeeding they have years of nostalgia built that every expansion will give them 10 million players the first month from now on but no other game has ever come close to toping wow either so that is why it's a monumental feat because being second place is a big deal when most mmorpg's can't even touch 500k when we never go below.

The next expansion will definitely decide this game's fate, and I fear they won't change much up at all.

this is what i mean people said this for heavenward also, and i hate sounding so terrible to say it but they aren't changing anything they even said it saying we want to be predictable we want you to feel like you can leave the game and come back whenever and it's because this formula is working it's making them money and getting them players sure there are the expansion release players only or the patch release players only but it's working and people are liking it, yes there are people who don't but they aren't making a big enough impact to get SE to stop.

[Hyperia]

Really just wish they could make better midcore content and actual raids. All we have now is like a series of boss fights for savage, alliance raids are just big dungeons, and dungeons, they may as well just put us in a hallway. It all looks cool, but meh its just a chore. Nothing new, nothing fun, no puzzles, a literal treadmill.

SE should bring back that questionnaire thing they used a the end of 1.0, doubt they even listen to the playerbase anymore.

The raids are worse than that, there nothing but zone in, fight the boss, zone out. Its like we get 4 primals every 6 months, its very boring. When I think of good raids, I think of what WoW offered, they took time and had lots of bosses that were fun. I don't really care for a 15 minute boss fight where if you make a tiny mistake, its a wipe. I'd rather have a lot of bosses that take 6 to 8 minutes to fight and move on. Clearing trash that had a nice chance of dropping bonus loot also made things more interesting. I want raids to be a nice fun 2 hour dungeon crawl that tells a story and offer a non-linear method of encountering the content.

I believe that the raid team sizes are totally off the mark, 8 players makes mistakes way too punishing where if they upped things to 16 players, it would make things considerably easier. 8 players is great if your at the top of your game but if your a casual and want something more than the story mode, your out of luck. A 16 player mode would offer more opportunities and better tuning possibilities over a 24 player version which is too large and a zerg fest. 2 tanks, 2 to 4 healers and 10 to 12 DPS would work very nicely.

I'm also growing tired of overused raid mechanics such as one shots and falling off platforms or the death wall... it gets old really fast and it feels like a crutch they are using way too much. The other mechanic I also don't like is what I have called the Tokyo rule, if you don't live very close to the servers and have crazy good latency, you can miss a simple mechanic and pow... wipe the raid again. I understand that they don't trust client side processing because there afraid of cheaters but they really need to let that go and accept the fact that they need more client side processing. Deal with the cheaters by better log analysis or just accept that it will happen. It is a small percentage but eventually somebody will brag about what is going on and you can bust the whole lot of them when you catch them. Healers having to DPS and tanks having to DPS a lot also hurt things for me, I miss the old trinity where healers had to heal with lots of different heals and tanks had to tank with lots of different defenses and taunts.

One of the other things that kept me in the game was the music but Solken's work seems to be missing in the latest raids. I'm not particularly fond of listing to the Ultros & Typhon trial music (I know its actually from 6 but never played it so that's my only reference). His works kept the other raids much more interesting, engaging and enjoyable. I miss jamming to his music... Solken where are you!

Lastly, I miss the old relic grinds helped keep me in the game and their absence is painfully felt. It wasn't the best stuff in the world but it gave me something to do while waiting 6 months for new raid content. As it is now, I'm burned out and starting to play other games after 4 years straight of enjoying XIV. As for Eureka, it looks dull, brown, uninteresting and overly complicated. I want bright, colorful zones with lots of beauty and not a bunch of brown scenery. I'm tired of brown scenery, we had 3 zones of it already, yes it may be realistic but... this is a fantasy game... lets have some color like you did in the Othard zones, those were beautiful.

Well, I've rambled and ranted long enough... time for me to get some sleep and resume playing other games. Hopefully I will catch the spark to play this game in the future, but as of now...

[Darrcyphfeid]

this qoute sums up what i mean perfectly i guess this game isn't succeeding to them when the game never dips under 500k players which is the second highest mmorpg community besides wow.

I know you think this is a good and compelling point, but it's not. This is a (dubious) measurement of the game's population ranging from lv35 through lv70, and is by its nature reactionary. If you only look at the current number of players you don't see and can't plan for problems until it's already significantly affecting your bottom line. In a world where subscription-based MMOs are largely a relic of the past, in a market where "Games as a Service" is quickly becoming the norm outside the constraints of the MMO genre, being reactionary is an incredibly dangerous prospect.

Square has to be constantly proactive, and this is where community feedback is vital. Very little that has transpired since the launch of Stormblood has indicated that they're taking (or, truly, even hearing - see: the Urgamax situation) and incorporating that feedback, however, and meanwhile other cracks in the game's foundation are being revealed (see: Main Scenario Roulette, widespread connectivity issues, repeat of the solo instance failure, any number of "server limitation" excuses). The sky isn't falling, necessarily, but ignoring things because "the game is doing well right this moment" is very shortsighted. I haven't seen positive word-of-mouth about the game beyond here and r/FFXIV in nearly a year, whereas back in ARR and (early) HW I'd see people saying good things on a regular basis on multiple websites that I still frequent. That in and of itself is a problem.

this game has been SO successful that yoshi p has now gotten TWO...TWO promotions out of it.

The team did a good job developing and marketing the relaunch of XIV with ARR, but that has no actual bearing on their ability to continue making it successful by any standard in any way. Again, this is reactionary.

[Musashidon]

The team did a good job developing and marketing the relaunch of XIV with ARR, but that has no actual bearing on their ability to continue making it successful by any standard in any way. Again, this is reactionary.

i snipped and just left this part but my comment is about all you said.

you are right i am not saying this game can't fail, but so far it hasn't for the last 4 years there have been doomday sayers saying the game is going to end se is going to fail and everyone will see what they do.

until the game actually fails be it next week, 10 years from now or anytime between it's all hypothetical saying the game will die someone has to be right eventually as nothing lasts forever even WoW it will one day end but for now both games are going and going strong.

they are also working on fixing all the issues didn't they say they will looking into upping the main scenario roulette rewards again?
and they fixed the instance issue almost instantly this time like less than a couple hours with 4.2 so it wasn't like raubhan/pippen ex

now i am not saying they completely fixed the issues just that they are listening even when players feel they aren't.

[polyhedral]

Or, throw more than 1 boss at us at a time. IDK, call me crazy, but my memories of Kirin and Dynamis are some of my favorite gaming memories I have.

And let's not think I'm hating on this game too much. Just look at my forum join date. I've been playing since 1.0 beta, even though I took a break a month after HW launch when I started to realize the treadmill rehash. When I came back in 4.1, at least I had months of content to enjoy, but now, that tired feeling is coming on strong again.

I do hope Eureka is good and gives me something to expect more of in the future. I want to be hopeful, and I'd love to actually believe that SE listens to folks like myself, because I know I'm not alone in this feeling I'm fearing to be true.

[Darrcyphfeid]

they are also working on fixing all the issues didn't they say they will looking into upping the main scenario roulette rewards again?

This ultimately cuts to the heart of the matter.

There was a vocal segment of the community that begged them for years to adjust Castrum and Praetorium, whether that entailed making them into solo instances or moving the cutscenes outside of the dungeon. Instead, and again I'm going to point out that this happened years later and months (a full year?) after they first acknowledged the feedback and said they would be making adjustments, their "fix" was to make cutscenes unskippable. Even while doing the dungeons unsynced from what I've gathered (I've made no effort to touch either dungeon). For them to double down on their absolutely idiotic decision and say they're going to increase the "rewards" is both laughable and quintessentially Square Enix. The company as a whole has been completely and utterly out of touch with damn near everything for, I don't even know anymore, 12 years?

Meanwhile MSQ Roulette wasn't even the most glaring problem with the leveling experience to begin with. That honor would go to all of the now-obsolete filler quests added to the 2.0 storyline. Or most of the 2.1~2.55 storyline slog. Or the low-level experience becoming an absolute snoozefest post-4.0 job adjustments. And/or that DR 50/60 contains several story-required dungeons but the community has no actual incentive to queue for that and results in ridiculous queue times. But we can't get them to deal with most/any of that besides throwing up an offensive cash shop item (story skip potion) because, again, they spent months doing something stupid, will spend weeks deciding how to best double down on that, and then will invariably get forced into doing another change that may or may not be the thing they should have done the first time around.

and they fixed the instance issue almost instantly this time like less than a couple hours with 4.2 so it wasn't like raubhan/pippen ex

You're correct. But the fact that it happened again at all is a red flag and worthy of at least 7 facepalms. I don't really even understand why Sigmascape (and probably Omegascape come 4.4) requires a solo instance that's effectively a copy of Deltascape's to begin with.

[Joe777]

Or, throw more than 1 boss at us at a time. IDK, call me crazy, but my memories of Kirin and Dynamis are some of my favorite gaming memories I have.

And let's not think I'm hating on this game too much. Just look at my forum join date. I've been playing since 1.0 beta, even though I took a break a month after HW launch when I started to realize the treadmill rehash. When I came back in 4.1, at least I had months of content to enjoy, but now, that tired feeling is coming on strong again.

I do hope Eureka is good and gives me something to expect more of in the future. I want to be hopeful, and I'd love to actually believe that SE listens to folks like myself, because I know I'm not alone in this feeling I'm fearing to be true.

Well we do have a trial where we fight Ultros and Typhon in 1 battle...