Should FF14 take a new route? Discussion

[Okamimaru]

I'm not doom and glooming... I am ok with how this game works myself... it's a simple fact that unless you add a whole new system from the base it's just not going to change much... it's not a bad thing... I think SE is right to focus on trying to focus on minor side content and QOL improvements over trying to build a whole new system that will inevitably upset as many people as the current "stale" system does... maybe SE will build that perfect MMORPG everyone wants 14 to be but it will be a whole new and separate game... not this one...

[Ilyrian]

FFXIV is a sandbox MMO with nice graphics and a FF theme. You get what you pay for.
Also WoW is (and has always) been 'dying' for the past 13 years too.
I can only imagine how frustrating it is for the devs to get feedback without anyone actually saying what they want. A new director could direct the game to...what?

[Liam_Harper]

The only way I see it changing directions is if they decided to completely rewrite the combat system from the ground up...

They need to re-do the entire game really on a new engine.

It's amazing a game nearly a decade and a half old like WoW can manage smooth combat where any number of abilities register instantly, and in FF Ninja's have to take server lag into account to use Ninjitsu properly. Unfortunately they probably didn't expect ARR to be a success at all and were given a tight budget and as a result the servers and game engine are simply incapable of decent combat.

FF14 is just far too limited by its game engine. They can't give us lots of bag storage or make fully fleshed glamor systems or support proper vehicle quests or cope with large amounts of characters attacking a boss or anything fancy like other MMO's with good quality game engines can pull off. As a result the game never advances or develops, we just get variations of the same things. If they were serious about ARR, they should have invested right from the start. But they didn't.

[KaivaC]

Having read some of the comments, I'm not dooming and glooming. But I do believe that some things have gotten stale. The isn't too much in the game that lasts more than a patch cycle, which I feel contributes to this feeling that the game is stuck in a kind of limbo.

[splinter1545]

We definitely need change. But we're not going to get it. People are happy with the way things are now, despite it being the same treadmill that we walked on for 5 years. There's no reason for SE to shake things up if people are willing to pay for what we have currently.

[Ilyrian]

Having read some of the comments, I'm not dooming and glooming. But I do believe that some things have gotten stale. The isn't too much in the game that lasts more than a patch cycle, which I feel contributes to this feeling that the game is stuck in a kind of limbo.

But what is it that you actually want? Is there another MMO you like that is turning your head?
MMOs do get stale - they are just a grind-fest. That's the nature of the beast.
IMO FFXIV is better positioned than others as you aren't severely punished for taking breaks and/or not being at the bleeding edge of content.

[KaivaC]

But what is it that you actually want? Is there another MMO you like that is turning your head?
MMOs do get stale - they are just a grind-fest. That's the nature of the beast.
IMO FFXIV is better positioned than others as you aren't severely punished for taking breaks and/or not being at the bleeding edge of content.

Just a couple of things since I'm on mobile and can't give a proper post right now : because of Tera, I like the idea of dual jobs. Like a Tank that could do a dps role and vise versa.
Horizontal progression would've been a nice addition to stuff like Eureka,just optional. Content patches that are more than just the same thing recycled with nothing new added to them. Things like that.

[Aylis]

So food for thought: Do you think FFXIV would be able to innovate and go to greater heights with a new director? Or is the issue solely Square itself? Or maybe it's something else entirely that FFXIV needs.

I feel the issue lays on SE themselves. FFXIV at the start was a commercial disaster I think we can all agree with that. Stocks dropped significantly, many lost faith in SE and the franchise itself. FF13 didn't help matters either in this. It took a lot of work for them to rebuild not only the game but the companies name and the franchises name. Here we are now. While FFXIV doesn't have WoW's numbers and based on Lodestone data mines, its at least average/above average in terms of non WoW MMO population numbers. Its at least making money now for SE. I feel its past and all the past consumers that now want nothing more to do with SE or FF have taken its toll. I feel they're afraid to take risks in innovation due to worry history will repeat itself and the franchises name and the companies name would be beyond saving again. They see from 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 playing safe means at least making money. For all we know this could very well have scared them for life in that this could be their last delve into the MMO market.

Yoshida may have pulled them out of the fire, however in terms of a companies food chain, he is only the games director. He has bosses higher up that tell him what to do. A new director just means that new director would have those same bosses telling them what to do

[Tridus]

A lot of problems would be fixed if they put the time and resources into fixing the netcode. In particular to do things like reduce latency of server actions, and reducing how often the client and server sync (the root of the annoyances with things like inventory and the mess that you get when 130 people pile up to fight one mob). The problem is that doing it is hard. It wil take a long time, will require tons of testing and iterations, will likely break stuff in the short term, and isn't something the PR team can pitch as new content because it's not really visible in a trailer.

The long term health of the game would be greatly helped by eating that pain and doing it. But they don't. Is it YoshiP? Is it budget? Is it senior management? Is it risk adversion? Is it the belief that a patch with no content at all would turn players off? Who knows. But until they do it, they're handicapped by technical limitations that make doing anything more difficult than it needs to be.

As someone who doesn't have enough words to describe everything I think is wrong with Eureka and the concern that gives me for what I'll be doing for the next 5 months, I tend to see the value in a change of direction. The status quo uses technical limitations as an excuse for everything, and at some point that simply needs to be dealt with for the game to progress. They simply can't deliver meaningful new experiences until they do.

[Launched]

No, trying to take a new route is causing lots of the game's problems. SE needs to stop trying to add unique content like Diadem/Verminion/Eureka and focus on what they do well: dungeons and raids. We're getting half the amount of dungeons we got in ARR and the new content isn't worth that loss at all. Raids have also become a lot more boring, we don't get anything like BCoB arenas/CT trash anymore.