Should FF14 take a new route? Discussion

[ko_]

Besides the elemental wheel...what is new about Eureka? (I'm genuinely curious because it sure looks like Diadem to me, but with less Fates.

The fact you can delevel in there? THe biggest change in the game so far that doesn't exist anywhere else in the entire game? That's a pretty big deal. It shocking people forget this. And another thing is you get out of that place what you put in. There are people who have 4 sets of their relic armor and weapon. Go listen to LBR... some of them called in. I'm just saying everyone cries for a change but they aren't even looking at the change that was put in the game.

[Kaonis]

The fact you can delevel in there? THe biggest change in the game so far that doesn't exist anywhere else in the entire game? That's a pretty big deal. It shocking people forget this.

That's not a point in favor of the content. Exp loss and deleveling are products of an older MMO era that were rightfully dropped. Even older games that are still up and running like XI have eased up on that penalty. And that's what it is, a penalty. You can't claim a penalty to be something new as a retort when people are obviously talking about wanting new game play systems. Which Eureka lacks outside the shallow rock-paper-scissors elemental wheel. Beyond that tedious gimmick Eureka is nothing more than a trash mob grind fest with an occasional FATE zerg. Neither of which are new in the game.

[Tridus]

exactly. perfect example is all the doom and gloom about Eureka. However, 90% of people on my data center that are playing it are FULLY enjoying it AND helping eachother along. It is clearly incomplete, but hey, room for improvement.

90% of your data center, eh?

[Citation Needed]

[Tridus]

This here may be FFXIV's biggest failure. The utter lack of communication with the playerbase only creates resentment. Look no further than Eureka. Had they been more upfront with potential difficulties or outright acknowledged they intend to add more; they simply couldn't do everything all at once. I suspect people would have been far more forgiving. Why? We can hang our proverbial hats on "we're working on many of the things you're asking for." When they say nothing, people tend to assume their feedback isn't being received. Granted, XIV has a poor habit of asking for feedback only to ignore it. Ask the PvP crowd.

Yup. And the meme around here that it only matters if Japanese players complain. Is it true? Who knows. But when nobody's talking, perception is reality.

My prediction?

• New MSQ
• New EX Primal (will be easier than Shinryu)
• Rabanastre v2.0 (Hopefully closer to Weeping City)
• Ultimate
• Updates to the Glamour Dresser (Items can be removed; plates increased by five)
• PotD v2 (in 4.35)

I fully anticipate they will hope Rabanastre and the new Primal carry people's interest alongside Eureka until PotD v2 comes around. Admittedly, despite progging Ultimate, I do sometimes wonder if it's truly worth the endeavour. So few people can or even want to prog it. I feel a second primal or raid boss would be better for the community even if I'd miss the challenge.

Looks right, although I'm not convinced we'll see improvments to the glamour dresser at this point when they can't even get crystal conversion in Eureka right. And hey, I love new MSQ and new Alliance raids. Problem? MSQ is really done once. Alliance raids have a lockout on loot that says to do them once a week. What am I doing the rest of the time? It sure as hell won't be Ultimate, that's aimed at maybe 1% of the playerbase and the Twitch crowd.

That's where the concern is coming from. Eureka was likely supposed to keep people occupied, so if you don't like it (and many, many people don't like it), where are you? Sigmascape normal will be obsolete at that point except for crystalloids for alts, Expert will be what we have now +1 (and thus feel stale)... I dunno. It's not looking great for engagement.

[Remedi]

Admittedly, despite progging Ultimate, I do sometimes wonder if it's truly worth the endeavour. So few people can or even want to prog it. I feel a second primal or raid boss would be better for the community even if I'd miss the challenge.

As someone that doesn't prog it for time restaint and all in my oipinion it is actually a good implementation as something to strive for, it was actually a bit game changing considering that before you geared yourself up in savage to do nothing for 7 months now you gear yourself so that you can tackle the new ultimate.
Personally I'd rather have it requiring a synch forever It's good for the game if some rewards requires some work to do. Think about Herald of the titan title from Ulduar where you needed to kill algalon with a certain ilvl and at lv 70 without anyone diying and at first try of the week.
I find it problematic the lack of inspiring rewards something really that tells that you have worked for it, it's not just bragging raids it also might inspire others to pursue such content.

Also let's not forget the visibility that FFXIV got with ultimate (granted they started maybe too high with bahamut, so 4.3 will be extremely pressured to reach that level but we'll see)

[Mikki]

It's hard to change the foundations when the problem to change it is actually about 'change'. (I hope you understand what I mean ^^)

When you start FF XV first screen you get is 'A final fantasy for old and new'. So that in mind the FF VII remake, old players will most likely buy it again and they took the 'and new' route to attract new people that don't like the traditional wait your turn battle.
That's basically the only explanation I can think off. Or maybe they are just tired of turn based. Square Enix isn't just about Japan any more, they have holding on key locations all over the globe so there's much influence from other countries too.

And since you actually seem to be able to hold a decent discussion with unlike most other people on this forum. What do you think of a new FF MMO after this? Maybe that's a better solution then trying to untangle the spaghetti code in XIV.

Bonus note: No I don't trust you since I don't know you.
Good thing I always have a Phoenix Down in my pockets.

Yeah, unfortunately FFXIV was littered with problems from day 1. They wanted to earn player trust back by relaunching the game rather than abandoning it. At the same time, they wanted to try and keep the game as intact as possible so that returning players would not feel alienated. They paid for and poured time into a game; changing it too drastically could be a dangerous move, breaking the trust they were trying to restore. I could only imagine the complaints, "I paid for x and got y??" "This isn't the game I paid for." etc etc

Re-releasing a game is very difficult to do. However, although there were bumps in the road ffxiv did it with success. But because the game's remake was forced to be produced with limited resources and working off of original codes and models to save time and money it means that nothing is extremely optimal. At the time, SE as a company was not doing very well in general. Losing player trust and shutting down the game would have been a huge blow and so reforming it was the better option. But it felt as though it was more out of necessity rather than them having a true desire to make the game great. Of course, I'm sure Yoshi-P truly wanted success as this was a big role for him. But the company itself probably just wanted something mildly successful to help cover up the failure and to help restore the losses; they didn't expect it to be a huge success at all. Clearly not, by how unprepared they were when the servers launched for the first time. If you're unaware, the game had many issues - most people could hardly even log in; think housing rush but just...constant. So in their minds, I'm guessing they just wanted to show loyalty to customers and help their company image. But this is just my perspective and is entirely subjective.

At this point, I do feel like an entirely new MMO would be a good choice so that they could work from the ground up to create a better system and do it right this time. But I am doubtful that they would do this. An MMO is a continuous resource dump. Although it can keep money flowing for years, you have to put a lot of resources into it just to maintain it. Considering that they already have 2 MMO titles I can't see them releasing another one unless they discontinue one of the two. And even then, I wonder if they'd consider it worth it to embark on yet another. They have learned a lot that could be put to use but eh...

Honestly I think they just need to move the game over to a new engine, salvage what they can and go from there. To yet again reference league of legends, I honestly urge people to take a look at the history of that game. Look at the changes in character models. Look at the client's rehaul. Look at how they produced an entirely new map when the old one didn't feel up to snuff anymore. See how they improve characters, adding depth with more voiced lines and streamlining abilities so that they make sense when a kit is outdated. Read developer blogs and notes for the game; see how they are changing the entire engine to a new one.

No one says it needs to be done all at once. Baby steps.

And hey... I guess I can't blame someone for not trusting a healer named Fenix Down. ;p

[Marluxia]

Silence is a vacuum, and leaving a vacuum will compel people to fill it with speculation.

Case in point!

I've posted this elsewhere but I feel it needs repeating. The problem with Eureka isn't so much what it is as much as what it represents: a bleak future for Final Fantasy XIV.

There are four possibilities for why Eureka got developed the way it did and none of them bode well for the future of the game.

1). Awful project management
This feature purportedly took 17 months to develop, owing to the fact that it was announced in October of 2016. The fact that Eureka feels unfinished stinks to me of the dev team not having a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish, no long-term roadmap, and spent much of the dev time either faffing about or repeatedly starting over from scratch. To me, this is the most likely option, since Stormblood in general is floundering about in most departments in a similar fashion.

2). Engine limitations
Or, the dev team had loads of great and unique ideas that would have made Eureka amazing...but the FF14 engine code is a pile of spaghetti that would shock and awe Chef Boyardee to the point of retching nausea, making it unfeasible or impractical to implement anything other than boring Hunt zerging and mob grinding in a reasonable manner. This also has the potential to spell long-term doom if their systems are incapable of accommodating anything remotely complex.

3). The dev team genuinely thinks this kind of content is fun
I question this because numerous inferential evidence lends itself to suggesting that the FFXIV devs don't play their own game, QA is probably too polite to tell them otherwise, assuming there's QA at all beyond finding bugs.

4). The dev team knows this content is dull but doesn't care
I try not to think this because of Hanlon's razor--there's no such thing as true evil, just varying levels of incompetence--but I'm not sure how to avoid thinking this when they keep making the same mistakes, over and over. There's never been a reasonable margin of people who praised Atma grinding or Hunts or Diadem Dino Island.

Heck, when they announced the Atma stage of the HW Relic, even Yoshi-P said he would skip the step if he could (which is one hell of a condemnation for your own game, man. IF YOU DON'T THINK IT'S FUN, WHY ARE YOU PUTTING IT IN THE GAME?)

What in gods name compelled them to think Eureka would be enjoyable to a majority when content that uses the same fundamentals of Eureka (i.e. spam your rotation until thing fall down) have repeatedly been met with vocal criticism?

Then again, I suppose long grinds keep subs, you know? You don't need to make something actually fun, just make content that is just barely above people's standards and keep that sub money rolling. And they can push the envelope of how low some people's standards will go.

Or any combination of the above. It really doesn't bode well.

I love Final Fantasy XIV, okay. Some part of me has to love it (in partial combination with psychologically exploitative Skinner Box mechanics like weekly tomestone caps and weekly drops, obviously) for me to have played it for 5 years since ARR launched.

But it's hard to call the game's current direction anything other than "foreboding".

[Marluxia]

What so it doesn't count a change cause you and a few don't like it? That's not good.. if that's the case then noone should be on my case when I mention ALL you do is kill the thing.. so nothing will EVER change. I'm just saying that is STILL a change to THIS game. Same with the elemental wheel.

This argument is missing the point.

By the pure literal definition of the word, yes, delevelling and the magia board are technically "new" mechanics.

The argument isn't that "Eureka has no new features at all". Fundamentally, the argument is multi-tiered.

1). Yes, there is de-levelling and the Magia board, but those "new" elements are constructed around Hunt-zerging and FATE grinding, both of which have been in the game for five years.
2). There is not enough new features of sufficient depth to justify the development time spent on Eureka.
3). As a result of #1 and #2, Eureka is deemed to not be worth the potential content that could have been developed instead of Eureka (opportunity cost).

The Magia Board and de-levelling are new to FFXIV, so by a pure argument of semantics, yes the content is "new".

What people are arguing against that those "new" mechanics are built around Hunts and FATEs, both of which are dead horses whom Square Enix are beating so vigorously they're mistaking the twitching as a sign of life.

[Recruiter]

FFXIV is 4 years old with most players being at level cap, but has two major issues:

• Equipment stats are too basic. It all boils down to 2 iLv identical pieces per endgame tier and all you need to do is choose the one with the sub stats you like more.
  I'm not counting crafted gear as its rarely a viable choice.
• Endgame content boils down to just 4 Savage floors, 1 extreme primal, 1 24man raid, 4 normal raid floors.
  Raid and normal raid ilv is always too low but it serves as a gateway to endgame and provides 1 weekly upgrade items for tome gear.

Expert dungeons, older expert primals, maps, hunts, fates, leves, hests etc are in fact content but not endgame content in any way other than that some help you get tomes and upgrade tome gear.

In other words, we need more meaningful loot, and more ways to obtain it.

[KisaiTenshi]

I am ready for a new mmo with actual decent coding this time. Eureka reveals more about how limited the codes of this game is more than anything

Every time someone drops "decent coding" or "poorly optimized" in a comment or discussion about a game, is revealing of how little they actually know about coding.

There is not some "make game suck less" tick box. There is not a "bugs=0" line.

The difference between North America and Japan/Korea is that zero-latency programming can not be done. The only way to get the M for Massive in a MMO in North America is either by having shards that serve the surrounding 500km area, and can not talk to each other, or by having worlds that can talk to each other (which appears to be exclusive to FFXIV) but trading off command latency (eg no "action RPG" elements are possible.) The entire reason we can avoid AOE's at all is because there is a long window. No single player game would ever be this forgiving.

A game with better netcode would have to be written with the intent of being a MMO, from both the client and server, and that is just not the current development model. The current development model is to retro-fit single-player game engines like Unreal, CryEngine, Unity and so forth, and make every "level" or "zone" maps as small as possible (really run any of the 2.0 dungeons unsynced, solo and notice that all of them except for the V1.0 holdovers are actually very small. The V1.0 hold overs are actually larger, but they cut off some parts to make them less of a maze.) Those engines I mentioned above all share the same issues that FFXIV doesn't have when they're used as MMO's. FFXIV actually works out pretty well considering I've never seen any crashes or GPU-related garbage that these other engines have when running for long periods of time.

A game that is "better optimized" means cutting everything in half. Textures are cut in half, model sizes go back to 2004-era sizes. Like every time Square puts out a PC game, "it needs better optimization" comes up, and some good-natured modder basically disables everything that makes the PC version superior to the PS3/PS4 version.

To be fair, not every game published by SE is done in-house, and some of these third parties (like the mobile/android/ios ports of FF6/Chrono Trigger) appear not care about the finished product, creating a "SquareEnix PC ports are buggy and sloppy" reputation that may hurt PC game sales in much the same way that we all avoid licensed titles by EA due to Electronic Art's obsession with microtransactions and general IP raiding of studios they acquire and then shut down. Some people don't care and will take any dogfood they are fed.

Which is to circle back to the topic, a new MMO will not be "better" at anything. FFXIV is already using the best available technology that is also used in FFXV. Unless you want the requirements for an Action MMO to be "move to NYC, LA or Tokyo", one is not going to happen. The current allowance for lag in internet mmo games, is also what allows cheating to be prolific because the closer the cheater is to the data center, the larger advantage they will have over players that aren't local.