We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Mahrze]

Honestly I m tired of seeing people tossing around over a decade of bad PR explanations that blizzard came up with, without exercising critical analysis about what they are talking about while thinking they are the one who came up with the idea. And honestly I m not even trying to win anything there, I m just tossing my displeasure about the game as a customer.

I lol'd /10char.

[Stanelis]

That's a bold claim you made. Unfortunately, there's no way to prove or falsify that claim.

Actually there really is, if you had played wow at this time you'd have seen. The sky was literally falling at the end of wod. There are no shortages of interviews where blizzard admitted they screwed up (according to them it was because they trained new developers).

Second, since you mentioned the time aspect, this only makes the RPG claim that much harder to prove. Yes we see the decline, but you can't prove to me if that was a natural over-time thing, or if it was because of WoW focusing on action-based gameplay.

Except the decline in the case of wow is correlated to the beginning of the bad design decisions they started to make. As a long term wow player I can tell you there was a noticeable point in time when the game stopped to work as well as it used to, WoD being the ultimate low point. Sure legion and BFA aren't perfect yet but there actually are improvements.

Warcraft was an RTS game for RTS lovers. While I'm sure people flocked to a Warcraft RPG, I don't think they were as married to the idea of it being an RPG as you claim.

Except, as already said, blizzard never claimed that wow would be a RTS. So, here again, I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. Sure some people would have loved to get warcraft IV, but that's beside the point. Nobody forced the RTS players to come to wow.

If SE wanted to make a race game out of final fantasy one day, they perfectly could. The issue would be if they made a race game while advertising a RPG.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

a) Yes you can. People have been playing some games for decades and even centuries now. As an example, chess does exist since 1200 after JC. Also, even today, people play old school video games that were very well designed, despite not having any "rewards".

You do realize Chess is a complete different game? Can we stop with these asinine apple to orange comparisons. If my "vision" is so uninspired, why can't yours actually provide examples from the genre we're playing in rather than making pointless strawmen?

b) As already stated in my previous post, there must be various situations with various ways to tackle it. Because there is only basically only one gameplay situation in the current FFXIV, there can only be one matched solution (eg homogeneized classes). But it is a misconception to assume alternatives aren't possible, especially by making the game less battle centric than what current FFXIV is.

Care to posit a few? You have sprouted plenty of hot air but I see nothing tangible except "FFXIV is boring. Change it to what I'd like!" Furthermore, I have never said an alternative approach didn't exist. I merely criticised your ideas. And I'll criticise another seeing you mention gameplay. Focusing less on battle content will inevitably drive away people who came to FFXIV for it. Considering virtually all successful MMOs rely on combat as their core feature, I sincerely doubt reducing it will have positive results. Unless you wanted FFXIV: The Sims.

c) Fates have always been terrible in FFXIV and the only reasons people used to do it were xp and atmas, but it support what I m basically saying : in FFXIV, nobody would do anything if there weren't any reward because the gameplay is lacking. Would you see people in pagos if there weren't any rewards ? No you won't, and that's why there is a problem.

And you don't think people play games to achieve something. To borrow your Chess example earlier, the "reward" is beating your opponent. If FFXIV made a decent PvP system in lieu of gimmick garbage, they may have something worthwhile. You cite Pagos yet ignore the chief complaints. People aren't saying "less battle content!" They want more varied objectives—many of which include killing things. Quests, leves, hunting log and frequent NM spawns. FATEs are considered boring because FFXIV's combat itself is basic at its core. Once you incorporate mechanic, that's where it begins to shine. Unfortunately, the devs have focused less on those and aren't innovating the way they ought to. Curiously, the most popular request from players is Mythic+ styled dungeons. Funny, that's battle centric. It's almost like people want good battle centric content not less altogether.

d) there are several ways to do that, by making daily quests asking you to find one particular monster accros the lighthouse, by making the lighthouse some sort of places where players would have to complete various quests, etc. There would be endless ways to accomplish that, ways that used to exist in games such as FFXI, FFXII, everquest or more broadly tabletop RPGs. And regarding your concern about the so called "time efficiency" of exploration, it could be easily solved by getting rid of that "hamster wheel" reward structure.

And then people have no reason to touch it. Putting quests to find a specific monsters with nothing but the "fun of exploration" isn't going to work. Look no further than Diadem. The whole concept was designed around an area we could explore. No one cared to. Removing the "hamster wheel" isn't going to make them care. It will simply have them quit. Quests are all well and good, but they lack longevity. Once you complete a quest, it's over. A MMO requires content to last months. None of your suggestions take this into account. Likewise, you once again assume it would have a huge turn around on entertainment. If so, why has Perform fallen out of favor? Here you have something purely roleplay driven. No rewards, just a side activity you can partake in at your leisure. And it's less popular than Ultimate.

e) FFX is indeed a single player games, but FFXI isn't. And FFXI is built upon a very strong battle system, gameplay wise. It would have been possible to make a game like FFXI without all the associated timesinks that were implemented in order to artificially make the players subscribe. As an example, the depth of the group centric battle system can be preserved with the trust system, that allows players to progress as if they were in a group but without having to wait hours to find one.

No, it wouldn't. FFXI existed over fifteen years ago. That style of gameplay has long been considered archaic, so much so even SE themselves shifted towards more action oriented gameplay since. At its basic core, FFXI was an extremely grind heavy MMO, and coincidentally boasted less active players than FFXIV does currently at its peak. FFXIV is hardly without flaws, but turning it into FFXI won't accomplish anything except a further disgruntled playerbase. We've been how people respond to grind heavy content. And your example essentially describes Duty Finder except the hassle of trying to find people on my server has been removed.

f) there are no such thing as "old school" or "modern" design when it comes to game design. It is a forgery coming from the PR teams of blizzard when they started to decide game design was overrated (but it did eventually backfire, and hard). Furthermore, I didn't suggest anything, as it is pointless to give any ideas here because SE doesn't give a damn.

That is flat out false. If it weren't, games wouldn't move away or entirely abandon systems which worked in the past. For example, Halo revolutionized the matchmaking system to such an extent, it's tantamount to career suicide if you were release a competitive FPS without some variation of it. You see this in all forms of media, be it sports, video games or film. What worked several years prior won't necessary capture audiences the same way it once did. Blizzard's mistake is they went too far away from their core design—something you ironically are advocating SE do with FFXIV. WoW's two recent expansions, Legion and BoA have both been incredibly well received despite being "modernized." They kept what worked and innovated.

And by the way, WoW is practically all battle centric. Seems to be working quite well for them.

[Dualgunner]

Actually there really is, if you had played wow at this time you'd have seen. The sky was literally falling at the end of wod. There are no shortages of interviews where blizzard admitted they screwed up (according to them it was because they trained new developers).

That's not exactly proof of anything, but I'll take your word for it.

Except the decline in the case of wow is correlated to the beginning of the bad design decisions they started to make.

Except no, it isn't if you're going to stick to "It all started falling apart in WotLK." WotLK launched in November of 2008; the game was dipping in search popularity as soon as February, 2007.

Except, as already said, blizzard never claimed that wow would be a RTS. So, here again, I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. Sure some people would have loved to get warcraft IV, but that's beside the point. Nobody forced the RTS players to come to wow.

Nobody forced RPG players to come to XIV.

[Stanelis]

Still more beside the point replies for the sake of whitekniting

a) Chess is a different game but is still a game. Meaning game design had to be accomplished in order to come up with the rules. FFXIV is a video game, therefore it is still a game. What I'm saying is that FFXIV is lacking in its sets of rules and in his game design. Because its set of rules are so simplistic, they are simply unfun and nobody would play without the so called "rewards" and the pretty graphics and cutscenes (something SE is good at). I was talking about chess because on a theoretical standpoint the fact people are still playing the game today mean its game design is very strong, and you don't get any achievements the more games you play and your ilvl doesn't increase.

b) I didn't propose any ideas but merely provided examples. It is not my place to teach SE how to make games, especially considering the expertise square used to have in the era of FFX, FFXI and FFXII (probably the pinnacle of what Square used to be able to design). But the ideas do exist and can be found in several decades of tabletop RPG games (square managed to find some when they started the final fantasy saga, they can still find more).

c) People play games to achieve something but that's generally not the alpha and the omega as it is in FFXIV. There must be balance in all things. The issue with FFXIV is that the rewards became the whole game.

d) Diadem was flawed because the area in itself was boring, the spawn mechanics underwhelming, the mobs weren't exciting and there weren't any purpose storyline wise. Nobody wanted to explore diadem because there only were a bunch of rocks and some clouds in a small instanced area. Talk about underwhelming content.

e) Considered archaic by who exactly ? A RPG is a RPG. The only reason SE talks about archaic game design is because it tries to cater to a demographic that doesn't like RPGs. FFXI sure wasn't perfect and even had a boatload of flaws but its core gameplay is what used to make it strong despite its flaws. People complained all the timed about how it was a pain in the butt to group, how it was hard to claim a nm and the like of it, but people NEVER complained about the gameplay as people do in FFXIV. People never complained the game used to be the same (even so there weren't a lot of updates), etc

f) No offense but FFXIV doesn't capture audience, as an example, currently, FFXIV has as much viewers as fallout IV on twitch. Also, FFXIV isn't really more successful than what FFXI used to be back in the day.

Blizzard's mistake is they went too far away from their core design—something you ironically are advocating SE do with FFXIV.

You re perfectly right but the problem is that FFXIV is heavily inspired from the wow that strayed too far from the RPG genre, the one that isn't working gameplay wise. What I'm saying is that SE should try to go back to what they know how to do (design RPGs) rather than trying to reinvent the wheel to cater to players who do not exist.

By the way, FFXIV ARR was more of a RPG than stormblood and to some extent Heavensward. There were some more open dungeons with interesting mechanics, raids with some attempts at making explorable environments, more support oriented class specific abilities, etc.

And by the way, WoW is practically all battle centric. Seems to be working quite well for them.

The issue isn't that the game is battle centric, the issue is that there is only that in FFXIV. Even in wow there are more open dungeons/raids, something you never see in FFXIV (with the monster in a box and dungeon corridor design).

That's not exactly proof of anything, but I'll take your word for it.


Except no, it isn't if you're going to stick to "It all started falling apart in WotLK." WotLK launched in November of 2008; the game was dipping in search popularity as soon as February, 2007.


Nobody forced RPG players to come to XIV.

Issue is FFXIV is marketed like a RPG.

As for wow popularity, there were other factors at play during the TBC era but I won't dwell into that here because that's beside the point (it has something to do with the elitism issue of TBC).

[Bourne_Endeavor]

a) Chess is a different game but is still a game. Meaning game design had to be accomplished in order to come up with the rules. FFXIV is a video game, therefore it is still a game. What I'm saying is that FFXIV is lacking in its sets of rules and in his game design. Because its set of rules are so simplistic, they are simply unfun and nobody would play without the so called "rewards" and the pretty graphics and cutscenes (something SE is good at). I was talking about chess because on a theoretical standpoint the fact people are still playing the game today mean its game design is very strong, and you don't get any achievements the more games you play and your ilvl doesn't increase.

Childish quote editing aside, everything you wrote here is entirely subjective. You are not the arbiter of fun. Regardless, for someone so readily willing to toss around accusations, you comically missed the point yourself. The achievement in Chess is winning because it's a competitive game. FFXIV doesn't employ the same direct competitiveness, therefore it's a poor comparison. Some people play Chess for the fun of it, just like some play FFXIV for those same reasons. Apparently, this makes me a white knight. Good to see you can handle disagreement.

b) I didn't propose any ideas but merely provided examples. It is not my place to teach SE how to make games

This is a blatant cop out.

If you cannot provide ideas your criticism is entirely worthless. How can the developers change without knowing what the playerbase wants? This applies to any game not simply FFXIV. You've essentially boiled it down to:

"I don't like it. Change things!"
"Alright. What would you like to see?"
"It's not my job to tell you. Figure it out!"

What happened to the purported vision? Or was that merely a poor attempt to sound informed?

d) Diadem was flawed because the area in itself was boring, the spawn mechanics underwhelming, the mobs weren't exciting and there weren't any purpose storyline wise. Nobody wanted to explore diadem because there only were a bunch of rocks and some clouds in a small instanced area. Talk about underwhelming content.

Indeed. Therefore, they should have improved upon it. They didn't. Making Ridorana into an area we can explore isn't going to revolutionize the game. You conveniently ignored how I mentioned quests are a one and done activity. Now you have a giant instance/zone people have little reason to touch once they've done the handful of quests, which generally can be finished within a day. Regardless, you may find looking for a specific mob fun. I hazard a guess you'd be in a sharp minority. Put this in the open world and it's a different argument but omitting battle content so you can roleplay... it just isn't going to work.

e) Considered archaic by who exactly ? A RPG is a RPG. The only reason SE talks about archaic game design is because it tries to cater to a demographic that doesn't like RPGs. FFXI sure wasn't perfect and even had a boatload of flaws but its core gameplay is what used to make it strong despite its flaws. People complained all the timed about how it was a pain in the butt to group, how it was hard to claim a nm and the like of it, but people NEVER complained about the gameplay as people do in FFXIV. People never complained the game used to be the same (even so there weren't a lot of updates), etc

The millions of players who don't purchase the game? Once again, you completely ignored my examples to go off on a rose-tinted glasses tangent about FFXI. If you believe people didn't complain about FFXI's gameplay, well, we know where you biases lie. Nevertheless, going back to the example, a FPS game will simply be discarded without a matchmaking system. Even FFXIV and WoW could never abandon their respective Duty Finders. People largely prefer the convenience, at least if you're aiming to attract a mainstream audience.

f) No offense but FFXIV doesn't capture audience, as an example, currently, FFXIV has as much viewers as fallout IV on twitch. Also, FFXIV isn't really more successful than what FFXI used to be back in the day.

And?

All that proves is FFXIV isn't something people actively watch. That has no bearing whatsoever on whether it attracts a playing audience. Despite my own criticisms and concerns with FFXIV's future, it has a large playerbase. You know when FFXIV spikes into the several thousands? When raiders prog the new Savage and Ultimate tiers. But wait, I thought you said people were getting bored of battle content.

[RiyahArp]

If you're talking Diadem 2.0, which had the 280 weapon, you should note relic weapon holders were a lot more vocal than raiders about it at that point.

That wasn't true. The complaints were from raiders annoyed that they needed to do a heavy RNG grind for a BiS weapon, to prepare for the next progression race, and raiders annoyed it had better stats than savage gear. I don't think relic people cared as much, since people don't get relics due to being useful BIS weapons; they always lagged behind savage gear except for brief periods.

The raiders, while I'm not a fan of them personally, generally don't affect gameplay much because SE cordons off high-end raiding from the rest of the game. The danger with them in my opinion is the requests to make the game overall harder at all levels, to make players git gud.

f) No offense but FFXIV doesn't capture audience, as an example, currently, FFXIV has as much viewers as fallout IV on twitch. Also, FFXIV isn't really more successful than what FFXI used to be back in the day.

Twitch in general only has high view numbers for maybe 14-15 games at a time, then they drop heavily. I don't know why people even worry about it, people who watch games do so because they don't want to play them. That's why God of War for ps4 was so big on it, for one reason.

[Dualgunner]

That wasn't true. The complaints were from raiders annoyed that they needed to do a heavy RNG grind for a BiS weapon, to prepare for the next progression race, and raiders annoyed it had better stats than savage gear. I don't think relic people cared as much, since people don't get relics due to being useful BIS weapons; they always lagged behind savage gear except for brief periods.

What "next progression race"? It was the end of the expansion. Any raider who genuinely thought they needed a 280 for the "next progression race" is outright dumb, because the weapons we had starting at Lv70 were i290 and we were i314 total by the time Deltascape even started. Basically everybody knew and acknowledged that all Creator Savage-tier gear would be outdated by Lv66.

No, it was relic grinders who threw a tantrum because they were running on the precedent set by Square in ARR that their relic weapons would be BiS until the next expansion came out; instead they were outdated within a month.

Issue is FFXIV is marketed like a RPG.

It's marketed like an MMO.

As for wow popularity, there were other factors at play during the TBC era but I won't dwell into that here because that's beside the point (it has something to do with the elitism issue of TBC).

Right. I suppose it's always elitism in the end, so easy to blame all the problems on it.

[Sigma-Astra]

I'm confused on how one person is saying that WoW wasn't inspired or designed, at least, on it's first leg and basis from the Warcraft RTS games. Literally, they took the story and lore of what they already had and expanded upon it until they got their financial motherload project which turned into WoW. It's not surprising to see how expansive they were able to go from an RTS setting towards an MMORPG setting. They took something existing inside an already rigid structure, because let's face it that's what RTS games are, and went full blown creative with it.

But, to say that the two are only relative to each other out of lore is a half-truth. Warcraft involved into World of Warcraft and all large projects had to start small somewhere. For XIV, it was XI and 1.0.

Warcraft gave birth to World of Warcraft. I mean, it's literally part of WoW's name.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

That wasn't true. The complaints were from raiders annoyed that they needed to do a heavy RNG grind for a BiS weapon, to prepare for the next progression race, and raiders annoyed it had better stats than savage gear. I don't think relic people cared as much, since people don't get relics due to being useful BIS weapons; they always lagged behind savage gear except for brief periods.

The raiders, while I'm not a fan of them personally, generally don't affect gameplay much because SE cordons off high-end raiding from the rest of the game. The danger with them in my opinion is the requests to make the game overall harder at all levels, to make players git gud.

Layla Bell outright said "Anyone who cares about those i280 weapons is an idiot." If you're not familiar with him, He's from Elysium. Likewise, Angered members, Xeno and many other hardcore raiders had similar sentiments. My own thoughts aligned with theirs in the sense it appeared more like a desperate attempt to try and get people to actually bother with Diadem. The people upset were generally relic grinders, especially as this relaunch came out nine days after the final relic step. Raiders were long done with Creator by then.