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

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Yeah, get rid of the guy who literally saved this mmo from vanishing into existence, that sounds like a great idea. Yeah, the game is incredibly lacking in a lot of areas but getting rid of Yoshida isn't going to fix anything.

Just because he saved FFXIV five years ago does not absolve him of criticism nor does it mean his vision thereafter will benefit the game forever. Look at Bioware. Once considered stellar for their RPG games, they have become a borderline joke in the wake of ME3's conversational ending and Andromeda. Sometimes change is needed, even from the developers themselves. Now that isn't to say I necessarily agree Yoshida should be let go. If SE is restricting the budget, well, changing the guard won't alleviate anything. Of course, this doesn't excuse content like Eureka.

[Alleo]

May be a unpopular opinion, but we got what people asked. So you cannot say they don't listen to us.

You are right that they sadly sometimes listen to the wrong kind of playerbase (or at least it feels that way since we dont have the numbers they have) and at the same time somehow turn away when there are complaints and feedback on other content like Eureka or Diadem. The problem for SE is, that they have no real survey thus they will either have to take "feedback" from the data that they get and that can be interpreted wrongly or only have those that complain somewhere. Surveys would at least offer a new way to get feedback and if in that way they see that a majority want easier or harder content they could react to that and we would have to accept that most want it in a certain way.

But I would not put all the blame on the community. People will often find the easiest way to do something but that doesnt mean that the devs have to make it easy from the start. We could still have dungeons with exploration and people that want to do them quick could still do that and all the others could enjoy complexer dungeons. Heck put some creative achievements behind it and more might even take their time.

Also sometimes they overdo it. Steps of Faith is imo a good example. It was just a badly designed content in my eyes because it was part of the story and locked HW behind it and introduced something else with the cannons and chains. This was making it all quite a horrible experience with randoms because now people could really hinder a run and on top of that even if you knew that it was a wipe you would have still had to wait until he was at the very end. This made it quite horrible with the learning experience and thats also one of the reasons quite a few people bailed out of it as soon as it popped up. Their solution was , to nerf it into the ground instead of changing something about the wipe mechanics.

Yeah, get rid of the guy who literally saved this mmo from vanishing into existence, that sounds like a great idea. Yeah, the game is incredibly lacking in a lot of areas but getting rid of Yoshida isn't going to fix anything.

Just because a person did something great once, does not mean that they will always be perfect for the position. It should never give them the free card of always being at that place. (And no I am not saying that he should be kicked but that a exchange should not be hindered just because of some past great deeds if it truly holds back the game)

[Miste]

After some digging, the only thing I found was this update on November 24, 2015: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...20#post3449020
The note on droprate changes seems very vague (which isn't rare for SE to do), so it's hard to tell if they did adjust the droprate of NMs and "certain monsters", or if they simply haven't adjusted droprate

Yeah, that is too vague to use to blame raiders for like some others in this thread are doing.

Going by the quote from that section:
"The following adjustments have been made to “The Diadem” as a result of balance changes to the Duty Finder:"

Maybe SE was concerned about the wait times for dungeons and void ark in DF. Diadem gear basically removed any need to run void ark (even though it was released at the same time as Diadem, Diadem basically made void ark dead on release) or experts anymore. My boyfriend and I played during this time and we recall really bad DF wait times on experts when Diadem came out.

Just speculation though, because this header doesn't really make sense for them just nerfing it to nerf it, although it might just be a way to hide true intentions.

I just remember that Diadem died pretty fast after that, with a lot of complaints being about the lower amount of i210 gear dropping.

If I was to make an educated guess, that change might have been to stop everyone camping Dino Island and no where else. Like an entire zone and all anyone did was go to Dino Island. If that were the case then it was not raider complaints that did it, simply that SE likely wanted people to actually do things in other areas.

But that is just a guess, the information is too vague. Also the players might have perceived less i210 gear when it might have not been the case. Simply not enough data to go on and no way to test it since Diadem 1.0 is gone.

They're obviously not going to state that they nerfed something because of x group complaining about y feature, because it's not a professional thing to do. And you're right, ultimately it's SE's decision, but it's a decision based on what they think is best for the playerbase. That decision just happened to line up with the complaints coming from raiders.

Of course it is unprofessional, and of course they wouldn't do that. My point in saying that was simply that there is no proof to generalize all raiders and blame us all for Diadem.

I've been a raider for most of my playtime in XIV, except during Midas. It's kinda difficult to have a grudge against myself.

Wasn't saying you had a grudge. My initial response was to someone else and is due to some other posters in this thread using Diadem to hold a grudge and blame raiders for it. You just replied to me about it so I am explaining my logic, it was not an accusation.

Except the i280 weapon was so rare, that it might've not even existed at all. If they had actually doubled down on it, they'd have done so with a guaranteed emergency mission with every Diadem map, along with multiple weapons as reward from finishing it.

Still doesn't prove that SE did any of this due to raiders. They can have their own reasons for doing things after all, and it may be because they noticed balance was being thrown off making content dead too soon (you have to remember that i280 weapon also invalidated the relic, not just the savage weapon, so raid gear is not the only thing on the table here).

The gear in this game already gets worthless quite quickly, all of it only lasts 6 months already, dropping Diadem at the 3 month mark in a tier making a lot of other gear and content options almost worthless immediately might not have been their intention.

The idea that Diadem and Void Ark were released in the same patch and one drops i200 gear and the other drops i210 shows there maaay have been an oversight. Just my own speculations, but there is still the general idea that there were many other reasons SE could have done whatever they did.

[Selova]

Just because he saved FFXIV five years does not absolve him of criticism nor does it mean his vision thereafter will benefit the game forever. Look at Bioware. Once considered stellar for their RPG games, they have become a borderline joke in the wake of ME3's conversational ending and Andromeda. Sometimes change is needed, even from the developers themselves. Now that isn't to say I necessarily agree Yoshida should be let go. If SE is restricting the budget, well, changing the guard won't alleviate anything. Of course, this doesn't excuse content like Eureka.

I never stated he was somehow free of being criticized for the decisions he makes, just that calling for someone to be replaced does not all of a sudden mean all of the problems that the game has will magically be solved.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I never stated he was somehow free of being criticized for the decisions he makes, just that calling for someone to be replaced does not all of a sudden mean all of the problems that the game has will magically be solved.

Nor did the person you quoted say that. They simply posited perhaps the game news fresh ideas if Yoshida has nothing left to give. You were the one to outright say he shouldn't be replaced simply because he saved the game five years ago.

[HyoMinPark]

All of this is exactly one of the reasons why I made up that post a while back. The one about all the different paths to gear that's max ilvl, meaning gear that simply has the level and different stats not actually being the raid or Augmented Tome Gear. I also edited in to the OP.

What you are failing to realize here is that maximum item level does not necessarily mean the best (the i370 Aiming body exists, after all). Did you miss where I said BRD has 2 builds currently that sacrifice i370 pieces for an i350 piece and an i360 piece? And they aren’t the only job that has done that this tier. As it stands, it’s not just Tomestones or Savage as your only options, and “highest item level” does not always mean “the best”.

I’m not opposed to adding more options, but they may not necessarily be “the best”—considering that gear stat configurations are chosen by algorithms that assign substats on each piece of gear based on what stat combination hasn’t been chosen yet, they could end up “the best”, “the second best”, “bearable”, or “absolute trash”. Getting “the best” may still rely on either raiding for the piece, or settling for something “second best”; I hope you also realize that.

I want to be able to get something nice from more content than just raids or dungeons. No matter what we do, in the end if we want to be i370 or i400 we will have to deal with having things we don't really want. We shouldn't have to deal with extra Skill Speed if we don't want Skill Speed. We should have way more options. FFXIV even right now has the content to reward some things. Like the Peak Crafted Gear and Primal Jewelry I mentioned.

I’ll use BRD as an example again—there already are options for the BRDs that don’t want the 983 Skill Speed that comes with the High Crit build: the High DEX build, which has less skill speed, for example. I’ve even seen some BRDs talk about taking the i350 crafted belt to reduce the Skill Speed (BiS sets favor the Augmented Tomestone belt), and to allow for more Crit melding, as that’s their preference. And these are orange-percentile BRDs; they’re good players. There may be slight damage variances, or there may not; I didn’t follow up to see if that was tested.
Damage variance on BRD is already a significant thing even with BiS because of RNG, to be fair.

There are 3 builds for MCH in Sigmascape all with varying degrees of GCDs so that they can have a GCD (which is dependent on Skill Speed) that gives them the least amount of clipping with their latency, since MCH is so heavily affected by ping with regards to their Wildfires.

These options exist; the various gearsets that currently exist all boil down to preference as they all have similar damage outputs (i.e., High Crit and High DEX will net you roughly the same amount of gain, hence why they’re both viable builds despite one sacrificing main stat in favor of a substat—even though Crit basically counts as a main stat for BRD at this point because of how much our job revolves around it).

If some MCH decides they want to try and create a build with 3,000 Skill Speed and 2,500 Critical Hit, they should be able to. Who knows, maybe something hilarious will come out of it.

At that point, all other MCHs are looking at that MCH and scratching their heads. Such a build is not only impossible within the confines of this game currently, but also a detriment to that MCH’s performance. Skill Speed and a MCH’s core rotation do not allow for such “crazy builds” without severely impacting the MCH’s damage performance (e.g., GCD clipping). Skill Speed and Spell Speed are not stats that can allow for such “crazy builds” because of the way they function within this game—not without severely impacting the player who chooses to go down that road, and not in a good way.

I just hate not having more than 2 options.

Your ire seems to stem from the fact that these options (there are more than 2 for BiS for multiple jobs; I’ve said that multiple times) require raid gear and aren’t completely reliant on gear you can get outside of raids. But, as I said above, even if you did add in Primal Accessories or some Super Augmented crafted gear, they still may or may not be “the best” for your job; “the best” may still be locked behind raids.

If you only cared about item level, this wouldn’t be an issue. But you clearly do care about more than just that. That’s kind of why your MCH example confuses me—you obviously care to some extent about substats and how they affect a job (otherwise, I don’t think we would be having this conversation), so why start suggesting that it should be possible to do something so completely suboptimal?

Lots of people out there don't go by what theorycrafters say though. Just like lots do go by what they say. Even if something is subpar, the player should be able to make that decision especially if they aren't raiding Ultimate since I bet even a MCH with 3,000 Skill Speed can beat Kefka with a team of other players with botched gear. Players with odd stats can make their own groups. Otherwise why have options at all if the best way to go is the way to go? Just have VIT/STR/DEX/INT/MND and call it a day.

I question why a player would willingly pick something subpar, if they are aware that it’s subpar. I can at least understand if they are unaware of how subpar something is, but if they already know? Why willingly choose it?

There are plenty of options for several jobs this tier with regards to BiS—BRD has 5 different BiS that they can choose from, each with varying amounts of DEX and Crit, the two stats that are most important to them. MCH has 3. Healers have tons depending on their preferences (High Piety? Low Piety? Determination build? Crit build?).

The options are there—they just aren’t off the wall like you’re suggesting here, and yes, they rely on raid gear. But that’s the way the algorithm fell. If you don’t think they’re there, I would suggest you doing some research; all jobs currently have multiple options for BiS, and there are decent options for non-BiS or pseudo-BiS if you look;I just doubt you’d want them because they aren’t “the best”. It’s not cut and dry. The only difference between those and what you’re suggesting is that none of them are “crazy builds” that also make the jobs absolutely horrible to play (because 3,000 Skill Speed on a MCH would make it horrible to play), and none rely exclusively on just Savage gear or just Tomestone gear.

It doesn’t matter if the 3,000 Skill Speed MCH can clear God Kefka if he’s hindering a party while doing so. Clearing isn’t all that matters when you’re playing with other people, and I get tired of hearing the “Well, we cleared!” argument after a run where two people carried six. If he wants to play with others who love botching their gear, then fine; but if he tries to join parties or statics with players who care about things like optimization because “we’re still going to clear, chill”, then no. That’s not okay.

The theorycrafters proved that raw damage is always better than elemental. Why have elemental weapons then? But we do have elemental weapons.

If you’re referring to the ARR elemental weapons (e.g., the conjurer and thaumaturge weapons that you can craft that all have elemental resistances on them) and not the ones from Pagos, those are there strictly because they’re a remnant from 1.0. When the developers ported 1.0 over to ARR, they didn’t delete any of the existing items because they didn’t want to cause issues for players that returned that may have had those items equipped or in their inventories—e.g., say a player had equipped one of those weapons on their conjurer: they didn’t want the player to return and suddenly not have a weapon, so they left them in the game. Elemental resistance had a bit of importance in 1.0, but that was removed with ARR, making any gains null and void. If you’ve noticed, elemental weapons stopped being a thing after the base 2.0 game; you don’t see them anywhere else.

If you’re referring to the Pagos weapons, they’re supposed to be there to serve as a base for the next step of the mess the Stormblood Relic Questline is. But they aren’t elementally aspected last I checked, because elemental resistance has no gains in this iteration of the game. After all, 4.0 removed all elemental materia as drops; any left over are from people who were simply carrying them beforehand.

At least the players have that choice. Some will listen to what's out there, some won't in the end. But they can still beat the hardest content.

Players already have choices. You not doing your research to see that isn’t the fault of the raiders, the developers, or anyone else.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'd also like the book system to be incorporated into the Normal raids because my goodness, it's more difficult and takes more effort to get the normal mode gear than the savage gear. I would happily take a token/book system that you get every week to buy stuff but for NM. Because when the catch-up patch comes and the weekly limit is removed, we'd have guaranteed reward after 4 clears or 8 for chest/legs. Less headache and that would encourage me to actually do the content over a few weeks span over getting a headache grinding it all week with no gain.

You do this and normal mode instantly dies. Why run it multiple times if you're guaranteed a book each week? Savage has books because loot is only obtainable on your first clear whereas you can spam normal until you get precisely what you want. This doesn't even touch on the fact book amounts what need to be adjusted since it takes since the Savage equivalent makes little sense. Four books are required for one accessory yet bolts can be exchanged one for one, and drop from two fights. Regardless, they purposely implement RNG because it keeps queues active. If you want a no hassle means of obtaining that ilvl, purchase it from the market board. Speaking of that, making Normal Mode gear even easier to obtain kills crafted gear.

[Nezerius]

Yeah, that is too vague to use to blame raiders for like some others in this thread are doing.

Going by the quote from that section:
"The following adjustments have been made to “The Diadem” as a result of balance changes to the Duty Finder:"

Maybe SE was concerned about the wait times for dungeons and void ark in DF. Diadem gear basically removed any need to run void ark (even though it was released at the same time as Diadem, Diadem basically made void ark dead on release) or experts anymore. My boyfriend and I played during this time and we recall really bad DF wait times on experts when Diadem came out.

Just speculation though, because this header doesn't really make sense for them just nerfing it to nerf it, although it might just be a way to hide true intentions.

Which is why I said that raiders were partially to blame, not to be blamed entirely for it. And yea, SE generally leaves things vague if they need to report on a nerf like that.
As for the DF wait times, that seemed to have been a different issue that got fixed in the December 7 hotfix (scroll down a bit in the link I posted).

If I was to make an educated guess, that change might have been to stop everyone camping Dino Island and no where else. Like an entire zone and all anyone did was go to Dino Island. If that were the case then it was not raider complaints that did it, simply that SE likely wanted people to actually do things in other areas.

But that is just a guess, the information is too vague. Also the players might have perceived less i210 gear when it might have not been the case. Simply not enough data to go on and no way to test it since Diadem 1.0 is gone.

If that were the case, people would've found another effective way of farming i210 gear, and the players that farmed for it before the nerf would've kept on going back in.
That didn't happen, since Diadem pretty much died, and stayed dead.

Of course it is unprofessional, and of course they wouldn't do that. My point in saying that was simply that there is no proof to generalize all raiders and blame us all for Diadem.

Like I said earlier in this post, partial blame.

Wasn't saying you had a grudge. My initial response was to someone else and is due to some other posters in this thread using Diadem to hold a grudge and blame raiders for it. You just replied to me about it so I am explaining my logic, it was not an accusation.

Fair enough.

Still doesn't prove that SE did any of this due to raiders. They can have their own reasons for doing things after all, and it may be because they noticed balance was being thrown off making content dead too soon (you have to remember that i280 weapon also invalidated the relic, not just the savage weapon, so raid gear is not the only thing on the table here).

Their decision still lined up with the raider's complaints, so we'll never know for sure. And I definitely remember about the HW relic, because I had gone for it as well. That said, once I found out about the hilariously bad RNG to even obtain an i280 weapon, I wasn't too bothered about it.

[Selova]

Nor did the person you quoted say that. They simply posited perhaps the game news fresh ideas if Yoshida has nothing left to give. You were the one to outright say he shouldn't be replaced simply because he saved the game five years ago.

At the end of the day this entire argument is nothing but opinionated speculation. Yes, I don't personally think getting rid of Yoshida would solve anything. People like to play the "point the finger" game whenever the game direction feels like it's in a slump and then immediately lash out that the person in charge need to be replaced before anything gets addressed/resolved. Do i think the dude is perfect and that just because he brought the game back from it's death means he's absolved from all blame completely? No. Changes clearly need to be made, but I don't personally think SE getting rid of him is the answer to that.

[Archchancellor]

People don't know what they want until you show it to them.

Steve Jobs.