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

[Kalise]

For me, it feels like the exact opposite on the side of the Dev themself.
The Artists and Composers were always really good and they are still doing great work, but the Dev Team works for me on the Game like it is something they call MVP in the Game Buisness (minimum value product).

To be honest, it feels like with Stormblood the devs just spread themselves too thin.

Like, the story is trying to be 2 independent stories about Ala Mhigo and Doma, but it ends up feeling as though towards the end of the development cycle someone went "Hey guys, weren't we supposed to also finish the Ala Mhigo story?" and everyone when "OH SHI-" and quickly rushed to finish everything off in time to start the 5.0 preparation.

Class balance feels like it took a back seat because they wanted to work on adding BLU as a Limited Job and focus on trying to create content around that instead of you know... Making actual jobs not feel gutted.

With content feeling like they had to spend too much time between dungeons, raids and Eureka to properly design any single one of them. Especially as they also wanted to expand on things such as how Ghimlyt Dark includes so many other NPC's.

Though, I'm not sure the blame rests entirely on the dev team. Since it seems that they're in a bit of a Catch 22 situation. Where, they want to keep expanding the game and its systems, but they're limited by resources. But the only way to get more resources from SE is to show them that it's worth it by showing how expansion can create increased profits to justify the expenditure.

[Derio]

I am having fun with the game. However the tank balance needs to be better in 5.0

The relic needs to be separate of the eureka style content in 5.0

And make the current open world more meaningful. 4.0 fate system was a good start but needs to be better.

[CarnivalNights]

I agree with almost everything the OP said, but you're going to run into a lot of resistant people who have enjoyed FFXIV's formulaic approach to delivering content.

[Imuka]

Though, I'm not sure the blame rests entirely on the dev team. Since it seems that they're in a bit of a Catch 22 situation. Where, they want to keep expanding the game and its systems, but they're limited by resources. But the only way to get more resources from SE is to show them that it's worth it by showing how expansion can create increased profits to justify the expenditure.

One of the Main Problems is SE themself.
As far as I know, they reduced the Numbers of Developers and do not really reinvest into the Game. How much they see this Game as a Cashcow was made super obvious after they lost 30 Million Dollars when they had to cancel the 15 DLCs and a shortly after that, those Job Bracelets for around 120 Dollars appeared in the Shop as Pre-Orders. The timing was just to perfect to be just a simple coincidence.

In the end, no matter how much Money the Game makes, SE will not reinvest into the Game if they can use the Money to develop other Games.
FF14 gets more Players by WoW being worser and worser with every Year, not by improving the Game itself. But this is a dangerous Market, because they often leave a fast as they entered the Game.

But from my View, Eureka was not a good way to expand the Game. For some it might sound weird, but I think less but more high Quality Content would serve the Game much better, than taking something and strech it as far as possible.

To quote myself:

For me, Eureka always felt like the Devs took one 0,5l Bottle of Beer and mixed it with 5 Liters of Water, to have more "Beer".

The Devs are like a Part of the Problem. I don't hate Yoshida, but his Vision for the Game becomes more and more lackluster, by trying to mimik the Past and being Retro for the sake of being Retro.
I would not say, that he needs to leave, but he needs somebody being super honest with his Visions.
Somebody who is not feared to rip his Ideas apart, tell him, when something is not great or just to shallow as a full Concept.
Not in a harmfull way, but for the sake of the Game itself. Sometimes an Idea, that sounds good is bad and sometimes something super simple makes billions.
Devs call this "Fail Faster". Take an Idea, try it, rip it apart and see if it is fun.
Don't waste months for an Idea, that was bad from day one.
And don't just take Ideas from the past, blended by Nostalgia. We easily forget the flaws of Games we played a long time ago, because our brain forgets a lot of bad stuff, when we drift into Nostalgia.
Nostalgia can be used in a good way, but not if you say "everything was better back then.".

Survival Horror Games like Resident Evil were great because of the feeling of Survival Horror, like limited Ammo, limited Healing Items, not being able to kill everything you see, etc.
And the RE Devs did a good Job with the RE2 Remake from my View. But the first thing they dropped was the fixed Camera, because it was neccesary back then, but not like the Fans would want it back if the Devs can make something more modern and better.
RE4 was also fun and I still love this Game, for being quirky, but still have a good Part of the Element of Survival Horror Games. Re5 and 6 were just boring and bad, for being so Action Focuse and shallow.

And this is what baffles me about Eureka. We can create more complex Games and Ingame Systems today, compared to 2004-2010 and the Devs managed to drop nearly all of the depth and complexity of 11.

Class balance feels like it took a back seat because they wanted to work on adding BLU as a Limited Job and focus on trying to create content around that instead of you know... Making actual jobs not feel gutted.

And here I think, they should have invested time into Quality, not Quantity.
A MMO with 10 Classes that feel super unique and are all super fun to play is better, than 20 Classes and the half of them feel rushed.
You can clearly feel how some of the Jobs feel super lackluster and are just not fun to play.
Streamlined to a Point, that puts all the Mastery into theorycrafting of Stats, instead of Gameplay.
The MCH Mastery is mostly just about looking into Math Charts in a Document as soon as you are able to play the Basic Rotation.
But the mastery of a Class should happen in the Game not outside of it.
Making decisions in a fight, analyze the Situation, etc. Not just knowing, that 160 Det raise your Dps by 1% or that having 200 more Skillspeed makes your Rotation 0,3% stronger.

Like, the story is trying to be 2 independent stories about Ala Mhigo and Doma, but it ends up feeling as though towards the end of the development cycle someone went "Hey guys, weren't we supposed to also finish the Ala Mhigo story?" and everyone when "OH SHI-" and quickly rushed to finish everything off in time to start the 5.0 preparation.

Which is a super weird way to develop a Story from my View.
They needed to rush Stormblood to write Shadowbringer, to finish the whole Main Story with 5.0, to again rush it, because they need to write 6.0, when 5.0 hits the Shelf.
But if Stormblood would develop slower, they would have more time, to develop the whole Story of Shadowbringer from 5.0-5.4.
You don't want to throw all your Power into a single Strike.
This is not a TV Show, and they do not need to finish the whole Story in a single Shot Window.


I would not say the Game is ruined in any way, but I think, they believe that they mediocre raise of the Numbers is caused by them being awesome and less by WoW just falling apart, because Blizzard puts their whole focus on Overwatch.

[Kalise]

One of the Main Problems is SE themself.

In the end, no matter how much Money the Game makes, SE will not reinvest into the Game if they can use the Money to develop other Games.

Yeah, it's a particular decision that makes little sense.

Given that we have literal evidence how how incredibly profitable an MMO that is properly funded and worked on can be.

Literally, WoW before the Activision merge was one of the most popular games of all time and literally dominated the market for years. It wasn't until Activision started the "Less Work, More Profits" style of of development that it started dying.

SE seems to have just skipped that stage of becoming insanely successful and gone straight to the "Less Work, More Profits" development style.

Which just doesn't make much sense from even the viewpoint with basic understanding of economics. Yes, this style makes more short term profit which looks good now. But it stifles growth and makes profits uncertain because you don't have a large loyal playerbase that you can rely on to keep paying for expansions and subs. While investing into the game allows for growth and as such the best long term profits at the cost of not being immediately the best on your quarterly earnings reports.

But from my View, Eureka was not a good way to expand the Game. For some it might sound weird, but I think less but more high Quality Content would serve the Game much better, than taking something and strech it as far as possible.

Honestly, I think Eureka was a good idea, but misplaced. Like, the overall idea of having an overworld that meant something is great. Having cross-server open worlds is great. Having less reliance on AFK in a City while you queue into DF to actually do anything is a massive boon, given that style of gameplay is often touted as one of WoW's largest mistakes - When they killed the world and community by causing everything to be able using LFD tool to rush content.

I just don't think that it necessarily needed to be put into its own isolated content designed independently of the actual games overworld that continues to be dead content on release, only existing to let you run through it while you do your handful of MSQ's per zone and then going back to gather stuff for crafting.

The Devs are like a Part of the Problem. I don't hate Yoshida, but his Vision for the Game becomes more and more lackluster, by trying to mimik the Past and being Retro for the sake of being Retro.
I would not say, that he needs to leave, but he needs somebody being super honest with his Visions.
Somebody who is not feared to rip his Ideas apart, tell him, when something is not great or just to shallow as a full Concept.

True... The way that his concept of Limited Jobs got shredded by the community definitely suggests that there definitely needs to be some sort of person in play to stop and go "Sure, that's cool. But how is it fun?"

Especially when there are time and resource restrictions. I've no doubt "Limited Jobs" could be fun, provided they create a plethora of content for them to do and keep it updated. But given they already struggle to create the core content of the game to a quality standard without diverting time and resources to side attractions, it comes back down to "Sure, that's cool. But how is it fun?"

And the RE Devs did a good Job with the RE2 Remake from my View. But the first thing they dropped was the fixed Camera, because it was neccesary back then, but not like the Fans would want it back if the Devs can make something more modern and better.

Though, in this particular case, I'd argue that dropping the fixed camera because they can isn't necessarily the best decision. Since, the fixed camera in the early games actually provided more than just "This is literally all we're capable of doing". It added to the tension of the game by removing the control you had, which allowed you to be put in difficult and stressful situations that kept you on the edge of your seat.

Literally, you'd always clench when you had to move to a new screen because you had no idea what to expect on the other side, even if it was you moving back to a screen you've previously cleared, you could have an empty room or you could have like 15 zombies all up in your face that only react once you enter that screen.

So, in this sense going "Retro" with RE5/RE6 could have improved the game by creating that tension again (That, and you know... Not giving you like 5 guns with a billion ammo each on every level...)

Though, it's a similar argument that you're making. Retro mechanics for the sake of being retro and nostalgic doesn't fare well. Retro mechanics because they provide actually interesting gameplay opportunities are good.

And here I think, they should have invested time into Quality, not Quantity.
A MMO with 10 Classes that feel super unique and are all super fun to play is better, than 20 Classes and the half of them feel rushed.
You can clearly feel how some of the Jobs feel super lackluster and are just not fun to play.

Yeah, there's also class theme to consider.

Like, I really dislike how they removed a lot of the WAR skills that I liked in SB. Things like making Bloodbath into a mDPS Role Action and removing Mercy Stroke. While adding things that just muddy the feeling of a WAR such as making all tanks have similar defensive CD's (Many of which are just Role Actions with generic animations).

While alongside this messing with the theme of the class, it has had balance ramifications too, with a lot of PLD/DRK players complaining about how WAR now just has all the stuff that used to be unique to their class on top of their base kit.

Streamlined to a Point, that puts all the Mastery into theorycrafting of Stats, instead of Gameplay.
The MCH Mastery is mostly just about looking into Math Charts in a Document as soon as you are able to play the Basic Rotation.
But the mastery of a Class should happen in the Game not outside of it.

To be fair, this pretty much always happens though. Every MMO is about learning the basic rotation and then it's a simple spreadsheet to determine stat priorities and skill priorities.

Streamlining merely makes the basic rotation far easier to learn while making the low levels (Thus new player retention) garbage...

Which is something they need to address. They need to capitalize on their existing systems to frontload classes skills into the lower levels to make actually leveling up interesting. Then rely on their Trait system to upgrade these "Core" skills into their more interesting and powerful higher level versions.

Since, the game is already on the backfoot in terms of MMO leveling by the fact that it uses a base 2.5 second GCD. Most MMO's use 1.0-1.5s GCD's. This means that outside of oGCD skills, combat is SLOW, especially before you can actually gear and meld for SkS/SpS to improve it and before you get your full suite of oGCD's.

So they need to ensure that from level 1 that classes are entertaining to play. To make it interesting to level up and to also make it feel less frustrating when you jump into a roulette and get Sastasha and you have like 2 skills to use, so you don't even have a full combo let alone interesting combat.

Which is a super weird way to develop a Story from my View.
They needed to rush Stormblood to write Shadowbringer, to finish the whole Main Story with 5.0, to again rush it, because they need to write 6.0, when 5.0 hits the Shelf.

True, I think one of WoW's (Many) failings was that they got into a situation where they just relied on fixed Expansion releases.

While I think one of the major successes from Vanilla and TBC was that they weren't subject to this "We need to release an expansion every X years!". Vanilla was constantly updated until they felt that it was a good time to expand and enter TBC, including being when they'd finished designing TBC so it was ready to go out.

WotLK might have also been a similar thing, if on a faster schedule. But then after? They kept coming out like clockwork. With the worst case being WoD > Legion. Where they literally just stopped working on WoD in the middle of the expansion and said they were just going to work on the eventual Legion release instead...

I feel that this could end up with a similar problem in FFXIV. Wherein they feel the need to release a new expansion every 2 years. So they have to design every expansion so the story starts and ends within this 2 year period while leaving room to set up for the next expansion.

As opposed to working on an expansion and its story until they reach a satisfactory and natural end in their plan and then start working on the next expansion.

Of course, this is further exacerbated by their reluctance to do any significant balance changes within an expansion and would rather just band-aid fix stuff until the 2 year wait is over for a rework in the newest expansion.

Like, so long as they don't leave it too late before starting the next expansion and start having to add a bunch of fluff filler content (See: That awful MSQ grind at the end of ARR...) they should be able to dynamically release expansions when it's ready to do so.

So that they don't run into time issues that forces them to rush stuff or cut out content. Like how we worked our way towards the liberation of Doma and had a bunch of story surrounding Yotsuyu and then afterwards we spend like 2 minutes and we had punched Zenos in the face and Ala Mhigo was free. Or how we had the interesting development of Alphinaud deciding to travel to Garlemald and the beginnings of an arc with Shadowhunter, then 5.0 was close so they had to scrap that.

[Imuka]

Literally, WoW before the Activision merge was one of the most popular games of all time and literally dominated the market for years. It wasn't until Activision started the "Less Work, More Profits" style of of development that it started dying.

Which is for a Part true and a Part of it was on Blizzards side.
When WoW was at the absolute Top of the MMO Charts, you could see one typical Blizzard behaviour. "Thinking this will go on forever.".
Instead of using all the Money they had to also make new Games, they just focused everything on WoW. Just like they do it with Overwatch.
Even if they had only reinvested 20% of the WoW revenue, the Game would had Billions per Year for the investment.

Back then, they made the mistake to not buy themself out of Activision and start to turn Games like Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft into IPs, that come back every few Years, with maybe 1-2 Addons. Not every Year, but also not every 12 Years.
Give your audience the feeling, that your are working on the Game, but it might take time.
Now the Indies took over the Diablo Franchise and Blizzard can't keep up with the Indies. Nobody knows if they even make D4 at the moment and then when everybody was super hyped about new Diablo Leaks, they came up with "Do you guys not have Phones?".
Diablo on a Phone would have been okay, if D4 would come maybe 6-10 Months after the Mobile Game. Like a Gap filler for the Fans.
StarCraft was so focused on being an ESports Game on the mostly Korean Market.
People wait for the Franchises they love, but they won't wait again for 12 Years for a new Diablo.

I just don't think that it necessarily needed to be put into its own isolated content designed independently of the actual games overworld that continues to be dead content on release, only existing to let you run through it while you do your handful of MSQ's per zone and then going back to gather stuff for crafting.

This could have been a good way to handle it. Let people do something while being in the Queue for a Dungeon.
But now it would feel bad from my View, like they try to replace the world with Eureka.
And because Eureka got this super mixed Reception, it could make more people quit the Game.

When they killed the world and community by causing everything to be able using LFD tool to rush content.

I think, this is one of the most harmfull decisions any MMO can make. To put in this Partyfinder, so that people can just AFK everywere to get into a Dungeon.
Next to flying, because it makes the world look empty.
Traveling to a Dungeon can be fun, if the Enemies can be a real threat to the Party.
Make the whole Way and the Dungeon an Adventure.
The old times when you searched for a Group and then traveled to the Dungeon together. Sure, it took more time, but it felt like the whole thing was an Adventure.
It is like fast Travel. Fast Travel was introduced to cover the Problems of modern Sandboxes in open World Game.
They are often just boring and empty if you look behind the Picture. And so we got fast travel to hide that.
For Skyrim I used several Mods, that gave me the Option to interact much more with the World and it was so much more fun to travel. Using Caves as shelter while a Storm was outside. Hunting Animals as food. Setting up a fire, to prevent freezing to death. I always looked around for stuff.
And this gave traveling some kind of adventure and depth and made it really enjoyable for me. I felt less like in a Game and more like a play an adventure. The immersion was awesome.
Many Games just throw around dozens of collectibles and call it a day. 200 Chests in Assassins Creed, 100 Feathers/Pages/Relics etc. But I do not feel like they are a real Part of the World, they feel more like Geo Caching.
14 can't give me this interaction, but they could make the world feel more alive. Put a Punch of Workers in the Forest, put some Farmer in a Field working, moving around etc. Make some NPCs move around the Areas. They can even be instanced just on my PC, like with NPCs like Alpha.
But make me feel like this world breathes and lives and not everybody is a NPC just waiting till they die.

Though, in this particular case, I'd argue that dropping the fixed camera because they can isn't necessarily the best decision. Since, the fixed camera in the early games actually provided more than just "This is literally all we're capable of doing". It added to the tension of the game by removing the control you had, which allowed you to be put in difficult and stressful situations that kept you on the edge of your seat.

This was something I liked about Silent Hill. They worked with both way back then.
Going for fixed Cameras when needed but kept it behind the Player in other sections.
This feeling of a Camera were I could not see if something is behind me was so intense in SH2 in several buildings. Mostly, because of the very well done sound effects.
At the same time a fixed Camera was great for other Rooms.

I guess I said it a bit wrong. I can be a good thing, but keeping a fixed Camera, just because it was there back then is not a good thing. Especially, with Rooms and Areas, that would benefit from a Camera behind the Character or a free moving one.

Streamlining merely makes the basic rotation far easier to learn while making the low levels (Thus new player retention) garbage...

I feel like the Problem is, that the Classes only work at Lvl 70 at the moment and are even Garbage at 69.
The do not evolve and grow, they just suddenly work, like a Clock that is missing a Piece till the last moment.
This makes learning them near impossible for new Players while leveling.

The same happened to me, when I got Alex12 once. I loved this fight back then in HW. I played it sometimes, just because I enjoyed it so much.
Then I entered as a Samurai. My Class felt so clunky, that the fun was gone. I needed to play a crippled Class for 10 Minutes.
Missing Skills, a broken Rotation, etc. it was no fun at all.
And this was a Lvl 60 Encounter. Below that the Class feels so horrible. It feels like the Designers think, I am not able to use more than 4 Skills in a fight.

To be fair, this pretty much always happens though. Every MMO is about learning the basic rotation and then it's a simple spreadsheet to determine stat priorities and skill priorities.

Sometimes I think, a System on a smaller scale with more impact might change things.
I enjoyed the System of Monster Hunter, back when I played 4 Ultimate.
The Numbers are smaller but with more impact.
The difference between 1200 Crit and 2400 Crit...you can't really feel anything at all.
Maybe if the Boss Battles would focus a bit less just on DPS alone, they could try more and new entertaining Mechanics, that could be played or even be altered by using certain Materia to gain benefits.
We dropped everything about Materia, except for more DPS or MP.
And maybe it is at least more fun, if the Player can do it for themself.
At the moment, nearly everything of the Theory behind the Stats goes back to a few people doing all the work.

Maybe it reminds me to much of the Days when I played Path of Exile and Grim Dawn. In Grim Dawn I started pretty fast to understand and to build my Class over time. With POE I never got out of the Zone of following a Guide of a Grandmaster of this Game. And it felt like I was just copying his work, without understanding, what I did.

(btw. something I really miss is, that they show me my Crit Chance with a 1-100% Number, instead of just 2000. So that I know what this 2000 means. Yoshida says he wants us to find out. But how can this be fun? Except for a very small Number of Players, nearly nobody could come up with the Formula based on Results of 2000 Hits on a Strike Dummy with several Numbers. And my guess is, they would happily drop this Task for a % Number).

I know it is a bit of a crazy Idea, but it was in the Game back then and was more or less dropped, like Elemental Resistance and other thing, to streamline the Game.
And from my View, this is what made WoW worse. Streamlining it so much, that it feels to "gamey".

SE seems to have just skipped that stage of becoming insanely successful and gone straight to the "Less Work, More Profits" development style.

This is what the Industry calles "Games as a Service".
It is the Design to throw a MVP (Minimum Value Product) on the Market and fix it over the next Years, instead of fixing the Problems while the Game is in development.
This is the reason why Games like Destiny miss so much content and feel like there are significant Plotholes. Mostly because it was cut to sell later, when the content fixed.
Just look at Fallout76. The Game was released in such a Gargabe State, because they want to fix it later, with the Money from the people who bought it, are mostly unhappy and start to hate Bethesda for this Trash they called a Game.
They sold Trust for a faster Release and being able to fix the Game without spending their Money.

[Deceptus]

I honestly think that unless they really pull some magic out of their collective @$$es, ShadowBringers will be the make or break for me.

If they continue down the safe road, where nothing about the content cycle changes, I'll probably leave.

If they double down on their RNG in every system (such as relics), I'm definitely going to leave. I don't find RNG based gameplay fun at all.

This game is wonderful, but it's getting pretty stale.

[TaiyoShikasu]

This is what the Industry calles "Games as a Service".
It is the Design to throw a MVP (Minimum Value Product) on the Market and fix it over the next Years, instead of fixing the Problems while the Game is in development.
This is the reason why Games like Destiny miss so much content and feel like there are significant Plotholes. Mostly because it was cut to sell later, when the content fixed.
Just look at Fallout76. The Game was released in such a Gargabe State, because they want to fix it later, with the Money from the people who bought it, are mostly unhappy and start to hate Bethesda for this Trash they called a Game.
They sold Trust for a faster Release and being able to fix the Game without spending their Money.

Besthesda was ahead of the curve minus the fixing things.

[Shurrikhan]

I feel like the Problem is, that the Classes only work at Lvl 70 at the moment and are even Garbage at 69.
The do not evolve and grow, they just suddenly work, like a Clock that is missing a Piece till the last moment.
This makes learning them near impossible for new Players while leveling.

This is easily the biggest issue to me. On the other hand though you can end up with something like WoW where what few additional abilities you get with later levels often feel tacked-on, rather than offering reiteration or any new level of mastery to the arsenal used up until then.

[Levy9]

My two biggest general complaints is that the game is over-instanced and that it lacks exploratory/world content at end game. Eureka doesn't quite count due to it being both instanced and skewed towards large groups at the expense of exploration.

I'd love if we just got a new zone during a patch cycle with it's own story, completely non-instanced and part of the game's overworld. It could offer high difficulty mobs, dailies and maybe some form of instanced group content at the end, similar to Baldesion Arsenal. Maybe just an extreme difficulty four-man dungeon with a weekly cap?

As of now this game's only world content at endgame are beast tribe quests and hunts. In each of them, you essentially fly or immediately teleport to your destination and finish the quest/kill the under tuned mobs in mere minutes. This quick content is also capped at a daily limit, giving you no other world content to do after you cap.

I thought Eureka would've been an attempt to fill this gap in FFXIV's content pattern, but they made it another instanced zone with a heavy focus on large groups and large scale encounters.