General concerns with the Devs content philosophy

[Arkfrost]

Well sure. SE could make cluttered zones filled with objects and life.
Whether our computers could handle that in a satisfactory manner is a different question.

Well, I'm not saying that they should exaggerate on it, but a bit more, especially in those areas where you have large spaces filled with nothing they could add some more stuff.

I agree though, a bit more foliage as an option would be nice. Mob density is good as it is.

That being said: please keep in mind that the First is a dying world plagued by sin eaters for 100 years. I would not expect a dense population (though I would expect a lot more eaters that we have seen).

Hostile mob density is okay, yes. But they could add small, non-hostile level 1 critters somewhere inbetween, which only have 1HP and their name only pops up, when you deliberately target them.

Also, I know that it's a dying world plagued by sin eaters for 100 years. However, what bothers me is, that I don't see any of these sin eaters at all roaming the area, outside of the MSQ.

It would be like Limsa Lominsa which is small and compact and very annoying at times due to so many people in a small area.

Lol, I have the exactly opposite feeling. The fact that there are not so many people all over the place is what is annoying in my opinion. I'm playin a MMORPG after all and not a co-op single player title.

[Saito_S]

Honestly, the only complaint I agree with is #2. It is disappointing, that there's no lv 60 primal weapons at the very least for GNB and DNC. I hope those and some other glam weapons are added soon, because that seems like a strange omission. Everything else tho...

re: Role Quests - there are seventeen battle classes now. And that's not counting BLU or any DoH/L classes. I get why one could be disappointed to see this change, but it's pretty understandable. It's really not fair to accuse them of laziness in reaction to them saying they don't feel they can keep up with writing THAT many storylines and maintain any semblance of quality.

Besides - and YMMV on this of course - the quality wasn't there with any consistency to begin with, going all the way back to ARR. Sure some class questlines were great, but many were "meh", and some were AWFUL. For every Rogue, Red Mage, or Dark Knight storyline, there was a Lancer, Paladin (especially 50-60, ye gods), or Marauder. Trimming that down so that there are way fewer stories to juggle makes sense if it improves quality - I've only done the caster role line so far, but I enjoyed it, and I've heard from friends who main different roles that the others are good.

re: "empty zones" - I really don't agree with this. I love the zones from HW and ShB, and while I'm more up and down on the StB ones, there are still some that are great, and none of them have ever felt empty or lifeless to me. The zones are just bigger, that's all. There's plenty of "stuff" going on in the world if you look (in HW, StB, and ShB alike), they're just not OVERstuffed with people and objects. And it's not like there aren't plenty of large, open areas in ARR zones with little going on. Said open areas are just smaller, because the zones themselves are smaller, so you notice them less (and notice the goings-on of people, animals, and objects, more).
You can cherry-pick screenshots to make any of the main city hubs look either busy and lively, or empty and deserted, so your "look at these shots that prove how empty the Crystarium is!" photo album really did not impress. Hell, in the comparison between the restaurant areas in Limsa vs. Crystarium, from your position in the latter where you took the screenshot showing mostly empty tables with only one occupied by a couple NPCs, if you were to just turn around and then immediately take another screenshot, you'd capture like 10 NPCs in one shot in various "daily life" positions/poses/actions.

re: voice acting - I've never understood this complaint, honestly. I just am not that fussed when a game goes the route of not having fully voiced everything everywhere. This game has voice acting during the key MSQ scenes, and that's about it, and that's fine with me. I suppose to some degree, this topic is at an impasse by default the moment it's brought up, because you either think more voice acting is crucially important, or you don't, and it's unlikely that either side will suddenly change their mind. But yeah, for my part, I don't have a problem with how they've handled this. Reading in RPGs is as old as... RPGs, so it's not like it's unusual, and given how small the dev team is and how reluctant SE seems to be to fund XIV more than is absolutely necessary to keep the lights on, I have little doubt that the money saved by not having more voice work has been put to use elsewhere, thus meaning that if we DID get more voice work, we'd have to accept a dip in quality in some other area of the game. I'd rather keep things the way they are if such a trade-off were the price for having more cutscenes be voiced.

EDIT: also when it comes to the style of having EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING, voiced, like in Skyrim or Mass Effect where no conversation isn't voiced, including just background NPC banter that's just going on as you run through an area... no thanks. I find that kind of thing to be more grating than "immersive" when I'm trying to explore a new zone or chill in one of the cities or etc.

[LiteBrite]

OP you should know better. No matter what criticisms you give, no matter how small, people will come out in droves here, and give any excuse in the book they can think of, defending every little desision the devs makes. A lot of them are in denial. On other words, you're wasting your breath.

[Dualblade]

Besides - and YMMV on this of course - the quality wasn't there with any consistency to begin with, going all the way back to ARR. Sure some class questlines were great, but many were "meh", and some were AWFUL. For every Rogue, Red Mage, or Dark Knight storyline, there was a Lancer, Paladin (especially 50-60, ye gods), or Marauder.

Look you can beat down on other class/job quests if you want but the Lancer class quest was one of the better Class quests out there, even better than some of the Job quests were.

As far as the points here are the only one I can agree with is the DNC/GNB glam and even then if people keep asking for things like the Primal gear it'll come. The Zones feel fine enough, Role Quests have all been consistently high quality and did a lot to make the WoD more likable than their HW appearance did, and while I like the voice acting we really don't need it for every part of the game. I would love to see the 8-man raid get it but thats about the only area that really could use it.

[Gula]

OP you should know better. No matter what criticisms you give, no matter how small, people will come out in droves here, and give any excuse in the book they can think of, defending every little desision the devs makes. A lot of them are in denial. On other words, you're wasting your breath.

Do you actually believe people are wrong for wanting to speak in favor of the staff that brought us 5.0's amazing story telling, fabulous music and making sure the release was as smooth as it could have been done? Everyone has a right to voice their opinion but some people seem to let subjectivity negate what is objectively a fine piece of development.

Of all my very, very minute and personal gripes post launch, it would have to be The Empty. Because objectively, it is... well, empty. And the initial preview made it seem as though we could do more. The presentation in comparison to the other raids isn't as polished. I don't think anyone will disagree on that. I could also lie and say, well- the story wasn't as interesting. But that interest is subjective and entirely arguable.

[Alucard135]

Do you actually believe people are wrong for wanting to speak in favor of the staff that brought us 5.0's amazing story telling, fabulous music and making sure the release was as smooth as it could have been done? Everyone has a right to voice their opinion but some people seem to let subjectivity negate what is objectively a fine piece of development.

Of all my very, very minute and personal gripes post launch, it would have to be The Empty. Because objectively, it is... well, empty. And the initial preview made it seem as though we could do more. The presentation in comparison to the other raids isn't as polished. I don't think anyone will disagree on that. I could also lie and say, well- the story wasn't as interesting. But that interest is subjective and entirely arguable.

Don't bother with them lol. They hate everything the devs do to the point you wonder why are they still playing.

[dapperfaffer]

1.I agree that areas of the games content for questing seems to be lacking, but it really isn't fair to the developers to expect them to give some 40 classes all unique stories at this point that are all of high quality. I'll put it to you in an easier way. Blizzard did class quests in Legion and they were relatively well done. Did they do them in BfA? No. It was simply to much work. Role quests are a fair trade off.

2. Yes, it would be nice if they had more glam and options and that older tiers had something unique for them as well. But the game is now 9 years old is it really fair to expect them to update all the previous content, no. Would it be nice if Viera and Hrothgars had more hair options, yea, especially with Viera since they are more human like but they don't and thats the way it is.

3. Every MMO ever. BfA still has trash sized maps, with flying restricted while making you run all over the place only to lengthen the content duration because their is literally nothing there but the daily "hey, heres a thing that we locked behind rep and you have to go grind it out now on these specific quests". Its no better and you could argue that its worse.

4. I agree with this in terms of immersion. But we both know the majority of people click the X on the talking head box.

Maybe its just me but there seems to be something going on with the dev team behind FFXIV. Maybe they are being pulled to other projects, maybe they are just tired of working on 1 game coming form an overhaul and expanding it for that past 9ish years, but there is a noticeable absence with ShB compared to other expansions. The quality is there and maybe its just a time frame thing, like ShB was rushed or something, but so far ShB seems better at the story end and everything else is sort of a wip.

[Saito_S]

OP you should know better. No matter what criticisms you give, no matter how small, people will come out in droves here, and give any excuse in the book they can think of, defending every little desision the devs makes. A lot of them are in denial. On other words, you're wasting your breath.

I never really get why people say this. Sure, what you're describing does happen - there are absolute defender types who will 100% back up EVERY decision SE makes. That's just objectively true, that such people exist, but why do you care that much about them? You're not even responding directly to one of them, you're just making a drive-by to paint anyone who disagrees with the OP as "one of those people". Disagree with these particular complaints =/= will defend everything SE does. For my part I strongly disagree with certain decisions by Yoshi and the team over the years. It just so happens that the particular complaints voiced in THIS thread, I don't agree with (except for the GNB/DNC glam).

But it's like... so people are disagreeing with each other. That's what forums are for. "Don't bother wasting your breath OP, these people are all sheeple!" posts like yours are, honestly, no more worthwhile and no less eye-roll inducing than the "SE can do no wrong!" posts made BY the "sheeple" themselves.

Look you can beat down on other class/job quests if you want but the Lancer class quest was one of the better Class quests out there, even better than some of the Job quests were.

I mean... this is why I said YMMV, lol. I personally found the Reasonable McReasonable Face vs. Massive Edgelord - also starring "So... he can talk to the boar, or... what's going on here?" storyline to be borderline comedic.

As far as the points here are the only one I can agree with is the DNC/GNB glam and even then if people keep asking for things like the Primal gear it'll come. The Zones feel fine enough, Role Quests have all been consistently high quality and did a lot to make the WoD more likable than their HW appearance did, and while I like the voice acting we really don't need it for every part of the game. I would love to see the 8-man raid get it but thats about the only area that really could use it.

I actually agree here. As I said, I'm not too fussed by the lack of voice acting outside MSQ, but simply because of how connected the Eden Raid is to the MSQ this time around, I do think it'd be cool if it got voice acting, yeah. But it's definitely not a big deal to me. I absolutely adored the Eden Raid fights and story so far. My only complaint would be that I DID think we might be able to explore a bit more of the Empty, especially as... things began to happen, lol (not saying more cause spoilers). Mildly disappointing that we can't. But that's about it. Really looking forward to part 2!

[Mahoukenshi]

"So... he can talk to the boar, or... what's going on here?" That's nothing too unusual in Japanese media. It even happened in Detective Conan, but with a bear. People understanding animals is in general nothing unusual, the Horse Whisperer, Flippers, Lassy, Free Willy, with a lenient suspension of disbelief Pokémon. Ignoring if they are good or bad. While I thought the Lancer job story was solid, I prefered the Dragoon story (only up to 50 so far) a bit more.

[LiteBrite]

I never really get why people say this. Sure, what you're describing does happen - there are absolute defender types who will 100% back up EVERY decision SE makes. That's just objectively true, that such people exist, but why do you care that much about them? You're not even responding directly to one of them, you're just making a drive-by to paint anyone who disagrees with the OP as "one of those people". Disagree with these particular complaints =/= will defend everything SE does. For my part I strongly disagree with certain decisions by Yoshi and the team over the years. It just so happens that the particular complaints voiced in THIS thread, I don't agree with (except for the GNB/DNC glam).

But it's like... so people are disagreeing with each other. That's what forums are for. "Don't bother wasting your breath OP, these people are all sheeple!" posts like yours are, honestly, no more worthwhile and no less eye-roll inducing than the "SE can do no wrong!" posts made BY the "sheeple" themselves.

Thanks for proving my point.