Shadowbringers starting to feel like a budget expansion

[Melichoir]

And for the love of Hydaelyn: If players aren't happy with the way they game is currently, it's not on them to come up with solutions.

It's perfectly fine and rational to say "I don't like X part of the game". I may or may not be able to explain why, but I'm not a game designer and I don't have to come up with a solution to fix it.

Why? Because even if I did, SE has their own processes and very rarely listen to the player base unless backed into a corner.

Lets be frank though. If SE listened to the whims of the player base, this game would be horrible. 99% of us are not game devs, have any background in game design, story telling, art direction, or other components needed to make a compelling game. Most of us just play games in our free time. We know what we like as individuals, and what we dont, but that doesnt make us qualified to design games ourselves.

You wouldnt know how to make a good pizza from scratch simply because you like eating pizza.

[frostmagemari]

Lets be frank though. If SE listened to the whims of the player base, this game would be horrible. 99% of us are not game devs, have any background in game design, story telling, art direction, or other components needed to make a compelling game. Most of us just play games in our free time. We know what we like as individuals, and what we dont, but that doesnt make us qualified to design games ourselves.

You wouldnt know how to make a good pizza from scratch simply because you like eating pizza.

True, but there is nuance to even that.
You're right that the average person wouldn't know how to make a pizza from scratch just because they like pizza... but the average person can still offer critiques about the pizza, and you will find common ground among critiques. If your pizza sauce is too sweet, it will get complaints; now this doesn't mean that people are telling you to put no sauce on the pizza (and they shouldn't have to point that out in their complaint), but rather that the kind of sauce you put on there isn't to the liking and the recipe might need to be changed slightly.

So SQEX doesn't need to listen to us on how to fix their game, but they do need to listen to us to properly assess what the issues actually are and work on fixing those issues.

[LaylaTsarra]

So SQEX doesn't need to listen to us on how to fix their game, but they do need to listen to us to properly assess what the issues actually are and work on fixing those issues.

I've been here for a long long time and it doesn't matter what the relic or what the relic stage this forum has panned them all. From atma to umbrites, to dungeon drops, to crafted hand in's, to light grinding, to Eureka to this SHB's first step. There is nothing new here. Complaining about how it's terrible constantly is the normal state of affairs. It's ok if this was something new but the devs are used to this i'm sure and expect to get the standard complaints.

I'm sure they use other metrics to see how the content is doing. How many people are participating etc. This easy first step might in fact be a way to get a lot more people hooked on the process.

The problem here with this forum is that everything is bad. There is very little hey you did a good job and we like it. It's simply this sucks most of the time or you should have done this and you didn't. Give me this, give me that... about sums up what this forum does on a daily basis so one can say it's constructive criticism but it's not really when all they do here is complain.

[Eldevern]

Grmplf. The game is plain bad. Not more not less. I'm... probably some kind of masochist to play it.

[Lersayil]

Positive feedback and gushing about what we like usually floats up to reddit, or the other sub forums.

When a game is doing good, its the natural thing to happen.

Sure, most of these forums are usually filled with complaints, but that's a good thing. As long as its worded in a civil and readable manner, its constructive criticism, and shows that people still care.

Even more so, since if they ever wanted to, they could collate forum posts to in-game account history en-mass and get some usable data out of it (if its not a thing yet?).

[Kalise]

No Diadem/Eureka - Good god. Does no one remember how much people complained about Anemos before the train become a thing? Or how bad Pagos was? How Eureka, like Diadem, was trash content no one liked and time wouldve been better spent on other content? How grindy and brain dead it was? How some people compared Eureka to Diadem and said Diadem was better?

People like to bring this up a lot. The way that people hated Anemos as a reason why Eureka 2.0 (Or more accurately Diadem 3.0? Or would that be 4.0 given Ishguardian Scrips uses a new Diadem first?) being neglected is good.

However, the reality is that Eureka was actually AMAZING in concept, but majorly hamstrung by a failure in IMPLEMENTATION.

I say this as someone who hated Eureka, including Pyros and Hydatos (Which many Eureka lovers say was so much better and fun... But no, it was more FATE Trains. Oh with shiny new buttons to use!)

If they had taken their experience with Eureka, combined with player feedback in regards to it (More than just the "Plz no Relic in Eureka!" which they currently have used) and improved it, then it's still possible for Eureka content to be closer to its potential.

Like, there are many things Eureka did wrong.

Such as the dumb arbitrary leveling system that meant that helping friends wasn't possible because exp leeching (As well as making 90% of the world content literally harmless once you leveled up to max for the zone).

The fact that the mode revolved entirely around FATE Trains, meaning the content heavily relied upon playing during prime time when it was populated (Which also often meant that the Trains became too crowded to be fun, where AoEing enemies to spawn FATEs would result in most of the train not even being able to attack something, while going elsewhere to farm towards another FATE could result in the Train killing the NM before you can come back to get participation).

Not to mention some pretty horrendous environment design that seemed to be intentionally making life more annoying (Such as terrible layouts making moving around the map awful, stupid dragons you have to /walk past (Especially when you're rushing to get to a FATE to get participation) as well as level locked mounts and aetherytes)

However, there's stuff that Eureka did right. Such as it gave consistent, casual combat content. Meaning there was always something you could hop into for as long as you wanted. Tired after a long day at work? Jump into Eureka for an hour. Weekend with no plans? Spend all day in Eureka. This was especially notable due to how good it was for getting Tomestones, meaning that casual players could easily grind out tome gear on their schedule (This could be grinding out the entire weeks worth of tomes on a Sunday evening. Something that Daily Roulette bonuses doesn't allow)

Eureka also provided a myriad of rewards. Bunny Fates, specific NM rewards, lockboxes. There was TONS of stuff to work on, not just the Relic. (Though, the terrible design was that FATEs scaled based on the number of people in the instance, rather than number of people DOING THE FATE. So people farming Bunnies, grinding Light, leveling via mob chains, doing Challenge Logs etc. Would all work against the FATE Train by making the FATEs tougher...)

It also was a place that allowed the gathering of more than 8 people. All working towards similar goals. That's a social aspect that is sorely lacking in the rest of Duty Finder XIV. Since so much content is literally shoved into tiny instances of 4/8 players (With the occasional Alliance Raid for up to 24 people!) while open zones are pretty barren given that there's so little to do there (Outside the occasional Hunt Train where like 50 people come and zerg a Hunt monster then move on to the next one), the zone with a massive number of people in it is amazing for making the game more sociable (Ishguard sort of gets a lot of people in the same zone, but from my experience it tends to be more crafters AFKing through their Macros... Diadem is fairly sociable though)

So yeah, sure, Eureka was absolute trash on arrival and wasn't that great going forward (Especially given Pagos was already in the works before player feedback from Anemos was given). But outright dismissing the notion of Eureka content purely based on the idea that a new Eureka would be a copy/paste of the existing one is a bit silly (Then again... This is the XIV team... Wouldn't be surprised if they did simply copy/paste it. That's how they create new Dungeons/Raids/Crafting content anyway)

Lets be frank though. If SE listened to the whims of the player base, this game would be horrible. 99% of us are not game devs, have any background in game design, story telling, art direction, or other components needed to make a compelling game. Most of us just play games in our free time. We know what we like as individuals, and what we dont, but that doesnt make us qualified to design games ourselves.

You wouldnt know how to make a good pizza from scratch simply because you like eating pizza.

Ehh... That's a poor analogy.

I mean, you don't need to be a world reknowned proffessional italian chef who's lived their entire life in Italy and worked in a bunch of Michelin Star restaurants to be able to say something like, putting Strawberry Jam on a Pepperoni Pizza would not be a good combination.

Heck, in the service industry it's often a customer focused line of work. Maybe it's just me, but I recently watched like a ton of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and a lot of it was him telling head chefs that what they're making isn't what the customers want (While the head chefs were all like "My food is the bestest! I've worked alongside the best chefs in the world and won awards for my cooking so I know how to make food!")

Same is true for video games. While yes, most people won't know the intricacies of game design such as being able to code the damn thing, or compose the music in accordance to what is happening in the game, just like your average pizza eater won't really know how to spin a good pizza dough.

It's still quite possible for a layperson to judge the result of a game or pizza. If a game lacks something, or has issues with the flow or enjoyability those can be pointed out by a player then the devs can listen to that feedback and use their knowledge to implement it into their game.

Just like you can complain about a pizza being too doughy, having a weak sauce or toppings that are not complementary to each other (I.e. Pineapple on a Tomato Sauce Pepperoni Pizza would be not so great... However, Pineapple on a BBQ Sauce pizza with Ham and Bacon? That's pretty good) and it'd be up to the chef to use their knowledge to think about how they'd make the dough and what toppings they'd put together.

[EtherRose]

Ehh... That's a poor analogy.

I mean, you don't need to be a world reknowned proffessional italian chef who's lived their entire life in Italy and worked in a bunch of Michelin Star restaurants to be able to say something like, putting Strawberry Jam on a Pepperoni Pizza would not be a good combination.

Heck, in the service industry it's often a customer focused line of work. Maybe it's just me, but I recently watched like a ton of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and a lot of it was him telling head chefs that what they're making isn't what the customers want (While the head chefs were all like "My food is the bestest! I've worked alongside the best chefs in the world and won awards for my cooking so I know how to make food!")

Same is true for video games. While yes, most people won't know the intricacies of game design such as being able to code the damn thing, or compose the music in accordance to what is happening in the game, just like your average pizza eater won't really know how to spin a good pizza dough.

It's still quite possible for a layperson to judge the result of a game or pizza. If a game lacks something, or has issues with the flow or enjoyability those can be pointed out by a player then the devs can listen to that feedback and use their knowledge to implement it into their game.

Just like you can complain about a pizza being too doughy, having a weak sauce or toppings that are not complementary to each other (I.e. Pineapple on a Tomato Sauce Pepperoni Pizza would be not so great... However, Pineapple on a BBQ Sauce pizza with Ham and Bacon? That's pretty good) and it'd be up to the chef to use their knowledge to think about how they'd make the dough and what toppings they'd put together.

In some way, Melichoir is right. Still poor analogy but, right. However the main problem is the community itself. The community wants this and that. Half the community says yes, other half says no. And it keeps branching from there on what the community wants and what they agree on and disagree. SE has to take all this in and make decisions on what the community has said. And even though they try to do stuff, there will always be that part of the community who vehemently doesn't like it and will constantly whine while you have a other part of the community who says it's decent or not bad at all. All in all, you can't appease everybody, no mater what SE does.

[Kalise]

In some way, Melichoir is right. Still poor analogy but, right. However the main problem is the community itself. The community wants this and that. Half the community says yes, other half says no. And it keeps branching from there on what the community wants and what they agree on and disagree. SE has to take all this in and make decisions on what the community has said. And even though they try to do stuff, there will always be that part of the community who vehemently doesn't like it and will constantly whine while you have a other part of the community who says it's decent or not bad at all. All in all, you can't appease everybody, no mater what SE does.

Though, this is where you have to make a decision based on your target audience.

If we keep using the pizza analogy; this would be something like, you make a pepperoni pizza. But a bunch of vegetarians come along and say they don't like it.

Now, in this case, vegetarians clearly aren't the target audience of a pizza with a meat topping, so how much do you put stock in their feedback to it?

Ideally, if you wanted to be the most popular pizzeria, you'd still make the pepperoni pizza that's aimed towards people who like that kind of pizza. But you'd also offer other pizzas such as margherita, mexican green wave, double cheese etc. So people who don't like pepperoni pizza have things they would like to order.

As opposed to the SE method of dealing with feedback where they make a pepperoni pizza. But then a vegetarian says they don't like it, so then they remove the pepperoni. Then a vegan says they don't like it, so then they remove the cheese. Then someone with celiac's says they don't like it, so then they remove the dough. Meaning that all they're left with is some tomato sauce. It might be really good tomato sauce. But no-one is going to have a satisfying meal just eating a bowl of tomato sauce.

[Mansion]

Yeah, 1 year of content with them saying "Hey were cutting back on stuff" and havent exactly told us the reasoning behind this at this time, leaving lots of room for speculation. Speculation is fine and dandy, but it's not a good way to decide the merit of something.

This is like saying "You know, Ive only watched half this movie, therefore I can judge how complete or worthwhile it is by only watching half." Which is a stupid position to take considering that the ending of a movie can really make or break things. There are plenty of movies in which the movie is going fine, get to the end and it ruins the movie, and conversely, the catch at the end of hte movie makes the entire thing so much better.

The point Im making is that it's fine to have thoughts on what we've been given currently. But there's a pernicious thought process that were somehow being jipped content unfairly because no deep dungeon and 1 less dungeon per major patch, with the complete disregard for quality of content or potential reasons for certain content being scaled back. I dunno, but it seems to make more sense for me to be like "Hmm Ill judge whether this xpac is ultimately bad or good when I can see the whole picture, and not before."

That's kind of a crooked reasoning because a movie is meant to be enjoyed in its entirety, while FFXIV patches are meant to be enjoyed as they are delivered. And then, the expansion is ultimately "reviewed" once the next one is coming. Having something crazy good coming in 5.55 would not make up for the "draught" of 5.1 to 5.5 at all for instance. Each patch has to stand on its own (meaning providing gameplay) and live to its purpose (gear up in even patches and catch up in uneven patches). And I'm generous in that distinction here because there are players who already know uneven patches are not interesting if there is no ultimate coming up for instance.

[EtherRose]

Though, this is where you have to make a decision based on your target audience.

If we keep using the pizza analogy; this would be something like, you make a pepperoni pizza. But a bunch of vegetarians come along and say they don't like it.

Now, in this case, vegetarians clearly aren't the target audience of a pizza with a meat topping, so how much do you put stock in their feedback to it?

Ideally, if you wanted to be the most popular pizzeria, you'd still make the pepperoni pizza that's aimed towards people who like that kind of pizza. But you'd also offer other pizzas such as margherita, mexican green wave, double cheese etc. So people who don't like pepperoni pizza have things they would like to order.

As opposed to the SE method of dealing with feedback where they make a pepperoni pizza. But then a vegetarian says they don't like it, so then they remove the pepperoni. Then a vegan says they don't like it, so then they remove the cheese. Then someone with celiac's says they don't like it, so then they remove the dough. Meaning that all they're left with is some tomato sauce. It might be really good tomato sauce. But no-one is going to have a satisfying meal just eating a bowl of tomato sauce.

Correct. Although sometimes that target audience is a hit or miss with them. Feedback and criticism is so all over the place with the community on what they want. I'm sure SE has mental break downs trying to figure out what the community really wants. It's a never ending battle but eh, most of the stuff ain't that bad like how some people put it out to be.