FFXIV's technical limitations are beginning to concern me.

[Jeeqbit]

Adding more servers has the danger of those servers becoming ghost towns once populations settle. See: Well just about every MMO that's launched in the past 15 years that panicked and added too many servers because of an initial rush.

MMOs that are growing add servers. MMOs that are dying merge servers.

If they become ghost towns ever I am sure SE will do the opposite and merge them like they did with FF11.

[Jin-]

2. Is good. This way we don't have your typical dead MMORPG servers and people just going to the biggest one. Atm situation might look troubling but the idea is still good

In fact this whole list is more like design choices over technical limitations. I disagree with every point apart from 1 and 2

[Puremallace]

1. Glam counts can't be expanded.
2. New players can only roll on certain servers during extremely limited windows.
3. The mogstation is a clunky mess (albeit slightly improved) that feels like it dates from 2005.
4. There are weird systems for everything: retainers, crafting, gear swaps, glamour (the prisms, the plates, the dresser, the armoire).
   
   One thing I would add to this list is the move away from Job Quest to Role quest. It gives me flashbacks to Blizzard finding it cheaper to just eliminate RPG elements from the MMO to save a dime. I cannot put into words how much I could case less about role quest. The story told through them in Shadowbringers could have been done in side quest and it COMPLETELY kills class fantasy for me in an MMO.
   
   Embracing this concept in Endwalker is a massive mistake.
   
   
   Complete lack of clarity on add ons. Endless examples of people using ACT and literal websites tracking all the characters using it with no word at all from Square Enix written into an official policy.

These are the 3 issues that I mostly agree with that are systemic. Every single FF14 vet saying things like "restrictions of the 1.0 code" or "spaghetti code" 7 YEARS later is pretty damn concerning. Telling people not to be concerned about how bad the Mogstation is designed because Final Fantasy 11 had a worse one is just horrible excuses to fall back on.

I do have very serious concerns when Yoshi P himself says that glamour being so restricted is not that big of a deal with an MMO that basically forces you to pay real life money for more storage in an MMO that is adding more reasons to be forced to buy more storage. Any MMO developer that seems like they are forcing me to goto a cash shop to get around arbitrary restrictions they are putting in place is a MASSIVE MASSIVE red flag.

Some people I have talked too are sitting on 5 to 10 EXTRA retainers. So when Yoshi P says there are some kind of memory or 1.0 issues then I have to wonder where are those same issues with all of these storage alts? It is outdated, inefficient and complete money grab. I also have extreme concerns about the sheer exteme levels of over monetization of the playerbase I am seeing from a Collectors edition that set a record for being the most expensive Collectors edition in gaming history to trying to sell branded guitars and jewelry on the main stage at a fan event that was supposed to be about new content coming in the expansion.

If you want to know one thing that will kill an MMO super fast for a western audience is the perception you are more concerned about our wallets then delivering a better experience.

. Treating the Housing Savage issue as a joke when people are spending 16 hours endangering their health or straight up using bots to participate in an on the box feature is just bad design. It is pure bad design and needs to be disabled NOW until it is fixed.

. How about how in christ name can someone type website address, gil and gold in a shout message in Limsa and not have that message denied with an auto ban?!??!?!!?!?

. Blowing off the Ultimate raiders for 2+ years when your biggest competition is famous for putting out raids is a massive mistake. It is the one thing they are actually good at.

There are a tsunami of complaints and issues that are building up that Square Enix is not addressing or blowing off as minor in the background and once FF14 gets that one bad expansion it is going to hit all at once. I saw it happen in Rift...Aion...SWToR...World of Warcraft.

[DPZ2]

. How about how in christ name can someone type website address, gil and gold in a shout message in Limsa and not have that message denied with an auto ban?!??!?!!?!?

Have you paid attention to the shouts (well, mostly /says these days)? Website address is coded, gold is a non-issue, since this game doesn't have gold, and 'gil' can be used by anyone via chat. Auto-ban would require some AI features that I could probably create, given time and money for a large enough Hadoop cluster to monitor Ever. Single. Chat. Conversation. In. The. Game. Across. All. Worlds.

Would it be worth the cost?

A simpler solution - always report such messages via the quick-and-easy "This is RMT" tool: You know, right click on the offender name in chat, click on the 'Report' button, select RMT and click on the "Yeah, I understand false reports are gonna come back and bite me" box. Takes about 5 seconds.

[Equitable_Remedy]

FFXIV's technical limitations are beginning to concern me.

The sky is not, in fact, falling. It's fine. Just play the game and enjoy your life.

[Puremallace]

Have you paid attention to the shouts (well, mostly /says these days)? Website address is coded, gold is a non-issue, since this game doesn't have gold, and 'gil' can be used by anyone via chat. Auto-ban would require some AI features that I could probably create, given time and money for a large enough Hadoop cluster to monitor Ever. Single. Chat. Conversation. In. The. Game. Across. All. Worlds.

As someone who AFK's in Limsa I can tell you something like 90% of the RMT post have the world gold in them so yeah I know it is stupid but it is what they are doing. I am reporting between 20-50 accounts a day in Limsa on Siren. All of the names are like jjhdjsdjk Tia.....kjdkszdj Tia...KJDhdh Tia

I played Aion in 2011 before FF14 even came out and even they solved this 10 YEARS ago with chat filters. People trying to blame this on some 1.0 code or whatever do not realize MMO's with older codes figured it out years ago. ALSO it goes to my other point of FF14 vets excusing obvious flaws as just broken code that will never get fixed.

[znushu]

Adding more servers has the danger of those servers

Please, Square-Enix - now is the time. Reinvest in this game.

This is going to be a unpopular opinion for most players here but looking back from my experiences when the game launched up till now. I truly believe that no amount of investments or servers are going to solve the technical limitations of the product because it's not something you can just patch, these are things which are built into the foundations of it which will take another massive overhaul in order to fix. By that point though you're basically just making a entirely new game and that brings me to what i'm about to suggest....


Final Fantasy XIV:ARR needs another Calamity.

[Puremallace]

This is going to be a unpopular opinion for most players here but looking back from my experiences when the game launched up till now. I truly believe that no amount of investments or servers are going to solve the technical limitations of the product because it's not something you can just patch, these are things which are built into the foundations of it which will take another massive overhaul in order to fix. By that point though you're basically just making a entirely new game and that brings me to what i'm about to suggest....


Final Fantasy XIV:ARR needs another Calamity.

This is basically my opinion on the current situation unless we get an 8th calamity which is 100% allowed in the lore just like the 7th was they can do it.

[ReynTime]

Yeah some of the technical debt the game has sounds like it can't just be "fixed" without redoing things from scratch. They're going to keep things as they are for as long as the game gets more new players than lose old ones.
But let's be real, this game's success did outlive SE's predecessors and is now surpassing the biggest one out there. But this iteration alone IS over 7 years old. Like any online game, the limitations become more and more apparent over time, until it becomes more feasible (in theory) to remake or make a new one.
XIV will be as fine as is until real competition comes out. So far, none in sight. I do think players who aren't completely new to the game are starting to become annoyed by the limitations, and a minority tired of the content cycle. But if you look at the existing alternatives... The division doesn't need to change how they work right now.
Obviously, current state of Blizzard says a lot about getting too comfy in your throne, but it will be a long time before the XIV team needs to worry at all.

Basically it feels right now as if XIV is "perfect" and SE will never need to make another MMORPG. I'll give that maybe they won't consider it because of costs (and maybe fear given how disastrous 1.0 launch was). But XIV won't be "all they need" forever BECAUSE of technical limitations being met. We already saw the limits of what they can do with a single map in Kholusia. And IDK about you, but that's not a very impressive limit in 2019.

I don't see them "remaking" XIV again. I see them supporting it indefinitely but prioritizing a new project when player count drops from its peak. And from my PoV, that peak will start dropping when the "casuals" who don't get overly attached to one game find the new hottest thing. Because the issues SE brushes off as minor don't bother them, but they bother the more passionate customers who are a lot more willing to stay around for a long period.

MMOs that are growing add servers. MMOs that are dying merge servers.

If they become ghost towns ever I am sure SE will do the opposite and merge them like they did with FF11.

They merged servers in the past too. In 1.X's lifetime. So it's not a foreign concept to the XIV team.

[DPZ2]

This is basically my opinion on the current situation unless we get an 8th calamity which is 100% allowed in the lore just like the 7th was they can do it.

They already had a major Calamity on the First. Are you ready to play an MMO with only four or five zones the size of those on the First? It'll have a very short life.