Lack of pve content

[ForteNightshade]

The problem is, it isn't just raid content being viewed with contempt by a vocal portion of the community. It's the idea of any content that might actually have some staying power/depth to it.

I really like what Eureka and Bozja bring to the table, for example. Yet players who are not the target audience kick and scream about how it is supposedly 'terrible' content and then the development team scrap plans for future content along those lines.

Yet if anybody dares to suggest that maybe we could do with less focus on fluff content, the floodgates open and people are outright attacked.

I'm interested in a healthy variety of content to appeal to a broad variety of tastes, ideally without major cuts and skewed priorities. As it stands, even before Covid-19 entered the picture a lot of content has been scrapped for what is arguably flimsy reasoning.

Personally I'm hoping that the recent influx of WoW refugees will increase the volume of the demand for more PvE and PvP content.

As someone who likes Bozja, I tend to agree. The problem with it though is players being forced to partake in it when they dislike that sort of content. I said this in another thread but to briefly summarize again here, they need to either commit to alternate relic paths or just separate the relic from Bozja-like content entirely and see if it can stand on its own.

I also have been quite vocal Shadowbringers focused far too much on "fluff" with very limited staying power. Which is partially why the content droughts have felt essentially bad. The patches had so little to fall back on, it became extremely noticeable how little meat was actually on the bone. This goes into my issue with the lack of content longevity in this game. If they had content that could last through two or three patch cycles, then a "fluff" focused patch wouldn't feel so hollow for players who have minimal interest in Gpose or Fishing. Take Blue Mage, for example. Even if you thoroughly enjoy what they have to offer... well, it got an update in 5.45 and likely won't see another until 6.15 or 6.35. Which is a year apart. Before that, it's last update was in 5.15 if I recall. Simply put, this is just too big a gap for something that really only lasts for a month at most.

They need content that can stretch through multiple patches or content that sees small updates throughout each patch.

No, thank you. The amount of elitism that M+ brings with it is a huge reason WoW is no longer fun to play. They've literally integrated a rating score into the game so that players can more easily exclude others from their groups while pushing their M+ keys. The game is now elitist for you so that you personally don't have to be. YoshiP has expressed distaste for this type of gameplay, and I'm happy that he's done so. I prefer a game that I can play with my friends without having to boot them from the group for underperforming. I'd rather step up my own game than ban someone from my groups for their inability to step up theirs.

No longer fun to play for you. While you may enjoy simply running dungeons with your friends who aren't as skilled, I get incredibly bored with them due to their complete inability to pose even the slightest challenge. This would not be content aimed towards your demographic but players more in the midcore scene looking to keep themselves occupied with reasonably challenging content that could hopefully last between patches. Furthermore, you have to consider in WoW, M+ is about progression. A FFXIV iteration wouldn't have power upgrades associated with it. Or if it did, they would be similar to how Bozja works: it's own system entirely separate from the main game. Frankly, I would prefer the latter approach as it offers a built in potential reward structure.

Borrowing an idea from WoW doesn't inherently make it toxic because our playerbases aren't the same. Toxicity breeds only because devs and GMs allow it. We need only look at the recent lawsuits Blizzard is undergoing to see why their playerbase can be incredibly toxic. That doesn't mean the content itself is.

[TeraRamis]

I also have been quite vocal Shadowbringers focused far too much on "fluff" with very limited staying power. Which is partially why the content droughts have felt essentially bad. The patches had so little to fall back on, it became extremely noticeable how little meat was actually on the bone. This goes into my issue with the lack of content longevity in this game. If they had content that could last through two or three patch cycles, then a "fluff" focused patch wouldn't feel so hollow for players who have minimal interest in Gpose or Fishing. Take Blue Mage, for example. Even if you thoroughly enjoy what they have to offer... well, it got an update in 5.45 and likely won't see another until 6.15 or 6.35. Which is a year apart. Before that, it's last update was in 5.15 if I recall. Simply put, this is just too big a gap for something that really only lasts for a month at most.

I am hopeful that at least some of this was due to them scaling back plans as a result of Covid, though I am leery of accepting that as a full excuse, due to a) the fact that life goes on, and b) Japan is such a technologically savvy place to begin with, so it's a bit difficult for me to accept that they couldn't readily transition to home work as needed. However, I believe there was probably at least some impact, so optimistically the next expansion will see more fruitful content releases. Or, at least, fingers crossed.

[ForteNightshade]

I am hopeful that at least some of this was due to them scaling back plans as a result of Covid, though I am leery of accepting that as a full excuse, due to a) the fact that life goes on, and b) Japan is such a technologically savvy place to begin with, so it's a bit difficult for me to accept that they couldn't readily transition to home work as needed. However, I believe there was probably at least some impact, so optimistically the next expansion will see more fruitful content releases. Or, at least, fingers crossed.

Yoshida did acknowledge the main factor for Ultimate's delay was their poor scheduling that gave them virtually no wiggle room, and that they want to fundamentally change how they approach all content going forward not just Ultimate. So that was refreshing to hear. I also recall the dev team finally admitting to the ping issues on MCH due to them actually have trouble with it while working at home. I'd like to think the Covid delays as a whole have definitely showed them some of the issues with how design approach.

Another big thing I hope they've learned from these delays is getting the relic out earlier. How much better would it have been if we had a long grind to work on?

[Ronduwil]

No longer fun to play for you. While you may enjoy simply running dungeons with your friends who aren't as skilled, I get incredibly bored with them due to their complete inability to pose even the slightest challenge.

Then why aren't you playing WoW instead of asking FFXIV to turn into that failure of a game?

[BaconBits]

Then why aren't you playing WoW instead of asking FFXIV to turn into that failure of a game?

Here's a better question, why can't someone ask for more difficult optional 4-man dungeons without people like you spouting off with the typical "gO bAcK tO WoW" comment?

[Puremallace]

Here's a better question, why can't someone ask for more difficult optional 4-man dungeons without people like you spouting off with the typical "gO bAcK tO WoW" comment?

Yoshi P has clearly said like 2 months ago is the problem is the comp size. Only thing they would do is percent scale ups on the dungeons so this is not Mythic Plus affixes that would either be loved by the community for 6 months or absolutely hated until the next season.

Either way you put it the healer would take a ton of the responsibility and that is before you get to the part of forcing DPS meters to hit checks that arbitrarily exist. Also the main reason casuals go near Mythic plus or used to was because of gear which is not a big deal in FF14 because our devs learned that pve gear vendors are common sense.

[ReynTime]

It's vastly easier for them to rehash one of their many grind treadmills and slap on some cute costumes and mounts or add furniture for housing and still impress their fans than it is for them to design proper midcore pve content that doesn't involve attaching your leg to a steel ball that is force-carry casuals who hate pve (alliance and "large scale" instances)

I don't see them improving this AT ALL unless they lose most of their casual playerbase. They will give you another deep dungeon and expect you to be content with that for the next two years.

[TTiscancer]

It's vastly easier for them to rehash one of their many grind treadmills and slap on some cute costumes and mounts or add furniture for housing and still impress their fans than it is for them to design proper midcore pve content that doesn't involve attaching your leg to a steel ball that is force-carry casuals who hate pve (alliance and "large scale" instances)

I don't see them improving this AT ALL unless they lose most of their casual playerbase. They will give you another deep dungeon and expect you to be content with that for the next two years.

Except they DON'T expect you to be content. They LITERALLY TOLD YOU TO PLAY OTHER GAMES BETWEEN CONTENT UPDATES.

[ForteNightshade]

Then why aren't you playing WoW instead of asking FFXIV to turn into that failure of a game?

Because I don't like WoW? I do, however, love this massive leap into logical extremes. Asking for M+ doesn't magically turn FFXIV into WoW anymore than putting a more cohesive story in WoW would make it FFXIV. Need I remind you Yoshida has outright admitted to have based the frame work of FFXIV on WoW. So much so, he mandated the entire dev team play WoW to better understand the genre.

Borrowing ideas from other games and innovating on them is good practice. M+ at its core is simply taking existing content and scaling it to a higher difficult either through sheer numbers or adding in new ways to approach the content; priority mobs, the need for crowd control and so forth. That concept isn't unique to WoW and could certainly work in FFXIV. In fact, the barebone version already does in Deep Dungeon. So maybe put your biases aside and stop telling people who want things you don't to "just go play WoW".