Dungeons we need to talk dungeons

[Shurrikhan]

Wow has done a bad job of integrating metrics into their decision making, all game companies use them though. The art of making good decisions is understanding the relationship between metrics and feedback, Square seem to have a good handle on this, Blizzard are obviously terrible at it.

That's precisely my point, though. Metrics won't supplant the need for long-term planning or vision.

WoW has made its fair number of negative examples, but can we honestly say XIV hasn't been following suit in its own way?

[Artemiz]

WoW has made its fair number of negative examples, but can we honestly say XIV hasn't been following suit in its own way?

Um, I wouldn't agree with that to be honest. I think the player/dev relationship is much healthier in FFXIV. Not everything Square has done has been a roaring success with the players obviously but I do think they at least try to keep us happy. Blizzard try to keep the shareholders happy and the players hooked, seems like a very different approach to me.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

That's precisely my point, though. Metrics won't supplant the need for long-term planning or vision.

WoW has made its fair number of negative examples, but can we honestly say XIV hasn't been following suit in its own way?

To be fair, metrics are far from the issue when it comes to WoW's many problems.

Blizzard is effectively the hostage of Activision, arguably the most profit hungry company in the entire gaming industry. I doubt Activision cares one bit about WoW's internal metrics or long-term planning or vision; they only see the immediate profits and how to create systems that force players to play for longer to squeeze sub money from them in the short term. Ion is just a yes-man for Activision at this point. Speaking from my own time working in the game industry, publishers alone can be the most annoying force to deal with when it comes to creative decisions. Let alone a publisher like EA/Activision that is insanely profit hungry to the point of sticking the metaphorical middle finger to the gamer's face because they know the playerbase will still eat up the big franchises they put out.

Compared to Yoshi-P who isn't beholden to some higher up publisher, and was even promoted to the lead of creative business unit III, showing that his fellow leads on the board have much respect for him. That being said, FF14 already has its long-term plan and vision. 6-7 years of consistent design in how certain types of content are tuned is a really hard statistic to ignore; FF14 has been advertising the demographics each form of content they create is aimed at for a long time now. Every piece of content in the game has its purpose and will not be deviating from said purpose this late into the life cycle of the game.

Rather than wasting time asking Yoshi-P for harder 4 man dungeons which have been so rock solidly integrated into the design of this game as the easy, spammable daily task, people should be asking him for more unique 4 man content like PoTD. I think asking for more unique 4 man content will go much further in their feedback than asking for harder dungeons, which I can pretty much guarantee any feedback of such is likely just auto-deleted by their sorting AI program.

[Shurrikhan]

Compared to Yoshi-P who isn't beholden to some higher up publisher, and was even promoted to the lead of creative business unit III, showing that his fellow leads on the board have much respect for him.

Yoshida absolutely is beholden to a higher up publisher. It's not as an invasive a publisher as Activision, but he's not suddenly freed from commitments. We have seen this many times already, such in trends to focus design around sale points (see the many abilities that had no reason to be abilities outside of the fact that actions demo and sell better than traits) and iconizing grinds like those of our relics.

Rather than wasting time asking Yoshi-P for harder 4 man dungeons which have been so rock solidly integrated into the design of this game as the easy, spammable daily task, people should be asking him for more unique 4 man content like PoTD. I think asking for more unique 4 man content will go much further in their feedback than asking for harder dungeons, which I can pretty much guarantee any feedback of such is likely just thrown out the window immediately.

And it's funny that you're passing something as broad as asking for more than a barebone, grinded experience in a content genre as staple as dungeons as somehow "waste[ful]" or, unless your grouping here was coincidental, negatively profits-minded.

Most of those asking for interesting dungeons are the same people who asked for unique and polished 4-man content previously. What did they get instead? The barebone grindfest that is PotD and HoH... and even further dumbed down dungeon grinds. And here's the thing: giving the option for dungeons to hold difficulty sufficient for their mechanics to act as actual mechanics, rather than ignorable suggestions, not only allows for more engaging experiences but reduces the development costs otherwise wasted in building those dungeons. It takes virtually zero time to simply slap a HP and damage modifier onto a dungeon. And for that you get greatly increased engagement. Virtually no cost. Large, centralized gains, especially for those who have already enjoyed your game, but wish there was something more that wasn't shuffling them off to the side again.

But, alas, what's the one thing a mob stat scaler doesn't do, despite its efficiency? It doesn't sound sexy. It doesn't sell. Because gods forbid it's something that makes sense to those who actually play the given content and enjoy its genre and possibilities, rather than merely attracts people to it (historically, to then quickly become nonsensical, like our dungeons' present scaling).

...Which is why we instead build altogether new content genres from scratch, badly fail to flesh them out, and treat the playerbase as unappeasable if they're not thereby satisfied, I suppose...

I can pretty much guarantee any feedback of such is likely just thrown out the window immediately.

And yet metrics will save us all, even as any reason for a drop in related playtime, or even subs, can be spun any which way since specific feedback is irrelevant?