Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Shougun]

Casual players are the blood and organs of the game, more hardcore players the bones.

I think hardcore players oversell their importance to the game, but casual players who believe there is no value in content directed, even if temporarily, at the hardcore players would cause FFXIV lose a lot of 'structure'.

More hot take:

I don't think it's important, ultimately, that things are hyper restrictive just delayed in some fashion. Meaning I don't believe content needs to be just for X. People who go on and on about how content needs a challenge FOR EVERYONE, FOREVER- I think they overstate the matter. An aside particularly in that thought might be difficultly should be more fun, not because... of the 'fun' of pain. Like grinding Atma may have been fun to some in ARR but overall that was just something that shouldn't be repeated. There exists a long precedence that difficultly is simply to enhance your fun, easy and hard both enjoying the same content (in sRPGs).

Of course this is multiplayer and so if you allowed both to exist at the same time, with the same reward, that would lead people to choose a difficulty they don't want simply to optimize. Famous quote players will optimize the fun out of the game. So delays, and also changes in reward rates, such that the multiplayer function is roughly similar in time cost is absolutely acceptable. Beyond that, which the game roughly already follows (and am in agreement), you don't need to keep old content of similar time cost because it would become prohibitive for all except a narrowband of players but rather if one could make the content still 'fun' while open to a larger band that'd be better (hence I am, from the beginning, always been rooting for Blue Mage to organically fit into the solo job as the primary function on all accounts (meaning progression is designed for the solo player in mind, and not anything else), but may have some party stuff on the side as an 'aside' because that may be fun as well). I mention Blue Mage simply because then the content doesn't have to self nerf itself as much, rather blue mage just comes in with massive orbital cannons to balance out that matter (this doesn't mean 1 shot bosses, again 'fun' is more important, but it does mean you could do stuff that seems impossible without being 'god tier player' - which is the case in a lot of situations now when you have a full blue mage kit, so that's nice, I do wish they smoothed out blue mage progression though as it still has some wrinkles imo).

Which comes together as I generally disagree that we need to have old content remain as time consuming as it was when new, I don't believe 'good' content rewards need to be locked behind exclusively challenging content, and I think players should simply be given avenues to play the game in the way they find most 'fun' rather than most optimized path of rewards excluded to how 'they' want to play. Not to say there can be no improvements, but that I think part of the charm for FFXIV is that you can do pretty much 'it all' and with some challenges in the way you want to do it (like there is no echo min sync, of course there are logistic issues sometimes.. and those could be discussed but simply not allowing power creep as a solution has implications on other players so that isn't simply a simple solution then).

Or maybe in other words, it's okay stuff is easy. The problem is not if something is easy or hard, those are relevant only in so much of their fun and nothing else. Difficulty is only a function to serve fun, and not exclusively for anything else. Difficulty isn't the goal, it's just a tool for another goal (fun) and beyond that isn't relevant. (Yes restated three times, lol- just to be clear ). Therefore the only issue is if something is fun, and then maybe how reasonable a solution can be for everyone to prop up the values each player comes with (because of course everyone does come at the game from a different angle- it's not to say there is one solution to everything, just that sometimes it feels we see the tree but miss the forest at least when I read the forums).

Hot take: people's opinions aren't as important as they tend to think they are (yes that includes me).

Akthusualylly- My opin----

Even if I disagree I tend to go out of my way to read yours (and a few others), plus we've had some good meme.jpgs... :3

[Rinhi]

I love pineapple on pizza. Fight me.

I agree with ya

[SenorPatty]

EW had too much padding for my tastes.

[Shurrikhan]

Gathering having separate gear, by constraining it first to small out of the way node loops to avoid combat and then to Stealth outright, actually makes gathering less fun than it would be if not thus constrained by its gear effectively locking it out of combat (or even the ability and reason to flee) entirely.

[Shurrikhan]

I think the game invests too little time in getting side-content (outside of perhaps GS mini-games) done right (both in polish and, especially, base concept and its technical affordances). Most initial attempts are painfully barebone, as if attempting to recoup player hours played per dev hour spent even in that first go-around. Even after feedback has come in, there is minimal improvement between iterations, largely because the initial design was so unambitious.

_________

Hotter still:

A central side-content form that ties the rest together would actually be good for a given expansion; it just has to be done well.

For instance, imagine if instead of just another Diadem-rehash, an utterly disjointed alliance raid, and another 2 years of just the same old Expert Roulette spam and isolated tiers, we had actually gone off to revitalize the Light Waste, using the connections between Stasis (Light) magic and Echo/timespace travel to join those elements together. For instance, rather than the Light Waste being a small vista from which to access Eden cutscenes, we could actually go out to explore, using the evolving Eden to echo the pre-apocalyptic world as to rediscover and (through defeating monsters and absorbing their aether), resituate, and repopulate it. NieR, in that context, could actually make sense, and open-world and instanced content could actually share an interesting, synergetic connection.

[FatalFatalis]

Dungeons should be removed and instead have singleplayer duties with trusts.

[kpxmanifesto]

EW was the worst expansion storywise.

[van_arn]

Casual and hardcore have no meaning.

[Jin-]

I love pineapple on pizza. Fight me.

Why would we fight when its one of the most popular one, at least in Europe?

[Shibi]

Pineapple, ham, and jalapeno pizza, mmmmmmmmm.