Future direction of FFXIV

[Raoabolic]

I feel like this "The game is great, but it could still be better" is the prevailing "negative" mentality that's going around, not "This game sucks and I'm leaving if they don't fix/improve this".

This is pretty much the sentiment most people have that have stuck with this game for a long while. It's far from a bad game but when you see a game you enjoy get class hominization, a cash shop, and less content per patch you will start to wonder why you are slowing down when your game is gaining traction in the "Gamer™" community. That, and Zenos really felt like the canary in the coal mine as far as story goes. EW's ending really didn't help considering the whole build up felt like a loud plop in an empty room. Again, at least Footfalls and Radz-at-han's daytime theme were really good. That trombone slide in Radz-at-han's daytime theme is sick!

[IdowhatIwant]

This thread reminds me of the WoW forums back in WotLK where people were constantly whining and complaining about the state of the game, asking for change etc. even though the game was peaking at a massive 12 million playerbase. Cataclysm arrived and change they got. Then everyone quit. Problem is that a lot of people don't know when to be content. There's always something to nag about that makes acting like it's the end of the world seem like a sensible reaction (even though the game is doing extremely well). Such is the danger of living in the echo-chamber of forums imbued with a constant negativity. Eventually it's all you see.

I absolutely do believe the game is fine, but could use some improvements in some areas. They need to adress healers and maybe also tanks. Doesn't seem like those roles have received the attention they deserve. Other than that? Fix the glamour system and make roulettes more interesting for max level characters.

Aside from that, I thoroughly enjoyed the EW MSQ - especially my time in Elpis. I've yet to meet a single person in-game who didn't like it.

For the record though. WoW saw its decline after WoTLK. So there were obviously issues with the state of the game that were either not address properly, or at all. If you feel the forums or negative, it is likely because there have been issues in the game that have been ignored for years and people are finally getting fed up with it.

They did something similar with Nanamo in HW due to players being upset she was killed at the end of ARR. It was a big twist of surprise it was just a sleeping potion, we were trying to bait out the baddies the whole time...

I hated Elpis, I think it existed soley because Emet Selch became popular in ShB and they wanted to bring him back. Matter of fact they even stated that the story was adjusted based off feed back from ShB so I can almost guarantee this was one of the changes.

[Vahlnir]

This thread reminds me of the WoW forums back in WotLK where people were constantly whining and complaining about the state of the game, asking for change etc. even though the game was peaking at a massive 12 million playerbase. Cataclysm arrived and change they got. Then everyone quit. Problem is that a lot of people don't know when to be content. There's always something to nag about that makes acting like it's the end of the world seem like a sensible reaction (even though the game is doing extremely well). Such is the danger of living in the echo-chamber of forums imbued with a constant negativity. Eventually it's all you see.

I absolutely do believe the game is fine, but could use some improvements in some areas. They need to adress healers and maybe also tanks. Doesn't seem like those roles have received the attention they deserve. Other than that? Fix the glamour system and make roulettes more interesting for max level characters.

FF XIV is currently in its golden years, though the game is not perfect. It also took a lot longer than WoW to get there. WoW's ended with the introduction of the Cataclysm expansion. It was arguably perfect before that. They struck a good balance in content design for anyone and everyone in Wrath of the Lich King. When they tried to lean too far in one direction by catering to their most hardcore...they saw a huge drop in players. Then in MoP they leaned too far in the opposite direction at first which upset a lot of people, causing some to leave. The Thunder King patch all but stemmed the bleeding, though it wasn't anything too serious even then. The long, LONG content drought at the end caused more players to leave but they were definitely going to come back. Personally I loved MoP from beginning to end but I understand the complaints that some people had. I just didn't agree. In WoD they swung that pendulum back the other way and lost more players yet again. Even more than before. Half the player base vanished in 6 months. It was around 10 million at the start of that expansion. When they tried to take flying away that did even more damage. Rough estimates put the player base at around...2 million or so I think before they stopped announcing those number to the public or even the shareholders. There's probably a reason for that. The Legion expansion that followed wasn't perfect, but they finally struck a good balance again by providing content for everyone. So naturally that meant that they needed to go back the other way and upset most everyone again in BfA. And then Shadowlands followed it up with them leaning on systems that just about everyone hated and ignoring any and all player feedback and all but cutting the "casual" player out of the mix entirely. As things currently stand if you do mythic+ or raid you are probably happy-ish right now. But even that crowd isn't entirely content with the state of things. Either way, a lot of people were fed up with the game and decided it was time to move on. So yeah, there's the WoW summary starting in 2011 until now. lol Cataclysm wasn't what caused the mass exodus from WoW we've been seeing for a while, but it was the beginning of the game's decline. Despite what complaints one might see on these forums, FF XIV is doing fine. But it's not perfect either and I think there are things they could be doing differently. Regardless I'm pretty happy with the game currently. Most everyone who is taking a break during the lull between patches will be back. They always come back. WoW, sadly, can't say the same anymore.

[Rulakir]

I received a survey for my free trial account in September(ish) 2021, but not one for my retail account which I thought was odd. I forget what all it asked, there were some story related questions regarding Endwalker I remember answering.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

I feel like this "The game is great, but it could still be better" is the prevailing "negative" mentality that's going around, not "This game sucks and I'm leaving if they don't fix/improve this".

Yep toxic positivity. The devs constantly get "you are next to God and can do no wrong". Hard to start seeing the problems.

[hagare]

As I said, seems like poor marketing research if they only send it to some veterans and not all. And I have to ask what their definition of “veteran” is. My sub hasn’t lapsed once in over six years, so I don’t see how that isn’t significant. And if the pool of participants is already questionable, makes any data collected just as questionable.

yeah that's just random sampling

[Jeeqbit]

I hated Elpis, I think it existed soley because Emet Selch became popular in ShB and they wanted to bring him back. Matter of fact they even stated that the story was adjusted based off feed back from ShB so I can almost guarantee this was one of the changes.

Yoshi-P actually denied this and said it was the plan all along since Emet-Selch was created as a character.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Yoshi-P actually denied this and said it was the plan all along since Emet-Selch was created as a character.

He actually stated in a separate interview that this is essentially true, and one of the main reasons he also showed up in 5.3 because they hadnt planned things that far.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I am curious - when people try use Metacritic, Reddit or Twitter as "proof" that the game is fantastic, would you maintain in that instance that we're dealing with a "small, self-selecting group"? I would hope so.

This is a non sequitur, but sure - the point is that none of these are representative of the player base as a whole. Further, internet fights about the game being good or bad are incredibly silly regardless. If you like the game, play it. If you don't like the game, don't play it.

It's not like SE bothers to orchestrate any other means of soliciting feedback. So we've exhausted the main areas where it gets it from - reddit, Twitter, the forum. For all intents and purposes, if SE doesn't undertake any work to obtain more representative & systematic feedback from elsewhere (e.g. via surveys) - and to my awareness, it does not - what is the functional difference between that and the actual truth of what most players believe? It may - and probably - differs, but if you're not asking them and SE isn't, what real notion of it do you have above anecdotal evidence? Sales figures and profits going up? Great, now get to the bottom of why.

Your lack of access to good evidence does not make your bad evidence good. Put another way, Generalizing from a small, self-selecting group of players isn't more valid because you don't have systematic data. SE has some revealed preference data, such as subs, online store, content completion, etc.; that data isn't available to you, but it doesn't follow that SE never looks at it.

A toy example: if you want to know something about the American population as a whole, surveying 50 seniors in an Iowa retirement home won't tell you much of anything. That doesn't change even if it's the only evidence available to you. The opinions of those people are very, very unlikely to look anything like the median opinions of the whole population.

Here's my real point: instead of saying "players hate X," just say "I hate X." Saying "players hate X" is supposed to make your argument appear stronger by implying or outright stating that it's a majority position among players, but you have no basis for that assertion. Instead, say "I hate X," because you actually have good evidence for that. (However, if you say that you hate X but you constantly spend your time doing X, we actually should question whether you saying that you hate X is stronger evidence of your preferences than the fact that you spend your free time constantly doing X rather than other things that you could do - a discussion topic for another time.)

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Yoshi-P actually denied this and said it was the plan all along since Emet-Selch was created as a character.

You can see it's not the case. At what point in 6.0 you can say that you see the things was planned for years.