Future direction of FFXIV

[LittleImp]

This will not work the way they expect. No one who intentionally avoids MMOs will rush to pay a subscription fee to play ONE game solo. At best it will work like in FFXI where it helped future-proof the lv1~99 grind.
Besides XIV has a lot of combat, dungeon and progression design decisions even in the pre-Endgame range that only works because it's a MMORPG.

In addition to that, FFXIV also sacrifices a lot of the system depth that single-player JRPG titles tend to offer. Its systems are incredibly shallow in comparison to things like FF12s Gambit system (something widely requested in regards to Trusts), which came out in 2006. For an MMO this is totally fine, but as a $60+ single-player experience it just does not hold up. Not to mention, there remains a huge amount of content solo players will probably never really have access to (basically all optional trial and raid series', side dungeons, 24 mans, PvP etc.). So they'd be paying our their ears for access to a fraction of an already incomplete experience. The audience for this will be very, very small.

[Ronduwil]

Do you guys feel like the current dev team is incapable to lead this game 6.1 and beyond because of the good amount of complaints between gameplay, story, and general content releases.

I'm not sure what you mean by "good amount of complaints." A handful of vocal haters complained that things aren't going the way they want them to. Most of us are perfectly happy with the game's direction and have the utmost confidence in the current team's ability to continue performing at a high level.

[Ronduwil]

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.

As someone who took various statistics courses on the way to getting their bachelor's degree, I'd say it's efficient. You don't need to sample 100% of any given population to obtain accurate results. You'd be surprised with how small of a sample you can get away with while still getting really close to the actual result. The fact that you personally weren't picked as part of their random sample doesn't invalidate their study.

[Lauront]

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.

Sorry, not really seeing how it's a "non sequitur". In relation to what is it a "non sequitur"? It's a question to see whether you apply this principle both ways. That said, I would agree, but I have seen plenty of instances of people attempting to use Metacritic, Reddit and Twitter feedback (which tends to be more/far more on the positive side) to dismiss individual complaints/feedback about the game...

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.

On the other hand, the sources of feedback they most frequently allude to as drawing upon in interviews are Reddit and Twitter. I'd like to think that they do competent validation work of this, but as you say, this isn't available to me. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. The company has some rather huge failures under its belt, such as FF15 and its horrendous development issues, and Avengers more recently, so merely having data available to it and analysing it properly - if it does - doesn't mean much on its own.

Past success is no guarantor of future success, as WoW amply proved.

[shao32]

I'm not sure what you mean by "good amount of complaints." A handful of vocal haters complained that things aren't going the way they want them to. Most of us are perfectly happy with the game's direction and have the utmost confidence in the current team's ability to continue performing at a high level.

What make you think that if someone complain about something it's bcs is a hater? Ppl love this game and they send they feedback in many tones but that doesn't mean they are haters for it, they want the game become better or turn back in some directions they consider bad.

You can't come and say most of us are perfectly happy just bcs we are paying and don't say anything, many friends of mine have thousand complains about the game or recent changes specially job related and combat content related but they don't raise they concerns on the forum or media in general bcs they don't feel to or for a great variety of reasons so let's stop generalize and call ppl a minority or a majority for convenience.

Edit: of course this work on both ways

[Minarisweet]

Some people want an mmorpg that is meant to be a world to live in, other people want a themepark that you can go every now and then after beating the game. The game was an mmo until shadowbringer, stormblood for others and of course a crowd will feel betrayed and another either moved on or didn't care enough since they don't like mmos anyways.

The game has been tweaked to be a nice experience as just another game except this one you gotta pay a sub for for some reason and gets dlc every now and then... but its kind of an insult for traditional mmorpg players that thrive for endgame content and deep gameplay that isn't just the wrong way or the right way. You will keep seeing people in this thread having these two different perspectives and no common ground and its just kind of a shit show.

I feel yoship should really establish if he wants to develop an mmo for the mmo players or just another final fantasy game.

[Jeeqbit]

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.

If we want to debate how long they had been planning the story (vaguely), let's go back to ARR...

where Lahabrea outlines everything in Praetorium that we now have far more context for. The one true god, we know who that is now. A chaotic confluence of untold proportions must be brought about, we understand exactly what now. The Warrior of Light was growing an imbalance that if permitted to worsen, would make the laws of existence unrecognizable and we now know what would happen if we counteract the dark-aspected aether that is preventing the final days.

Or Heavensward's 3.2 where...

Hydaelyn literally tells us that Zodiark is bound on the Moon, that she sundered the star, that it was split across 10 and 3 each possessed of a shard and a part of Zodiark, that the Ascians want to tear down the barriers between these shards and merge them, creating a calamity/rejoining and that this has happened 7 times. Yet lacking the context we have now this was incomprehensible in 3.2 and all you could take from it was "Ascians = bad guys".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9AWSWBp94&t=260s

[LaylaTsarra]

What make you think that if someone complain about something it's bcs is a hater

No people can complain it's when certain individuals in here do NOTHING BUT COMPLAIN. If you spend time here you get to know who they are. One has to wonder really why they're here because if you check their post history you'd be hard pressed to find them say anything good about the game or it's devs/Yoshida ever.

[BaconBits]

No people can complain it's when certain individuals in here do NOTHING BUT COMPLAIN. If you spend time here you get to know who they are. One has to wonder really why they're here because if you check their post history you'd be hard pressed to find them say anything good about the game or it's devs/Yoshida ever.

Just because someone doesn't get down on their knees and drops Yoshida's trousers as thanks for saving FFXIV 10 years ago every other post doesn't mean they're a hater.

[shao32]

No people can complain it's when certain individuals in here do NOTHING BUT COMPLAIN. If you spend time here you get to know who they are. One has to wonder really why they're here because if you check their post history you'd be hard pressed to find them say anything good about the game or it's devs/Yoshida ever.

This is the official forum, our primary direct communication channel with the Dev team and Yoshi-p so it's normal most of the stuff here are complains bcs is the only place destinated for that.

Outside of that some players has been hit so much with Yoshi-p recent design direction like for example combat content, specific jobs new design directions aka DRK, SMN or the entire Healer role, story related stuff ext, if you are for example a SCH who consider your job ruined and the content you like to run trivialized or cut and more it's obviously will have way more stuff to complain than a BLM main wich is Yoshi-p job that just like to decorate his house bcs he was lucky enough to get it and is not a viera or a roghtgar without hats and new hair, so there is much to consider.

And there is the trolls who are just here to make fun of us but those have not remedy and don't have place in generalization