Future direction of FFXIV

[KageTokage]

They could easily inject new life into older content by adding achievements for doing them at minimum item level + sync.

I'm honestly kind of surprised they haven't already...outside of the BLU stuff that is.

[Faafetai]

I do not think it is dev team or the creative team to blame for many of the issues, but the company that publishes them and gives them the funds and go ahead to implement changes. Though it does seem they may need their team to grow due to seeming to be understaffed and overworked.

It is reminding me of a video I watched of the ceo of EA sticking his fingers in the creation of certain games. "Now I want flying, giant robots, and microtransactions get it done!" "Well sir you see you made us switch to an engine that does not support any of those things, but we will try to get it done or else we will be fired." "Good Great see you on monday."

I think it was the production of Anthem where the dev team had no clue how to work with the frostbite engine and needing support from the devs of battlefield to help them adapt their game to work in a different engine that was initially planned.

You can see this with the mogstation. Yoshi-P wished for the cruise chaser mount to be a reward, but no no no we need that sweet sweet money, we do not care of your values or if you want to make the game fun or have rewards for your players. This reward is too good to just GIVE them through the game, we need to charge money for it because who could resist riding cruise chaser around the world. They only have control over so much and it really stinks when you can see where they are being limited because of watching how other companies literally do the same exact things to their dev teams. They are trying so hard to fix issues, and just work on what they love, but if it isn't up to squares get money quick and not in the long term it will not be a priority.

Square needs to keep to their separate projects like Babylon's fall and treat FFXIV with a different view. They need to see FFXIV as a long term investment with large potential to make more consistent money than just the step child who has grown to the age of 18 and you just throw them on the street. I do not care if you are rich and have no clue how certain things are suppose to work. You are a company, you have computers, if you must google the information and learn what you do not know, to know you need to stop treating FFXIV as an indie project you are going to let go of in a year.

That as at least how it appears to me, I could be off base, but with many things I have read and the atmosphere between many things and actions done by the devs and the company as a whole, It really seems this may be the case.

[IdowhatIwant]

I do not think it is dev team or the creative team to blame for many of the issues, but the company that publishes them and gives them the funds and go ahead to implement changes. Though it does seem they may need their team to grow due to seeming to be understaffed and overworked.

I could believe this more if Yoshi P wasn't on the board of directors. The team has tripled since ARR so there has been growth in the team. It sounds like an excuse people use because none of us 100% know the inner workings of SE and it's a defense that is hard to really argue against. In the end though it is Yoshi P's responsibility to use the funds they are given wisely, so any short comings are his blame for not leading the project correctly.

On that note I don't think SE made the devs simplify the classes, I think there is a disconnect between the devs and the way players play the game. You can see in many cases Yoshi P states the intent of design but in many cases it does not meet the intentions he is claiming the design was made for.

[HeyMcFly]

I just want better designed cosmetics, like hairstyles. IMO the story is decent enough that I see no reason to complain. I do wish we could have some more in-depth dialogue with the Scions. Or a semi-flirt option because it would be interesting. I'd love to know how Thancred or G'raha would react to such dialogue.

I don't like anything in the mogstation to be upset about X item not being an in-game reward related but it's annoying to dislike almost everything they release as far as cosmetics. Especially when it's expected to be paid for. I just always thought paid for items were supposed to atleast look as good if not slightly better than earned in game content. That's not the case with alot of the available cosmetics in the mogstation. Also, we mostly just have male protagonist outfits from other FF games, like cloud, zidane, squall- yes there is Yuna's outfit (although it's been edited) & Lightnings outfit AND hair but what about Rinoa's? Garnet? Aerith or Tifa? In game we can get Penelo's outfit and Viera have Frans outfit and I know I'm missing the recent moon armors- but there's still more outfits WITH hairstyles that people have asked for for years.

I'm just really dissatisfied with the current ingame hairstyles and lack of character cosmetics (hairs/make-up/ faces/ beards) when older games have updated their character creator like WoW and GW2, sure it's not AS detailed as FFXIV and obviously has a different engine, but they took the time to work with what they had after feedback.
It doesn't feel that way with FFXIV, the only focus seems to be on Viera and Hrothgar which are getting updates but there have been years of requests of hairstyles and beards as well as things such as Au Ra being able to choose what horns they want instead of them being locked to a face. And it all feels pointless for even asking for these types of things.

We haven't gotten any good cosmetic updates bc it feels like "Oh, you asked for Viera/Hroth updates so we give you 4 hairstyles on Viera only and that's all we can give you at this time and I hope it pleases you in the drought of character creator content for the next 2-5 years."
The hairstyles added are appreciated but it would be nice if hairstyles were added due to request as well.
I know we're getting a slight graphic overhaul but what we saw was enhanced by shaders, so that likely doesn't include cosmetics like hairstyles or beards or any actual new features for existing races.
I'm just 1 person though I just wish others had the same passion and shared the frustration of wanting new character updates enough to share in forums or somewhere to garner enough attention.

I wish Yoshi-P was more transparent on if they listen to NA/EU forums or western threads so we would all know if we're wasting our time posting in the forums at all.

[MiaShino]

On that note I don't think SE made the devs simplify the classes, I think there is a disconnect between the devs and the way players play the game. You can see in many cases Yoshi P states the intent of design but in many cases it does not meet the intentions he is claiming the design was made for.

One bigger thing I have noticed on this end is seeming disconnect between how it feels to level something, then how it works at end game. Leveling and syncing down experience of many jobs is abysmal doing nothing to assist newer players in learning their core end game rotation. How can you learn when it changes every five to ten levels? How can you retain when every time you queue it is different?

You play Black Mage Yoshi P, no one enjoys having to transpose dance now give layline tele and umbral soul sooner.. Why does Paladin not gain engage until post 70? Who the heck signed off on Dragoon having no aoe until fricken Stone Vigil?! Monk suddenly introduces new rotational mechanic the moment you achieve 60. Dancer cannot even use dance partner in content below 60, core function of the job. Summoner has this stoopid useless skill that eats one gcd to do absolutely nothing for that gcd while it thumbs the posterior until your legos become available. Dark Knight waits until 70 for low cooldown defensive while warrior gets one at 56 and Paladin at 35. Astro cannot card pre-30??? Where my healer aoe at until Dismal Darkhold? Why can Sage not even use dots in Sastasha?

Really really could easily keep going.

While speaking of the aoe, that nonsense should unlock at 15 for every. single. job. no question. By first dungeon game should be training players to aoe.

[Jeeqbit]

On that note I don't think SE made the devs simplify the classes, I think there is a disconnect between the devs and the way players play the game. You can see in many cases Yoshi P states the intent of design but in many cases it does not meet the intentions he is claiming the design was made for.

I don't think there is a disconnect. Yoshi-P could see that there was a gap between tanks who used tank stance and those who used their damage stance, so it was changed. He could see that players felt pressured to get "basic" actions such as Provoke, so classes were "homogenized" as people put it with role actions and pointless cross-class skills were removed. He could see that the more complicated classes were hardly used, so they were made simpler and I see a lot more people playing them now.

A complex damage rotation might cause a healer to not heal out of fear of breaking their rotation or doing it sub-optimally. If one of your 3 dots expired, imagine you have a choice of refreshing that or healing. This argument makes a lot of sense, but it is less of an issue when most heals should be done with off-globals. The only reason this didn't cause me problems on old SCH was because of off-globals.

[IdowhatIwant]

I don't think there is a disconnect. Yoshi-P could see that there was a gap between tanks who used tank stance and those who used their damage stance, so it was changed. He could see that players felt pressured to get "basic" actions such as Provoke, so classes were "homogenized" as people put it with role actions and pointless cross-class skills were removed. He could see that the more complicated classes were hardly used, so they were made simpler and I see a lot more people playing them now.

I don't think it was changed because there was a gap between tank stance and dps stance. I think it is because the balance was so bad that even then healers were able to heal tanks that did not use tank stance. The purpose of tank stance and dps stance was to allow the off tank to do more damage while also reducing the risk of agro. Problem was eventually threat tanks generated was so high and damage taken was so low that there became little need for tank stance. Instead of doing the more complicated thing and balance the two they simply said we will just remove them all together, give tanks a trait to take less damage and make tank stance mandatory for them to generate threat. Now we can pretend that the removal of stance dancing was because players did not like it, but then why do we even have tank stance right now where tanks have to turn it off and on depending if they are MTing or OTing? Stance dancing still exists on tanks but the benefits of doings it properly have been lessened.

Adding provoke to all the tanks was not what homogenized them, it was when every tank got the same cool downs with a different names, removing the different debuffs they had, and the removal of dps stance which is where there uniqueness came from that homogenized the tanks. From my point of view this was not done to make the game simpler for players it was done because they were too lazy to balance this.

As far as people playing more complicated classes now that they are simpler I would have to see statistics to back that claim up.

A complex damage rotation might cause a healer to not heal out of fear of breaking their rotation or doing it sub-optimally. If one of your 3 dots expired, imagine you have a choice of refreshing that or healing. This argument makes a lot of sense, but it is less of an issue when most heals should be done with off-globals.

It did not stop healers from playing them previously, so why would it suddenly stop them now. You have more healers changing jobs currently because the role is boring than you did when it was complicated. Once again you can see where Yoshi P has stated that healers are not even meant to DPS they are meant to heal and that we should be able to complete the content with out healers DPSing and they should have to be focusing on healing. The content itself has never reflected this well even in a lot of Alexander fights. Most cases healers are needed to DPS to meet some DPS checks, and damage taken is typically so low they can heal using only OGCDs and an occasional AOE. So again there is a disconnection with what Yoshi P believes the game play is and what players are actually doing.

I HIGHLY doubt Yoshi P actually plays this game nearly as much as he claims to.

[MiaShino]

imagine you have a choice of refreshing that or healing.

You press one of the many ogcd heals or two in the double weave the dot refresh just created. If you cannot do that you heal if it is required and interrupt the flow of damage. Will lose more group uptime by allowing party members to die then have to expend resources picking them up, so you perform your roll as healer and heal. Rotational complexity in healer damage is for downtime or min maxing. It helps casual players as much as helping experienced players.

See this argument made many many times. There is no choice between "do I do deeps" or "do I heal".

Healer flow is;

1.) Keep party upright
2.) Do damage
3.) Optimize

You ask self would not healing them cause death, if no do damage. It matters not if that is one button or six. There is no choice. Casual players will not suddenly have braincase explosion over this. Dev team says this frequently about healers. "Adding more complexity will prevent inexperienced healers from playing."

Look, what they are doing is clearly not working here. They reduced the deeps options to two buttons and you still have curebots. You could make entire job one button that full heals party with 900 potency and others would still find way to fail. The roll of support tis not for all and this is okay. Not everything is for everyone. "Offensive to all, offensive to none." is not correct approach.

[Jagick]

For the most part I like the direction of the game and I like how involved with the community the people running the development seem to be. That said, I'm noticing some things.

I've only been here roughly a year but I feel like I've seen enough to know that FFXIV's situation is a mirror of the Late Star War Galaxies'. Players are constantly clamoring for this or that only to be repeatedly met with excuses or being told why it can't or shouldn't be done. We experienced this back in SWG years ago for many things. One example off the top of my head was atmospheric flight and a Z-axis in ground based content. For years we were told it was impossible and would never happen. When SOE corporate announced SWG was closing down, the devs were given free reign to do whatever they wanted with the game in the few months that remained. Atmospheric flight was completed and made stable within a month, it turned out corporate was the one turning down the idea. I have a feeling that's what's happening here in FFXIV for a great many things. SE Corporate is dictating what gets priority and what the focus of development is completely irrelevant of what the dev team wants or is capable of.

That being said though, I do feel that YoshiP does have a bit of a tendency to blow off the requests of players with some pretty ridiculous straw-man arguments at times (particularly concerning cross class glamour options.) Often the things denied are conveyed as an intentional design choice even if the player base doesn't like it. It reminds me of the "Snakes and Sparklers" stand scene from the movie Joe Dirt where the guy's shop gets no business because he only sells snake and sparkler fireworks because that's all he likes. To which the reply is: "It's not what you like, it's the consumer." Other than that there's just frequently excuses for why certain things won't be done because of server limitations or spaghetti code, and if that's the case then an overhaul is long overdue. If older games can make certain systems and interfaces (like inventory) more bearable, just take the time needed to get things fixed up. A content drought and and painful dev time now will be well worth it down the road.

That's just my opinion anyway.

[Jeeqbit]

Adding provoke to all the tanks was not what homogenized them, it was when every tank got the same cool downs with a different names, removing the different debuffs they had, and the removal of dps stance which is where there uniqueness came from that homogenized the tanks.

Tanks always had a 20% mitigation and a 30-40% mitigation. Their invulns are the same as at release except warrior's.

Raw Intuition used to parry from the front and crit you from behind but people just used Awareness. Parrying doesn't block magic so it was more useful against dungeon trash. Nobody valued parry or the RNG blocks on paladins that didn't block magic either. The solution to that problem was obviously to make everything pure mitigation. Parry became Tenacity, Raw Intuition became pure mitigation, blocks on Sheltron became 100% and could block magic. The uniqueness of these abilities was essentially lost, but players asked for it by talking negatively about parry.

Removing the different debuffs they had was solving what seemed like a looming problem. Because we have that class, we must have those 3 classes because they work with eachother's debuffs. That makes certain classes less desirable and that's a problem when you want every class to be viable. How do you balance a raid around them when certain statics will care about the debuffs and casual statics and party finder won't care about them? My poor paladin was mitigating physical damage (and only if I used a sub-optimal combo), when most boss attacks were not even physical. I can see the uniqueness of the debuffs but surely everyone can see the problems with them as well?

I don't miss out-of-combo dots like Fracture and Scourge because they were just annoying. Dark Arts was quite unique (until Samurais did something similar), but everyone meme'd it and cried for it to change so it's not fair to ask for it back.