What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[Hyrist]

This thread is nothing new.

See, every time there's something perceived as an issue or a mistake, the same naysayers who've been touting the company's end since Legacy days take it as a sign of complete validation that everything has been horrible since (insert contrived timeline here) and that they've been right all along.

Rabble rousing hasn't changed since ARR came out and some people just feed off of it.

As has happened, many, many times before. What will happen is the issues that aren't simply opinions to the contrary to the majority of players will get addressed and any perceived uproar will die down. This will be preceived by these dramamongers as being silenced, even though it's just their threads fading to obscurity. (Seriously, I've been watching this for close to a decade now. It's tired hat.)

Housing, because of its horrid state, is an easy bully pulpit that they get to beat CBU3's head over every time it's mentioned. It's a relic from the Legacy days that, in all honesty, never should have seen the light of day, but because some of its features are beloved, and the fact that it was released, the team is unfortunately married to it rather than being able to scrap it entirely and start from scratch - which honestly would have been the best solution. Instead they're litterally throwing money (For servers) at the problem that could never keep up with this game's growing success and population.

Various job 'Issues' as described are usually points of opinion that don't carry through or when they do get addressed, get decried by the same people with the argument that they 'liked it better than before'. No look at some of the post history of these people I'm not kidding, their opinions change on a dime if their concern actually gets addressed.

Even when some ideas are eventually adapted, they're downplayed. Savage/Story split the difference between demands on more accessible or harder demand for Savage content. Upwards scaling of difficulty on both dungeons and Raids are largely ignored as "not enough" which lead to the creation of both Ultimate and Unreal. Demands for longer grind lead to Relic Grind which was decried for being a grind. Demand for more random loot lead to Diadem which was a massive failure which had to be repurposed. Attempts at both exploration like dungeons demands lead to Deep Dungeons which got decried as not relevant enough - then they came out with Eureka which was not accessible enough, then to Bozja, both of which and their more difficult 24 man both became more or less dead content.

And so on it goes.

All the while the toxicity of this place in particular just grows because those who enjoy the game, get tired of the negativity and find different venues to participate in the community. (And the naysayers say *they're* silenced.)

There is no 'years long decline' of this game or group. It's actually gotten better over the years as evidenced in both its growth and growing acclaim. Yes, there are issues that may need to be address, or ones that simply exist in the thorn in both the community's and the developer's sides for various reasons. No different than any game. This isn't an indication of an inflexible team that fails to address long issues - this can be evidenced by both the current adjustments to Dark Knight's Ivun skill (finally) and the upcoming Criterion dungeons, which aims to address long standing concerns about a more challenging low-player dungeon, which has long been touted here as an unaddressed issue (though no credit has been given for that, rather than just the complaints shifting elsewhere to try to lend credence to an imaginary downtrend.)

I mean, MSQ roulette duties. The biggest meme of any 'Trial' got fixed in astounding fashion. But no, SE's never listening.

That's all to say I give very little if any credit to threads of this vein. Is there still a mountain of work to do? Absolutely! Hold their feet to the fire - especially as we are finally seeing some long standing changes. But don't pretend that this game or its group is in some sort of downward spiral. That's disingenuous to the point of being insulting, and it doesn't aid your cause, or make this game better.

[Atelier-Bagur]

if there was a way to pin the above post for the whole forum to read, I would.

But inb4 people "silence" and saying "well...you're wrong".

[AziraSyuren]

snip

Yeah pretty much. All of the problems people talk about have existed since I started playing the game in 3.0. There were never any "glory days" for job or content design and to pretend otherwise is revisionist history at its finest. Everything that people look fondly on- especially things pertaining to job design- came with their own sets of horrible flaws that people either don't remember, were never good enough to experience, or choose to ignore.

We should definitely hold their feet to the fire, but come the fuck on. The specific point where your job started being less fun to you is not the point where this game started going downhill.

Healers.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yeah pretty much. All of the problems people talk about have existed since I started playing the game in 3.0. There were never any "glory days" for job or content design and to pretend otherwise is revisionist history at its finest. Everything that people look fondly on- especially things pertaining to job design- came with their own sets of horrible flaws that people either don't remember, were never good enough to experience, or choose to ignore.

We should definitely hold their feet to the fire, but come the fuck on. The specific point where your job started being less fun to you is not the point where this game started going downhill.

Healers.

While Im still all for reworking healers to have more dps toolkits, the thing is....theres a little secret to this game involving the fact that "you can play other jobs" which is HUGE for an MMO. I dont know how people like to stick to one main class when this game encourages you to experience different play styles. Healer gets boring? Well then play a tank or a dps. This is what I do whenever I start to get tired of a class, I easily switch to something else or roll a job for the day and helps keep myself from getting burnout from having to play the same style over and over again.

I think this is probably why the devs have been trimming jobs lately because of this philosophy of switching to a class whenever you wish that allows more room to have fun rather than stick to the archaic MMO design of having a "main".

I still do play a main but I make sure to switch up the jobs whenever I feel like it. Just my own thoughts

[Semirhage]

While Im still all for reworking healers to have more dps toolkits, the thing is....theres a little secret to this game involving the fact that "you can play other jobs" which is HUGE for an MMO. I dont know how people like to stick to one main class when this game encourages you to experience different play styles. Healer gets boring? Well then play a tank or a dps. This is what I do whenever I start to get tired of a class, I easily switch to something else or roll a job for the day and helps keep myself from getting burnout from having to play the same style over and over again.

I think this is probably why the devs have been trimming jobs lately because of this philosophy of switching to a class whenever you wish that allows more room to have fun rather than stick to the archaic MMO design of having a "main".

I still do play a main but I make sure to switch up the jobs whenever I feel like it. Just my own thoughts

I play a lot of Red Mage because healers are so embarrassingly boring to play that I can't stand doing it for more than about a single roulette at a time. By this point, it's comical watching Square continue to somehow exceed my expectations and make White Mage even more boring with every major update.

I swapped jobs. Healers are still unbelievably boring. 1111111111111111111 is boring. It remains boring when I swap away from it for a few weeks. It's the worst healer design I've ever seen in a video game.

[Moonsprite]

I think they are stretched thin. They are working on a lot of things right now. Male Viera and female Hrothgar being added was something they didn’t plan on. I’m not excusing the limited races. I don’t like it either. I hate it.

Right now, they are adding trusts to all the msq dungeons from previous expansions, adding ultimates, adding another deep dungeon, relic weapons will be coming, criterion dungeons, new graphic updates, an entirely new hildebrand storyline, the island sanctuaries in addition to the things we usually get. They just redid the entire pvp system too.

I think the housing bug, while terrible and frustrating, wasn’t something intended and isn’t a sign the developers are doing a poor job.

The jobs being simplified is a design choice. I personally didn’t like cleric stance and I’m glad it’s gone. I’ve been playing since the end of HW and I don’t remember a time when I struggled to heal anything in normal groups. If you are talking about healers in savage content not healing enough and being forced to do boring dps, maybe I can understand that.

In normal content now I feel like a Rez bot more than a healer. I thought Doom mechanics were great at first for people to learn, it didn’t matter, more rezzes anyway. I think the devs are looking at the average player and balancing the game around them. Im hoping criterion dungeons bridge the gap a little bit for people who want more of a challenge.

[DamianFatale]

I think they are stretched thin. They are working on a lot of things right now. Male Viera and female Hrothgar being added was something they didn’t plan on. I’m not excusing the limited races. I don’t like it either. I hate it.

Right now, they are adding trusts to all the msq dungeons from previous expansions, adding ultimates, adding another deep dungeon, relic weapons will be coming, criterion dungeons, new graphic updates, an entirely new hildebrand storyline, the island sanctuaries in addition to the things we usually get. They just redid the entire pvp system too.

I think the housing bug, while terrible and frustrating, wasn’t something intended and isn’t a sign the developers are doing a poor job.

The jobs being simplified is a design choice. I personally didn’t like cleric stance and I’m glad it’s gone. I’ve been playing since the end of HW and I don’t remember a time when I struggled to heal anything in normal groups. If you are talking about healers in savage content not healing enough and being forced to do boring dps, maybe I can understand that.

In normal content now I feel like a Rez bot more than a healer. I thought Doom mechanics were great at first for people to learn, it didn’t matter, more rezzes anyway. I think the devs are looking at the average player and balancing the game around them. Im hoping criterion dungeons bridge the gap a little bit for people who want more of a challenge.

HIRE NEW STAFF THEN. I know it takes time to do so, but it can't be that hard when the development demand needs it.

[Moonsprite]

HIRE NEW STAFF THEN. I know it takes time to do so, but it can't be that hard when the development demand needs it.

I agree. They should hire more people.

I play other games too. Those games don’t design healers that much different than this game. ESO all I do it s few heals and drop blessed shards. In WoW healers dps with only a few buttons and are only necessary for utility, even in mythic+. Only the top 3% of the players in mythic raiding need actual healing with very little over healing. Even then after world first it gets nerfed. If there is a game where healers do a lot of healing I’d like to know.

[IkaraGreydancer]

HIRE NEW STAFF THEN. I know it takes time to do so, but it can't be that hard when the development demand needs it.

I mean they already were offering jobs in one off the Live Letters iirc. Ik folks blame the devs for alot but I honestly believe SE isn't helping them out as much as they should be. I'm just glad they have still put out quality in EWs story and raid content

[Nethereal]

I agree. They should hire more people.

I play other games too. Those games don’t design healers that much different than this game. ESO all I do it s few heals and drop blessed shards. In WoW healers dps with only a few buttons and are only necessary for utility, even in mythic+. Only the top 3% of the players in mythic raiding need actual healing with very little over healing. Even then after world first it gets nerfed. If there is a game where healers do a lot of healing I’d like to know.

I think the difference between those games is that they don't have anything similar to a GCD system at all. Even then they still have more dps buttons than the ones we do here.

Also Tera & Sword of Legends Online are games where healers do a lot of healing. They're both overall trash games though.