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

[aveyond-dreams]

I'll answer in spoiler tag:

I do not know where to start? Maybe at the point that Zodiark gets burnt in the middle of the addon. Meteion appears out of nowhere. The second part in Labyrinthos were mostly soulless filler quests. Doomsday was really well crafted and the menace was palpable. However, what I really missed was that apart from Thavnair and Garlemald, no other areas were really affected. I hoped to see a fight between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, in live or as echo. Also, the pacing of the story was very slow at times. Overall it felt to me like they wanted to tell the story of two in one addon. Which in itself is a contradiction in terms as the story still felt slow.

There was supposed to be a Garlemald expansion that was cut in order to get Endwalker out. Now we live with the results.

[IkaraGreydancer]

There was supposed to be a Garlemald expansion that was cut in order to get Endwalker out. Now we live with the results.

You know I've seen you say this way to many times. We get it, you don't like EW. You don't need to say it everytime you get a chance to

[BrokentoothMarch]

You know I've seen you say this way to many times. We get it, you don't like EW. You don't need to say it everytime you get a chance to

You know, I've seen you try to stamp out others displeasures way too many times. We get it. Yoshi's a god touched individual you can't stop kneeling for. You don't need to say it every time you get a chance to.

Why are you even here? The community has been regularly complaining because they want the devs to notice their issues, but you're only here to complain about the community. It seems counterintuitive and nonsensical. Sure, you have a right to be here, but if you're happy with the game, why waste your Government Issued Limited Posts on bullying other people into being quiet?

[Jirah]

I can handle bad experiments, I can handle bad launch day mechanics and elements like Eureka or housing

I CANT handle tone deafness of job design, job balance, and reduction of design for the sake of “ohh accessibility” more so if they don’t say anything about it

[Lunalepsy]

Between the healer problems for 6 years being ignored, the recent Hrothgar problems where they waited patiently for 3 years and got literal shit, to the horrid job design in 6.1, the pretty controversial story of EW, to now the housing system just imploding on itself. Do the devs just not care anymore? The game is seeing it’s peak, the game is bringing in more money than ever, and yet we’re somehow getting more broken systems. I guess this is what happens when they let the popularity get to their head? They start thinking they can half ass everything and people will continue to stay and kiss up to them. Seeing this community’s history i don’t blame them for thinking that way but…my god. The game is taking such a downward spiral. At this point i’m expecting Ultimate to have some major errors and that would be the icing on the cake.

They keep recycling content to no end. It has taken a toll on them!

[kpxmanifesto]

You know, I've seen you try to stamp out others displeasures way too many times.
Why are you even here? The community has been regularly complaining because they want the devs to notice their issues, but you're only here to complain about the community. It seems counterintuitive and nonsensical. Sure, you have a right to be here, but if you're happy with the game, why waste your Government Issued Limited Posts on bullying other people into being quiet?

Ego. Another person who's so involved with the game that they take criticism of the game as an attack on them personally. It's not just him either. There's quite a few of these folks on the forums and many on reddit.

[Teno]

I'll answer in spoiler tag to the question were the story is controversial:

I do not know where to start? Maybe at the point that Zodiark gets burnt in the middle of the addon. Meteion appears out of nowhere. The second part in Labyrinthos were mostly soulless filler quests. Doomsday was really well crafted and the menace was palpable. However, what I really missed was that apart from Thavnair and Garlemald, no other areas were really affected. I hoped to see a fight between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, in live or as echo. Also, the pacing of the story was very slow at times. Overall it felt to me like they wanted to tell the story of two in one addon. Which in itself is a contradiction in terms as the story still felt slow.

That's just personal opinion though, although I agree that the story went by too fast. The gameplay and systems issues are the biggest offenders at this point, they've just homogenized too much. They've done great with PvP, now I hope they get as much data as they can to implement or implement back some of these ideas in PvE. Some of the PvP skills being exactly what players have asked for a while.

[KizuyaKatogami]

That's just personal opinion though, although I agree that the story went by too fast. The gameplay and systems issues are the biggest offenders at this point, they've just homogenized too much. They've done great with PvP, now I hope they get as much data as they can to implement or implement back some of these ideas in PvE. Some of the PvP skills being exactly what players have asked for a while.

They’ve done okay with pvp. The fact that there’s literally game breaking bugs for some jobs that renders one unplayable though shows they clearly didn’t test it, and who knows when those bugs will get fixed.

[Theodric]

I can handle bad experiments, I can handle bad launch day mechanics and elements like Eureka or housing

I CANT handle tone deafness of job design, job balance, and reduction of design for the sake of “ohh accessibility” more so if they don’t say anything about it

By their own admission, they mostly look at Twitter and Reddit for feedback. Both, coincidentally, are places that rarely discuss the game itself as a game and more so treat it like a visual novel. It probably goes a long way towards explaining many developer decisions.

[Denji]

There was supposed to be a Garlemald expansion that was cut in order to get Endwalker out. Now we live with the results.

They did Garlemald dirty and I'm still bitter.
Ugh.