State of the Game prior to Liveletter

[TaleraRistain]

They told us about them before development had barely begun. We were not given a lot of information about the Firmament either. We were told it was "end game content for disciples of the land and hand" and that's almost all we had to go on for a long time. It's normal for information to be vague initially because the idea is still being shaped.

Yes, which is why it's even more important for us to temper our expectations and go only on officially confirmed data. I'm sorry, but people's wild speculations about these two pieces of content are not on the shoulders of the developers. Especially not for people to get to the point of being angry toward the developers who promised none of those things.

[Jeeqbit]

Yes, which is why it's even more important for us to temper our expectations and go only on officially confirmed data. I'm sorry, but people's wild speculations about these two pieces of content are not on the shoulders of the developers. Especially not for people to get to the point of being angry toward the developers who promised none of those things.

People have definitely taken it too far. I see it in the game a lot where people think this will involve instanced housing but unless the developers actually say that, people are spreading misinformation about it.

[Theodric]

Yes, which is why it's even more important for us to temper our expectations and go only on officially confirmed data. I'm sorry, but people's wild speculations about these two pieces of content are not on the shoulders of the developers. Especially not for people to get to the point of being angry toward the developers who promised none of those things.

I think the ball is very much in the court of the development team. They're the ones who chose to artificially shorten the amount of time it would take until the main story concluded and now having done as such there's expectations set that whatever comes next for the game's supposedly bright future is bold and not as lacking in depth as, say, the revamped Diadem.

A lot of us have been here before having seen World of Warcraft go down a very similar route where player concerns and expectations were ignored.

Furthermore, at times even the most barest of expectations are brushed off as 'unreasonable' so it can be argued that there's really no winning in the first place.

[TaleraRistain]

People have definitely taken it too far. I see it in the game a lot where people think this will involve instanced housing but unless the developers actually say that, people are spreading misinformation about it.

Case in point the OP. Nobody has been led to believe anything about Island Sanctuary because there has been little said officially on it. There have been no promises about the degree of difficulty in Criterion Dungeons. People have made huge assumptions and ran with them and then spread the misinformation far and wide. And now people basically think they can get mad at the developers for that. No, just no. Hold things against them they actually promised and failed to deliver on, but those two points are just absolutely ridiculous.

[Kaurhz]

Any expectation regarding Island Sanctuary and the subsequent belief that it will be instanced housing; Sorry but that belief is only of the presumptuousness of the community, particularly with what little information we have received.

Furthermore, I want to believe that the teasing of the void is more likely going to be correlated to the upcoming trial series, in addition to tying up the issues with shard travel as opposed to it being an entirely new expansion teaser already. So I think people are just being hasty with their judgment on this one. There is still as good a chance that we could be visiting Meracydia.

[AziraSyuren]

The best part is that the first live letter before a patch is always really lame and people are gonna get really mad because they expected something different for a change.

[TaleraRistain]

I think the ball is very much in the court of the development team. They're the ones who chose to artificially shorten the amount of time it would take until the main story concluded and now having done as such there's expectations set that whatever comes next for the game's supposedly bright future is bold and not as lacking in depth as, say, the revamped Diadem.

A lot of us have been here before having seen World of Warcraft go down a very similar route where player concerns and expectations were ignored.

Furthermore, at times even the most barest of expectations are brushed off as 'unreasonable' so it can be argued that there's really no winning in the first place.

Maybe they are unreasonable. Maybe there are time, financial, or manpower limitations. Maybe the higher ups have told them something else is a higher priority. This happens all the time in software. It doesn't mean a team doesn't care just because they can't implement something right the second someone else wants it.

It's fine for people to have things they want and communicate that. That's healthy interaction between users and developers. It's fine to have concerns and communicate those. And I would argue there is more of a place for a user to stand when they are giving feedback on concerns in having more expectation that it would be addressed.

But if you say that developers have to take responsibility for users making their own expectations, then you're setting up a situation where they can't ever win. They can say as little as possible, which the developers have been doing, but they're still going to be wrong in that situation. And that's just not right.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I like how people are specifically only critiquing the op's comment on island sanctuary and not bringing to light the major problems theyve brought up elsewhere. Lets stop avoiding it and actually talk about them shall we? Again, like i posted, the decrease in quality and quantity of content.

[Avoidy]

Thank you for compiling all of this.
It's funny and sad. The Korean mmo I left had no communication, a content dripfeed, an ever expanding cash shop, an out of touch/shortstaffed devteam that only communicated with the Korean players, and a game full of interesting elements that were constantly being dumbed down or abandoned. Whenever I complained about it, FFXIV fans would pat me on the shoulder and be like "come to our game! It's better here." And I have to wonder if those guys were just blind or I just arrived late to the party, because I see the exact same thing here, happening now. The only difference is that more of the devteam seem to actually enjoy playing the game, and the base story is pretty good for an MMO.

I think success can be damaging for this genre. You learn that people will stick with you and even defend you while you damage your own product and ignore your players. When 1.0 failed, they brought in Yoshi and started building 2.0 behind the scenes; they even created a world ending event for 1.0. They only did this because people were mad enough to quit and never look back. Nobody is that mad anymore, because the game's not horrible; it's just kind of "meh" between expansions and it's winning the mmo contest by default because all of its competition (wow, gw2, bdo, etc) keep shooting themselves in the face. Square definitely knows that they don't have any competition at the moment, and it shows in the way they refuse to invest back into their own game, operate on a dripfeed schedule, and slap us in the face with expensive cash shop additions while the game itself has nothing substantive for most players at the moment, (unless you're that 4% who love ultimate).

I am very much looking forward to the Japanese-only live letter for this global game. Can't wait to read subs done by fans on discord because the 2billion dollar company couldn't be arsed to call in a translator who's probably just chilling in another room down the hall. Like, see, this is what I mean. How much money did they milk off of people with that streetwear outfit? Okay, take like 2% of that and just pay a translator to come in for the 2 hour LL. Can't even do it. And people will jump in to defend all of this. They'll say there's plenty to do in the game, and then rattle off grindy side content that's been in the game for years or gold saucer minigames like anyone's seriously subbed to this game to do chocobo racing, and blablabla. Watched it happen with tera and bdo, and people defended them both all the way down. Now tera's dead and bdo's a zombie. Things always start out great and then one day it begins to slip and people just let it happen and anyone who calls it out is a doomsayer and a negative nancy. Then you wake up and all your jobs play the same, the devs don't listen to any feedback or provide communication for why they did things the way they did, the cash shop is bigger than the game itself, and you get new content once a year. And people who defended it to the death and bought everything and kept enabling it all the way down will still be like "How did it happen!"

[MatchaokaCha]

Can we also mention the absolute boredom when doing CT roulette? CT raids popping for the 100000th time isn't really fun to do anymore.

I've given up on any healer changes since Ast lost their cards and Royal Road. I'm actually excited to see if they'll remove Undraw this time or forget it exists again lol.

EW's story definitely felt rushed to me.

If I hear "hope" and "despair" one more time, I'm gonna go back in time to tell Venat, "we deserved instrumentality after all" and watch the whole universe pool into blue LCL while I laugh hysterically. It only reminds me how much I like Danganronpa V3 more. My opinion is that they should have never finished the season in this expansion if it was going to turn out like this. It feels like a rough manuscript that has a beginning and an end with missing pages in between. Music was banger tho.

I don't realistically see Hroths seeing any good meaningful changes until 7.0 (if ever) after witnessing the absolute chaos that was Wigageddon. I wanted to have a straighter posture as an option for idling/walking/running just like the other races, but apparently they're too beastly to have that in a fantasy game.

I'm probably going to skip this live letter since the last one was the first time I ever felt regret and frustration for playing the game after they presented those "hair" previews.