State of the Game prior to Liveletter

[Duskane]

90% of the people i used to play with have quit the game. They’re over it. The lack of content, the nothing new or changed aspect of it all, the devs not listening etc have all been contributing factors. 4-5 statics i’ve been in all broke down due to people not wanting to play the game anymore and being disappointed with the raids. Servers are strong? Meanwhile they broke down on EW launch and the devs tried to pin the blame on players’ internet at first. You’re lacking to mention that Endwalker has seen the worst player retention among all expansions.

yeah you need facts to check this out bud
EW has only just started but most will say SB is still the worst story wise and Shb content-wise.

[Jeeqbit]

lol, you're kidding right?

Not at all. It's been one of my main DPS this expansion that I use for hunts and alliance raids. Just because its rotation can be macro'd doesn't mean it doesn't have a rotation. Summoning all these primals is so cool and a lot of people I've talked to about it enjoy it.

[SturmChurro]

...

Yes, the devs do 'listen' on occasion. You can see things that were given in feedback every now and then make it's way into the game. Now it doesn't necessarily happen that quickly, but it does happen from time to time. I do wonder how much of our feedback actually does make it to the devs however, as a lot of it does feel selective, I will say.

I can too.. until I get personally attacked or called out. Then I just kind of spiral. I typically like to talk about things broadly, and look at multiple points of view. So, often times, people think I personally think one way or another, or am "for" one side or the other.. and that couldn't be further from the truth on many occasions. Sometimes I am just being sarcastic too, I'm not going to say I'm completely innocent. I appreciate responding to users like you, how regardless of the discussion, it stays fairly civil.

The root of the debacle with the hrothgar hair, is, mostly, that they did make a statement, or promise to many, very early on in ShB (the quote can be found all over viera/hrothgar threads), stating that they would "of course" get racial unique hairstyles. SE seemingly went back on that promise and started making shared hairstyles, and poorly fitted to each respective race's head at that. Not only that, for hrothgar, their hair was delayed to a later patch, while viera got their hairs first. I mean, I'm sure you already know this, but I might as well give the context. Being essentially promised hair three and a half years prior, and then getting hairs that remove a racial feature, but not only that, look poorly made to them, makes it entirely understandable how hrothgar players responded initially. I digress.

I think what is going on over at SE is that they are stretched thin. Not only due to covid throughout ShB, but also their team members being moved to work on another project. While also having new races to work on (viera M+F, hrothgar M) with each patch. It sucks, but with them taking on more and more work, it is inevitable. Especially, if SE isn't reinvesting back into this game as much as we think it deserves.

No, a new FF mmo wouldn't necessarily be the death of FFXIV, although, it would probably make it's way into maintenance mode because of it.

[FudoMyoo]

Nobody ever speak up for Paladin.

Our DPS sucks . . .

Anyways . . . game on!

[Shougun]

Yes, the devs do 'listen' on occasion. You can see things that were given in feedback every now and then make it's way into the game. Now it doesn't necessarily happen that quickly, but it does happen from time to time. I do wonder how much of our feedback actually does make it to the devs however, as a lot of it does feel selective, I will say.

I can too.. until I get personally attacked or called out. Then I just kind of spiral. I typically like to talk about things broadly, and look at multiple points of view. So, often times, people think I personally think one way or another, or am "for" one side or the other.. and that couldn't be further from the truth on many occasions. Sometimes I am just being sarcastic too, I'm not going to say I'm completely innocent. I appreciate responding to users like you, how regardless of the discussion, it stays fairly civil.

The root of the debacle with the hrothgar hair, is, mostly, that they did make a statement, or promise to many, very early on in ShB (the quote can be found all over viera/hrothgar threads), stating that they would "of course" get racial unique hairstyles. SE seemingly went back on that promise and started making shared hairstyles, and poorly fitted to each respective race's head at that. Not only that, for hrothgar, their hair was delayed to a later patch, while viera got their hairs first. I mean, I'm sure you already know this, but I might as well give the context. Being essentially promised hair three and a half years prior, and then getting hairs that remove a racial feature, but not only that, look poorly made to them, makes it entirely understandable how hrothgar players responded initially. I digress.

I think what is going on over at SE is that they are stretched thin. Not only due to covid throughout ShB, but also their team members being moved to work on another project. While also having new races to work on (viera M+F, hrothgar M) with each patch. It sucks, but with them taking on more and more work, it is inevitable. Especially, if SE isn't reinvesting back into this game as much as we think it deserves.

No, a new FF mmo wouldn't necessarily be the death of FFXIV, although, it would probably make it's way into maintenance mode because of it.

Definitely not that quick compared to what people would want, like I feel people want 'today I make a comment and next week it's hot patched in'.. lol. For stuff I feel I've noticed, my own or others, it's like multiple patch minimum with rare expcetions - this greater timescale I feel is harder for some people follow or believe in.. but at least I do believe they do.

It's a good question on how or what goes over lol. I know they've said they hired people to help translate feedback, I know from LONG ago they said they spent quite a bit of time translating and compiling feedback and then sending it off to the right departments. But since our team is either not interested in frequently talking to us, or are not allowed to, it's hard to get a sense of these things (I mean they post occasionally but the chance of them detailing how feedback works is quite low , maybe there are some reasons to this like "we can't win, everything gets twisted"). Sometimes tempted to learn Japanese so I can post it, but unless I could get a job for sure doing that.. my time would be better spent learning more Mandarin (my wife can speak). Not sure how swell that conversation would be lol, "sorry honey, going to study Mandarin less- FFXIV forums need me" *bat signal in the sky*. Maybe for the next MMO I can, lol after I'm good enough with Mandarin (since by learning traditional characters you know the meaning of most kanji).

Agreed on pretty much all points though. I do feel bad that I imagine they're being spread thin and work loads are probably really high... I don't know if it's true for FFXIV, but we know about Blizzard's situation, and it makes me even more concerned that they might be working crazy hard and hardly getting paid for it, and then we're over here bagging on all the work they are able to do ... lol. That would be pure sux.Though I am also cautious of people good at counting money taking advantage of these situations. Like how freedom works with governments, easy to give away- extremely hard to get back.. and money oriented companies would love to let others foot the bills while they cash the same or more profits ('uh.. yes.. too much work... sorry our team is human *meanwhile record profits to key members, paying their workforce less, working them more*' "have you tried hiring more people, or outsourcing stuff?" 'uh..... No.. can't.. cause.. logistics...' "..." '...money plz?'.

[LyraMaru]

What concerns me most is the lack of endgame content at 90 after a expansion hits. We are 8 months in the expansion now and we have 1 beast tribe with 3 quests we could do at 90. To be honest that's just a leveling alternative to dungeon grinding or khloe book. So I follow Yoshida's recommendation and play other games. I maybe would have quit my sub till the next bigger content patch. But I'm raiding and my static just takes longer to beat p4s, so I'm still here.

I hope that no one will tell me now that I could do the stupid grind stuff I haven't done until now.

I already said multiple times that the hrothgar and viera situation is beyond everything.

[Lustre]

OP is based and correct, although I wouldnt expect much of that to be addressed unfortunately. Theyll probably just skirt around issues and if a pertinent question does find it's way to them, theyll likely sidestep it or talk in circles

[VelKallor]

lol, you're kidding right?

Nope, enjoying it immensely. Feels smoother, more intuitive. I love it

[Rufalus]

I'm not especially bothered about jobs since I still think there are good options and I'm willing to switch if something gets messed up or boring. But of course none of my favorites are healers.

What concerns me most is the lack of endgame content at 90 after a expansion hits.

Yep this. I'm starting to call it auto-pilot game design. They're really trying hard to not rock the boat, down to a fault. Whatever Island Sanctuary ends up being, it will have to be awesome to make up for an otherwise dearth of content. That's probably impossible because people want battle content that isn't just spamming the same instances for half a year.

The dev process has problems if they are pushed to the limit making the stuff we have now. Need a 'work smarter, not harder' approach to getting more value out of existing assets. New types of daily / weekly challenges, more dynamic repeatable content without an increase in dev cost. There's plenty of assets already that could be remixed and reused in more interesting ways than just sprint down a linear hallway and earn some tomestones each week.

[anhaato]

It's time to accept that the dev team has poor work ethic in general. Seriously, 6 months to create a gearset? And they're brave enough to say this out loud with their chests? Every time we hear about any of the development processes, it's always completely abysmal. Hydaelyn's model took a month, btw. How do they find the nerve to put this out there as if it's a good thing? It doesn't make me think "wow they spend so much time on the finer details," it makes me think "what the hell are they doing with all of their time?" It should be no mystery, knowing this, why job complexity is being hacked at the shins every patch. The team is too small and their work ethic is remarkably poor.