Quote Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams View Post
If only he worked hard and gave the ok for things that don't impact his preferred playstyle without people going behind his back in order to get things back on track. Unfortunately enthusiasm for these projects varies wildly from the finished quality level of Male Viera to the state Island Sanctuary released in. He's demonstrating more and more out of touch behaviour as time increases. Telling healers who want more stuff to do to go try Ultimate was but one of many examples of this. A playerbase that enables him to get away with that sort of stuff isn't leading us to anywhere good.

I don't have to list the other many examples of his preferences being not only shown but enforced in game, and I shouldn't have to rely on devs going rogue against the director to give players what they're asking for. Hopefully one of them goes rogue again and delivers some more facial hair for men and revamps healers on the side. Because someone who plays a female Lalafell/Raen Black Mage doesn't seem to understand why players ask for these things nor the importance of listening to them. Maybe that's why this game has lost healers to Classic WoW's Wrath of the Lich King because by level 13 they already have more stuff to do than level 90 White Mages.
Fair enough.

I guess my perspective comes from the fact that prior to moving over to FFXIV I played a heavily-monetised F2P MMO managed by an EP with a background in smartphone gaming. Said game, which I don't wish to name as would prefer not to get into a discussion about that, went from having a pretty generous F2P model to a sleazy FOMO-fueled mess with an over-reliance on loot boxes and expensive (£200 - £300) bundles of items - which wouldn't be quite so bad if not for the fact that they only produce a new episode (worth about 45 minutes play time) every five or so months. And when players question the lack of content, the answer from the CM or Devs, who always show their VERY clear distaste at being asked such questions and have sometimes been quite offensive in how they reply, is always "the lootbox/item/bundle is content".

So no, I don't worship YoshiP - but regardless of his changing attitude and approach he hasn't reached the point where, like that other game, he's trying strip-mine as much revenue from the playerbase as possible, with no regard to sustainability, burnout, or player feedback, before moving on like a locust to find another game to ruin