Originally Posted by
TheDecay
(1): The "genre-external" does not only consist of players willing to try out FF14 because it's "easy". Players from shooters, action games, tactical games have, in my anecdotal experience, found FF14's early game gameplay too unchallenging and slow to want to continue playing the game. [...]
Ah, to be clear, I think that this is absolutely correct, in case I came across wrong.
FFXIV definitely does not offer much to "gamer" players with its initial combat experiences. (I use "gamer" here just to mean, "someone who enjoys playing games for the mechanical gameplay", and not in any other loaded sense)
And this has especially-exacerbated over time, as more and more basic complexities at the early levels have been stripped away, both intentionally and incidentally, and more and more "actual" combat gameplay (in terms of systems, considerations, and rotational breadth) have been heavily-backloaded into the top-end gameplay (which is not a "new" observation in these discussions, but bears repeating for the sake of context).
Partially, this is thanks to SE's obsession with trying to "reward" reaching very high expansion levels by just unlocking basic Job features and gameplay.
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At the same time, I think there may be an underestimation of the number of potential players who are drawn in specifically because there is the promise of not having high pressure or "complex" (taken in a relative sense, here) systems to fight with or figure out along the way, and combat design that is essentially as approachable and forgiving as single-player turn-based games.
So there's "genre-external" — as a single collective superset of "not normally an MMORPG player/fan".
And then specific subsets of that — such as, as you listed, Shooters, ARPGs, action, adventure, etc...
...but also an entirely-different crowd coming from other places, like single-player JRPGs, Animal Crossing/community management, simulators, visual novels, etc.
And I think those very different genre-external sets will tend to prioritise very different aspects when evaluating whether this is "an MMORPG that I actually like"... or etc.
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So I think it's correct that FFXIV's initial X hours of "gameplay" are some combination of boring, underwhelming, or confusing to a definite chunk of incoming "gamer" players (which does not have to be the mythical/stereotypical "elite gamer", but just "anyone" that enjoys the mechanical gameplay aspect of games).
I don't honestly see how that idea
cannot be true, given how objectively paper-thin the early FFXIV mechanical experience is at this point, and how severely tuning changes, Duty Support adjustments, and years of potency-refactoring/bloat have served to water-down the leveling content.
Instead, I'm just saying that SE may be running numbers, or rolling dice, and deciding that the "n" players that get fed up and leave because the combat gameplay seems bizarrely-limited, are outweighed by the "m" players that are one of:
a) Would be happy with more, but aren't perturbed enough to stop, due to other factors being more important to them
b) Really don't care that much either way
c) Genuinely like the "nonthreatening" and "almost impossible to do wrong" early combat systems (perhaps because they feel that it doesn't intimidate or interfere with the rest of their fantasy experience, etc)
I have no way of objectively proving this, and it's also not meant as an implicit invalidation of the players that legitimately do bail / complain because they feel like they are doing barely anything (mechanically) for way too many hours of game progression.
I'm just trying to reason-out why SE keeps going balls-in on this direction, rather than braking and course-correcting even slightly.
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There is also another consideration, which is that XIV has honestly underwhelmed a lot of new players with the early mechanical experience from Day 1 all along.
And so SE/CBU3/Yoshida/etc, may simply not perceive this as a focus of concern, or a design problem — see the now-infamous, "If you are seeking more challenge as a healer, consider doing Ultimates" statement.
For example, even back in HW, I distinctly remember Rouletting into leveling content with Healers coming from other games, like WOW, who would frequently ask things like, "Why is healing in this game so easy/boring?" and "Does the healing ever get more interesting here?" and, etc.
And even back then, a lot of those players would lose interest and wander off, either during the leveling process, or after reaching endgame and realising that they were still spending most of their time DPSing.
Originally Posted by
TheDecay
(2): I think you underestimate the number of players who quit FF14 because of (a) low job/gameplay complexity and (b) a perceived lack of content. [...] I've met many players in other MMOs who talk about FF14 unprompted with me, and [...] what largely seems to drive former FF14 players into other MMOs is its perceived lack of challenge.
Well, but those are "genre-internal" players who aren't finding what they've come to expect from the genre, becoming (understandably) frustrated or underwhelmed, and then returning to an environment that feels more in line with their expectations.
I say this not as a dismissal, but on the assumption that "genre-external" players unsatisfied with XIV's challenge would seem more likely to return to their originating genre (eg, Shooter, Survival, MOBA, etc) than to start cycling through alternative MMOs.
Originally Posted by
TheDecay
Most players will not actually tackle Savage and Ultimate, and the MSQ and normal endgame content is the source of their primary perception of the game.
I think, though, that in that case, those players have always been a large part of not just FFXIV, but modernised MMOs in general — those who are drawn forward like fluid in a straw by the clear, constrained focus of "leveling up" and "completing the storyline", and then kind of "lose their momentum" once opening up into the endgame.
Those players — still excited from their leveling / story-completion high — will attempt to dabble around a little bit in the more open endgame environment for a time, but since it lacks the concentrated driving factors of leveling-up plus a long, linear story-arc, their interest soon wanes, and then they wander off.
As I understand it, this is a phenomenon that MMO designers have fought with for a long time, because they can't just give you "infinite leveling content".
At some point, for resource-efficiency/feasibility, an "endgame loop" has to be established, and that loop mentality tends to only be compatible with only so much of the population, while the initial leveling segments tend to be more universally-enticing to a very broad selection of players — as seen in how MMOs tend to see massive spikes in sales and play-rates during expansion releases, followed by sharp and/or steady declines once all those players start to complete the leveling story and hit the expansion's "endgame".
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But conversely, if someone displeased with the early gameplay actually manages to sit through the process long enough to reach endgame, then that should be the point at which their interest begins to pick up and remain focused, right?
So if they're reaching endgame and still dissatisfied with the gameplay or lack of challenge, and also not tackling Savage/Ultimate, then they're either
a) Choosing not to seek it out (in which case the developers can, perhaps, be blamed for not directing players more clearly into the content), or...
b) Probably never going to be satisfied with what FFXIV has, and more importantly, is-willing-to, offer.
There is also the legitimate argument that FFXIV tends to deliver content in only 2 stark flavors: "Excruciatingly trivial" and "Very hard" — but I think this has a lot more to do with resources devoted (or not) to producing successive difficulty gradations, than to specific class rotational designs.
In that case, SE may be making the calculation that the total retention loss from mechanically-disappointed players is not significant enough to justify designing around it. (I'm not trying to argue whether this is a good thing for the health of the game — I'm just trying to reason-out what SE's motivations are, because they clearly aren't stopping this trend)
Originally Posted by
TheDecay
(3): [...] What I disagree with is the level of simplicity targeted to achieve this. Stormblood had a healthy high-end content participation rate too, as PF matured and became a legitimate way to participate in such content. [...] I think Stormblood struck a very good balance as most jobs had a low skill floor for players to adequately participate in high-end content, while having a rather high skill ceiling on many jobs to satisfy high-end raiders.
I can't personally argue with most of this — I found Stormblood overall "tough but fair" at the time, and I don't — anecdotally — recall talking to a lot of players who were any more unhappy with how their Job played as they are today (as opposed to more focus on just vexing balancing decisions that implicitly constrained comps, such as Piercing Debuff or Samurai's undertuning).
Both Jobs and content could be frustrating (PFing Midgardsormr was certainly an experience, and I don't exactly long for a return of DRK's Dark Arts RSI), but it also felt like there were clear and comfortable paths by which to improve and refine (excepting the inevitable outliers that were clearly "overdesigned" for the era and more HW-like, such as SB MCH).
And, again anecdotally, I cannot really recall talking to a single Healer who expressed feeling threatened by what SB design expected of them — I really don't see how, for example, taking away simple mechanics like Aero 3 or Shadow Flare or Time Dilation made any serious difference at all to the ability for players to function and concentrate in the Healing role.
Originally Posted by
TheDecay
(4): I actually don't believe long-term prestige is a concern for FF14. [...]
All good points, and perhaps SE also sees it the same way — ie, the spectacle of watching players clear Ultimates is not, from their perspective, affected or enhanced by how sophisticated a given player's Job execution is, vs. the mechanics themselves, the team coordination, etc.
It's true that a lot of the most (as it were) sophisticated aspects of FFXIV Job gameplay have historically tended to be largely "invisible" in the immediate moment, and only apparent when analysed numerically by external tools.
In that sense, it may be something that SE sees little payoff in continuing to develop further.
Originally Posted by
TheDecay
The reason I think low complexity is damaging to FF14 in the long run is because [...] While many of the gameplay-focused players continue sticking with FF14 because, let's be real, the MMO landscape is pathetic, it creates real opportunity for a new entrant to capture its unsatisfied players very easily, and I think this is the real long-term danger for FF14.
This is a pretty interesting point, and I think you highlight one of the few serious dangers that SE could take from the situation.
Unfortunately, SE — like most businesses — seems to live in the here-and-now, and I also suspect (with zero proof, lest it come across wrong) that Yoshida (or higher management) may have already made the shrewd assessment that FFXIV will have zero realistic competition at any near-future point, because the MMO genre has one of the most dramatic barriers-to-entry for new potential products of possibly any gaming genre in existence.
Even Dragonflight, which has somewhat "redeemed" WOW in many ways, has failed to seem to really dent FFXIV very strongly, despite the fact that Dragonflight offers significantly more robust mechanical gameplay than XIV, especially in the Healer role.
And other MMO competitors, even when the raw gameplay itself is promising (eg, arguably, Lost Ark), universally seem to fail to capture their audience for very long — either due to pernicious maintenance systems, excessively-aggressive monetisation practices, underwhelming long-term content, unsatisfying or generic world presentation, or etc.
FFXIV may simply be feeling relatively-invincible at this point, with the assumption that they're basically retaining "as many as they're going to retain" each cycle; that frustrated veterans will inevitably return for lack of any serious equivalent; and that there is more to gain from broadening "accessibility" than there is to lose by disappointing players looking for more depth of gameplay investment.
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