Revisiting the 10 year roadmap

[Shurrikhan]

Which is why this is a perfect example of SE's tendency to "overcorrect" on potentially-legitimate criticisms — outright-obliterating things, rather than first refining them.

Oftentimes, SE sees "A" is a problem, and then decides to Plunge straight from "A" to "Z" in one go.

Rather than something like:

A — Manually press a separate Kaiten key before every Iaijutsu.

M — Each Iaijutsu now automatically consumes up to 20 Kenki per use to increase its damage by up to 50%.

Z — Completely remove Kaiten, bake its potency into Iaijutsu baseline, and push all Kenki management onto Shinten.

...where "M" would accomplish everything that removing Kaiten supposedly did, while also still retaining an extra layer of Kenki reward and management, as well as the possibility of automatically performing the Kaiten animation that people are attached to.

That "M" wouldn't actually "accomplish everything that Kaiten" did, though, for a few reasons:

1. You need time enough for the Kaiten animation to go off (without delaying the Iaijutsu itself), if retaining whatever part of the appeal of Kaiten was its animation.
   
   
2. You're removing the ability to salvage a mismanagement. If one would need a Gyoten to cancel an otherwise-fatal knockback or to return to the eye of a 'donut' AoE in time after having burned Sprint early, now they have to actively avoid using Iaijutsu at all.
   
   
3. To many, part of the of Kaiten appeal was that actual key-slide from Kaiten to Iaijutsu, for much the same reason that many PC players fine with using plugins still nonetheless prefer to use separate buttons for each step of a combo, 'wasted' button-space though such may be.

This "A to Z" habit is a very strange, impatient design style, and probably a manifestation of too few designers having too many tasks under too much pressure... so there's a tendency to not want to keep too many long-term "plates spinning" in terms of wait-and-see observations.

On this general point, though, agreed.

[TheDecay]

It basically looks like they got negative feedback, they got mad that they got negative feedback, they double down on the changes that people are voicing their discontent towards, then they get more negative feedback and then it continues onwards.

It sounds like you're trying to say that the issue was that the players gave negative feedback in the first place.

These two points you said are inextricably linked. It is only because there are people who attack criticizers and hurl foul abuse at them that CBU3 dares to display contempt for the unsatisfied portion of the playerbase. Like father, like son indeed.

[Reimmi]

I don't think the buttons you listed can be compared to Kaiten that easily...


123 combos aren't transformative in the way using abilities is so that one I don't get why we compare it.
Requiescat isn't a "press before every single Holy Spirit" button, though at Lv90 it is basically the glorified spell combo opener.
Life Surge is best used on Full Thrust / Heaven's thrust, but you don't use it on every single Full Thrust / Heaven's Thrust.
Reassemble is best used on Drill / Air Anchor / Chainsaw, however you don't use it on every single Drill / Air Anchor / Chainsaw.
Blood Weapon is a glorified Infuriate since Shadowbringers and was a Haste buff + resource generation boost pre Shadowbringers, why is this listed?

The reason why Kaiten was different, which is likely why they did the change they did, is because other than pre Lv52 and pre 62 on AOE, there was never a single instance where you DIDN'T press Kaiten -> Iaijutsu, you did always and without question as any of the Iaijutsu's charged with Kaiten was a complete gain over using Shinten/Kyuten and/or using Kaiten on non-Iaijutsu combo finishers. It was so baseline you always did, which they saw as "well if you always do it, why do we even have the option to use it without?" and decided to get rid of it.

Do I like it? Personally yes and I say this as someone who lost Dark Arts and Speed Weapon, because it was a 100% mandatory button press on every Iaijutsu without question. Do I understand why people are pissed? Also yes, it essentially didn't get any Kenki spender replacement.

That said, where is my Hissatsu: Seigan counterattack? I miss that one a ton more than Hissatsu: Kaiten and just flat Kenki gain on Third Eye is boring.

The reason it was good for the game is it added error to play, where if you didn't use kaiten on your abilities you lost damage

The game needs a higher skill ceiling, not lower. the skill floor is already pretty low for most jobs, but things like that are objectively good for the game.

You don't need to do it to succeed, but a player who does do it stands out more. even if kaiten is a relatively minor upkeep thing, the point still stands

[Renathras]

- a type of pvp that appeals to me that I don't have to switch games for
- multiple types of raiding of all difficulties that appeal to me that I don't have to switch games for
- playing my own character. no offense, FFXVI is banger, but I like my own character due to attachment
- being able to make my own choice in a wide spectrum of activities not limited to current patch, usually with other people
- human interaction with other players that I dont have to switch games for [most important]

Probably more I could name but can't remember from the top of my hat. What Im trying to say is, the overall quality may not be great, but its a huge sandbox to me. Could FFXIV need improvement? Absolutely but Im not gonna bash the game on the level like some people do because it doesn't fulfill my every desire.

I am glad to simply have a stable MMORPG that doesn't fold itself by making tanks completely useless and turn everything into a 1min fight or crush itself because Devs can't stop making actually terrible decisions that cause a mass exodus of players.

Im paying for an online service that doesn't have to put character progression into micro transactions to sustain itself because of this. How much I get out of it each month is my own choice and not exactly easy to quantify number - someone who is new and blasts off crazy in month 1 will have the value of his lifetime, someone who logs for raiding, pvp and social interaction will obviously get less.

For me it is worth that money, and no matter how much people seem to shit on that mode, PvP is a massive factor for why Im staying. It also helps that the overall game's setting suits me.

The Riot MMO or the Tera PS may be diversions that may be well worth my time, but I will continue supporting FFXIV until it either shuts down or turns into something I cannot put money into with good conscience.

These two posts are more or less the answer.

If it's not worth the money to you, why are you paying it?
If it's not enjoyable too you, why are you playing it?

And if it is those things, then bashing it endlessly makes no sense and isn't helpful.

Is it perfect? No.
Can it be improved? Yes.

Does that mean it needs constant bashing? No, and constant, incessant bashing doesn't help make it better, either.

[Jojoya]

Where did you see anything about "removing the MMO tag" from the game? I think the discussion has gone differently than you anticipated because you were looking for talk about something that just isn't happening. I watched the video and Yoshi-P straight up said the game is an MMO.

Beginning at 31:22 (Aimee's translation of YoshiP's comments)

So our first concept - an even better RPG, alone or with friends.

So... I mean... It is what it says of course but I understand that Final Fantasy 14 as a game genre would be categorized as a MMORPG.

Of course throughout the 11 years of doing Final Fantasy 14 we did various gaming events including Fan Festival and I had the opportunity to speak with different gamers. And of course i would have my marketing teams perform market research as well. This is something we regularly do when we start to plan for upcoming expansion packs and with the information we've received, there is always like a question that we never seem to find a way to break through.

So there's actually two. One of them is we see there's a lot of players that love Final Fantasy and many that claim they've played all the Final Fantasys except for 11 and 14, and which is very frustrating.

Of course we are paying attention to Final Fantasy 11 players as well and we've made various updates. I think it has become very solo friendly recently but with Final Fantasy 14 we want to go beyond that.

The second point we're trying to make a breakthrough is people comment about "oh, online play, that's... I don't want to deal with having to play with other people" or "I don't want to develop relationships online" and that's actually a very large reason, if not the number one reason, why players hesitate playing 14.

So what I want to do here is spend the next 10 years and break out of that MMORPG category. I want this to be a RPG that can be enjoyed alone or with friends.

After that, he discusses the work to add Trust to the existing MSQ dungeons and 4-man trials over the 6.x patch series in preparation for 7.0, with Trust support for the 8-man trials not being added until 7.0 or later. He adds that Duty Finder and other matching systems will continue to be available just as you said. None of my comments/questions were about the future of Duty Finder. Those playing with friends would obviously still need a way to queue. My concerns were focused on other aspects of the game.

Regardless, he clearly stated that he wants FFXIV to be categorized as a RPG and not a MMORPG.

What changes would have to occur for gamers in general and Final Fantasy franchise fans specifically to stop thinking of FFXIV as a MMORPG and only as a RPG that can be played with friends? What do we expect from a MMO that we wouldn't expect from just a RPG?

I want to point out that the negative feedback only started rising when they started pushing Trusts, very easy solo instances and job simplifications in ShB. It basically looks like they got negative feedback, they got mad that they got negative feedback, they double down on the changes that people are voicing their discontent towards, then they get more negative feedback and then it continues onwards.

It sounds like you're trying to say that the issue was that the players gave negative feedback in the first place. If the developers want less negative feedback, maybe they should communicate with their players more, actually show that they're listening rather than give us nothing but radio silence. It's understandable for the players to get agitated when the dev team has not shown that they even care about our feedback, or that they even hear about it at all, and they asked us for our feedback.

But they have been listening to player feedback all along. Just because you didn't ask for something and didn't see it mentioned in the EN forums doesn't mean that there weren't players who had been asking for it. Just because they didn't respond to feedback you think was extra important doesn't mean they weren't listening.

At no point have they said they're unwilling to accept negative feedback They do want it just as much as positive feedback. Calls for developers to be fired and sending death threats is not negative feedback. That's disturbing and irrational behavior.

I'm also surprised that you claim there is only radio silence when they hold the Live Letters on a regular basis. They are communicating with us but it's unreasonable to expect them to talk about everything that is brought up. They do need to actually make the game after all. If they had to constantly stop to respond to all player questions and feedback, it wouldn't be 4 months between patches. It would be 4 years.

[Iscah]

What changes would have to occur for gamers in general and Final Fantasy franchise fans specifically to stop thinking of FFXIV as a MMORPG and only as a RPG that can be played with friends? What do we expect from a MMO that we wouldn't expect from just a RPG?

The change is that you can play the entire story of the RPG as a solo RPG and not delve into the multiplayer aspects of it unless you want to. That does not require any alteration to how they approach the multiplayer aspects.

[Jojoya]

The change is that you can play the entire story of the RPG as a solo RPG and not delve into the multiplayer aspects of it unless you want to. That does not require any alteration to how they approach the multiplayer aspects.

Then why state he intends to break the game out of the MMORPG category if there will be no changes to the multiplayer aspects?

We're still left with the question what makes the difference between a MMORPG and a RPG that has multiplayer options?

Just being able to play solo does not mean a game is not a MMORPG. A large part of WoW's initial success was that a player could play most content solo if they wanted, something that was not really possible in the old school MMORPGs available at the time.

[Rufalus]

The single-player stuff is quite smart in the long term. Some day when most of the community is gone and this game is considered retro, people might pick it up for like $10 in their quest to play all the old FF games and go through the whole story with just duty support NPCs. If the servers ever shut down and they make an offline version they mostly only need to rebalance rewards to make it make sense.

In the here and now, yeah it's kind of weird for such a big focus of every major update to be single-player scenario quests, in a live service game with monthly fees. The story is already gigantic enough. To me MMO means keeping the weekly multiplayer activities fresh, keep shaking up the gameplay loop, add new enticing carrots to repeatable content so it doesn't die (variant dungeon, field ops).

[Aravell]

But they have been listening to player feedback all along. Just because you didn't ask for something and didn't see it mentioned in the EN forums doesn't mean that there weren't players who had been asking for it. Just because they didn't respond to feedback you think was extra important doesn't mean they weren't listening.

At no point have they said they're unwilling to accept negative feedback They do want it just as much as positive feedback. Calls for developers to be fired and sending death threats is not negative feedback. That's disturbing and irrational behavior.

I'm also surprised that you claim there is only radio silence when they hold the Live Letters on a regular basis. They are communicating with us but it's unreasonable to expect them to talk about everything that is brought up. They do need to actually make the game after all. If they had to constantly stop to respond to all player questions and feedback, it wouldn't be 4 months between patches. It would be 4 years.

I agree that calling for people to be fired and sending death threats is very bad, that's something that I don't like either.

As for the radio silence, I'm talking about the 2 instances where they asked for feedback on something, got a huge megathread on the forums in response, then they never ever mentioned it again. Namely the GNB sound changes in 5.01 and the SAM+NIN changes in 6.1. Yoshi P directly asked everyone for feedback on the forums and got a ton of feedback, then they never mentioned either of those things again, that's going to frustrate people, why ask for feedback if you don't intend to at least let people know if you're even looking at the feedback? At least a quick mention even if just to say "Oh yeah, we saw your feedback, but we intend on continuing in this direction." would be nice to have.

[Eorzean_username]

That "M" wouldn't actually "accomplish everything that Kaiten" did, though, for a few reasons:

I am confused, because you quoted my statement, then responded to something that I didn't say.

...where "M" would accomplish everything that removing Kaiten supposedly did, while also still retaining an extra layer of Kenki reward and management, [...]

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...But while we're here anyway, for the sake of posterity:

You need time enough for the Kaiten animation to go off (without delaying the Iaijutsu itself), if retaining whatever part of the appeal of Kaiten was its animation.

Technically correct, but there are plenty of possibilities for adapting this to function, such as automatically performing "The Twirl" upon reaching 20 Kenki, or simply re-keying how the Iaijutsu animation itself progresses.

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You're removing the ability to salvage a mismanagement. If one would need a Gyoten to cancel an otherwise-fatal knockback or to return to the eye of a 'donut' AoE in time after having burned Sprint early, now they have to actively avoid using Iaijutsu at all.

This example seems ridiculous to me.

I cannot think of a situation in which any serious Samurai would not be mortally-embarrassed to have spent Kenki needed for Kaiten on a gap-closer, and in that case, it's an obvious misplay and lack of proper planning that "deserves" a rotational "slap on the wrist" — especially if operating by the standards of "skill expression" argued for so frequently around here.

Furthermore, in my off-the-cuff example of a mid-way compromise for Kaiten (which was not meant as an actual technical design document), it says:

M — Each Iaijutsu now automatically consumes up to 20 Kenki per use to increase its damage by up to 50%.

...Meaning that, in the situation of your example, the "M" method would actually be more forgiving and allow more salvaging of mismanagement, because if — say — you just had to Gyoten at, say, 25 Kenki to survive a mythical knockback and already blew your Arm's Length, then you could still gain a Kaiten bonus of at least 37.5% when you arrived back in range.

In the "classic Kaiten", you would be faced with an all-or-nothing choice — Iai for 0% bonus, or don't Iai at all. In which case, you're still "actively avoiding using Iaijutsu at all". (?)

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To many, part of the of Kaiten appeal was that actual key-slide from Kaiten to Iaijutsu

If we're now getting into "key-slides" being a justification for never editing anything, then the game's design has basically become paralytic and ossified.

Developers should not be held hostage to people wanting to press an exact number of keys (which, yes, works in both directions, and is an issue with excessive "bloat reduction" crusades as well).

If the "key slide" change is that offensive, create a pure-text macro that emotes, "/e <0> activated Kaiten!" and push it before each Iaijutsu.

That said, I'm aware that gaming is a complex experience from the user-satisfaction perspective, and I'm not trying to glibly invalidate that some people genuinely took satisfaction from this (or any other subtle detail that's been deprecated over time).

I'm just saying that, sooner or later, "something has to budge" when designers want to design, and while "non-destructive editing" is an ideal to follow in concept, it's not always going to work out in practice.

In that sense, "I lost my key slide" is going to end up pretty low on the list of potential consequences, and join a gigantic pile of other actions that have also gone extinct over time.

Like yeah, I personally miss my "key slide" of Cleric Stance into SCH DOTpocalypse and Dark Arts into... everything, but at some point I had to "Remember that we lived" and move on with the day.