Revisiting the 10 year roadmap

[Dzian]

It's much worse than that; the jobs aren't balanced where A is good at X, B is good at Y, etc.

Oh I agree. But that's an issue with xov content design. Such was demonstrated back in heavensward... where paladin was a solid physical tank but pretty naff at magical..

But the content was nearly all magical damage so paladin got shafted..

The other issue is xiv raids are literally 1 room with 1 boss. So again no room for variance or diversity..

They stripped away, dumbed down and simplified everything so much it doesn't even qualify as an rpg anymore. All that matters is dps and who brings most..

You can't diversify jobs or make them interesting when there's no interesting mechanical game systems for them to interact with..

[Post]

I found playing AST in Vanaspati the other day more stressful than in TOP, probably because it's a job that is designed for those 1 room, 1 boss encounters and nothing else. The moment there's an uneven number of ranged/melee card buff targets, different synchs on jobs buffing themselves because trash and bosses don't fit into the tight 2 min meta and variable amounts of skill or any amount of forced downtime it just becomes a mess -- My condolences to BRD, which has its 2 min not only tied to its ability to shoot something every 40 sec for its songs but also has to choose to buff either its mage's ballad for all the trash or its wanderer's minuet for the boss and at pace is basically locked into one rotation for the whole dungeon.

AST is at 'Z' with its card system when it was at 'M' before. Sure, balance was the best when you're playing with your Ultimate group but hell if it wasn't convenient (and fun) to load your 4 man dungeon tank up with 55 seconds of 30% bole mitigation and a ton of regens. God help any solo RPG players that latch onto that job if they don't change course.

They do have a tendency to overcorrect issues players have, is my point. Take the ground targeted actions. Largely fixed now, and basically only NIN shukuchi exists anymore; caster lb and healer fields are gargantuan.

I predict they'll finally fix tab targeting now that bosses rarely have adds when there's still a boss that's attackable anymore.

I also worry that things like current SMN are seen as acceptable for a few years of subscription if they've got a direction in mind for it next expansion. Compared to even most ARR jobs or feels like it's missing half of its actions. My very casual anecdotal friend went from loving SMN at 80 to being so bored of it in EW we leveled a fresh job to 90 when he came back to the game finally.

[TheDecay]

I found playing AST in Vanaspati the other day more stressful than in TOP, probably because it's a job that is designed for those 1 room, 1 boss encounters and nothing else. The moment there's an uneven number of ranged/melee card buff targets, different synchs on jobs buffing themselves because trash and bosses don't fit into the tight 2 min meta and variable amounts of skill or any amount of forced downtime it just becomes a mess -- My condolences to BRD, which has its 2 min not only tied to its ability to shoot something every 40 sec for its songs but also has to choose to buff either its mage's ballad for all the trash or its wanderer's minuet for the boss and at pace is basically locked into one rotation for the whole dungeon.

AST is at 'Z' with its card system when it was at 'M' before. Sure, balance was the best when you're playing with your Ultimate group but hell if it wasn't convenient (and fun) to load your 4 man dungeon tank up with 55 seconds of 30% bole mitigation and a ton of regens. God help any solo RPG players that latch onto that job if they don't change course.

They do have a tendency to overcorrect issues players have, is my point. Take the ground targeted actions. Largely fixed now, and basically only NIN shukuchi exists anymore; caster lb and healer fields are gargantuan.

I predict they'll finally fix tab targeting now that bosses rarely have adds when there's still a boss that's attackable anymore.

I also worry that things like current SMN are seen as acceptable for a few years of subscription if they've got a direction in mind for it next expansion. Compared to even most ARR jobs or feels like it's missing half of its actions. My very casual anecdotal friend went from loving SMN at 80 to being so bored of it in EW we leveled a fresh job to 90 when he came back to the game finally.

But here's the catch: your friend might be bored but many are not bored because they play this game one hour a month while ERPing full time. This is the demographic SE is catering to now.

[Semirhage]

I found playing AST in Vanaspati the other day more stressful than in TOP

I wish Vanaspati were stressful. Last time I ran it I went as Scholar and got a WAR. As soon as we zoned in, he said "healer don't heal me". So I didn't. I spent the entire dungeon, wall to wall pulls, spamming Art of War and Broil, with occasional Energy Drains, Chain Strats, and Biolysises. Not a single other ability, GCD, oGCD, none of it.

But I've been accused of being a dirty elitist; healers are super fun as-is, all that's needed is a tiny bit of encounter design shakeup. Super fun, best designed RPG ever. :eyeroll: (not directed at you, just Vanaspati brought it up)

[Jojoya]

But here's the catch: your friend might be bored but many are not bored because they play this game one hour a month while ERPing full time. This is the demographic SE is catering to now.

In the end, it doesn't matter what demographic you think SE may be catering to. Someone doesn't have to be part of the target demographic to enjoy the game just as someone who is a member of the demographic may dislike it immensely.

All the snide remarks and jabs at other players won't change things.

The only question that should matter to a player: is this a game you (generic you, not referring to TheDecay the poster specifically) still enjoy and want to continue playing in its current state?

How others feel about the game is irrelevant. In the end, we are all playing for our personal enjoyment and not theirs. Outside of the brainwashed social media sheep, no one is going to stop enjoying a game just because someone else says they don't (or start enjoying it simply because someone else says they do).

If someone is not enjoying it, it makes no sense to continue wasting time and money on it. Leave any relevant feedback (if it hasn't already been done) and move on.

If for some masochistic reason someone does continue to waste money on a game they aren't enjoying, I'm sure the developers appreciate the support.

[DixieBellOCE]

The sad fact is that there are free games out there that have bigger and better content releases than XIV gets every 8 months (Yes, its 8 months now, not 6!)

At this point, XIV and its Expansions needs to go Buy2play. There should not be a subscription unless content is going to be developed and released at a faster rate than f2p games.

Guild Wars 2 does a great job of this: Buy the game and each expansion once, and you can play it whenever you want, no subscription required, Drop it for 1 year, come back and just pick up where you left off without having to pay $15/month.

[Ath192]

The sad fact is that there are free games out there that have bigger and better content releases than XIV gets every 8 months (Yes, its 8 months now, not 6!)

At this point, XIV and its Expansions needs to go Buy2play. There should not be a subscription unless content is going to be developed and released at a faster rate than f2p games.

Guild Wars 2 does a great job of this: Buy the game and each expansion once, and you can play it whenever you want, no subscription required, Drop it for 1 year, come back and just pick up where you left off without having to pay $15/month.

Yes I agree. The content of this game between expansions is no where near justifying its price. I WOULD PREFER to keep paying the sub but get a lot more content, but since they are allergic to doing so this would be the next best option.

[Rufalus]

There should not be a subscription unless content is going to be developed and released at a faster rate than f2p games.

Incredibly even FF XI is still asking for subscription money beyond its 20th anniversary, with a skeleton crew left to support it. And we can't play both games on a single subscription, must separately pay in full for each game, each month. Leadership of this division really aren't interested in trying different business models.

[Sindele]

I dun care if they don't like me. And they don't read these forums anyways.

Just tired of people squawking about "buh hard to balance buh" and "you don't know what they are thinking uwu they got so much data" when we ALSO have data through FFLogs and Lucky Bancho. Players aren't stupid. We're not in the dark.

Also Kaiten change was very stupid because it didn't solve any the issues they claimed to want to change, but altered the playstyle to Shinten spam. SAM still has button bloat and still has incredibly wide damage variance. And like... every job presses buttons... before other buttons... That's how rotations work. If they wanted to get rid of "buttons we always pressed before skills" they should remove the 12 from every 123. Remove Life Surge. Remove Reassemble. Remove Requiescat. Remove Blood Weapon. ETC ETC

Truly genius.

The problem is that our data is in the dark compared to their data.

Can you slice your data to break down the Kaiten usage of players that leveled SAM from at least 52 to 55 but no more than 89 in the past 30 days? What about those who did that in the last 60 and then haven't played SAM in the last 30 days? How about the Kaiten usage rates of players that attempted content above Extreme difficulty as SAM and then went on to not play it for over 30 days?

No. You can't. It's literally not possible to do with any kind of useful accuracy, FFLogs is a fraction of a fraction of the relevant data to a business. Player data sources simply are not complete enough. You and I cannot know what went into that decision unless they tell us. It is truly a completely different level of ability to peer into the practicality of what players do.

You can certainly argue that the result is silly, heaven knows I have. You can certainly argue with the lack of transparency and obfuscatory responses. But "hur dur they clearly don't play the job" is just useless clownshoes nerd emoji behavior. Gotta be willing to put yourself in the mindset of "why would they think this was a good decision?", even for the decisions you hate, if you want to understand them and how to avoid them in the future.

[VelKallor]

FFLogs is a fraction of a fraction of the relevant data to a business. You and I cannot know what went into that decision unless they tell us

The same can be said for any decision SE has made, and that includes these moronic assertions as to how anyone here knows what staff went where and did what, "FF 16 caused FF 14 to suffer loss of content", no one knows one way or the other.

But you know, narrative.