The Perfect Response to "Take a Break"

[aveyond-dreams]

I mean, he might still be in that. He did say in another thread that he's in his early 20s and god, that explains so much. I look back on my late teens and early 20s and go "Man...I was such a cringe tryhard and an idiot." I mean...I'm still that second one, but hey, 33 years old and I'm at least not a cringe tryhard anymore! Just cringe!

My tastes have been pretty consistent. They were shaped by stories and games of substances and naturally I continue to seek and advocate for more in that vein. FFXIV was one of those games before they unceremoniously threw away everything in favor of what Endwalker turned out to be – an expansion that made me feel like I was being treated with gloves because people on twitter gave the impression that they didn’t want a story with proper consequences and required painfully frequent slice of life moments in order to “ease the tension” which I have never needed in any video game prior in my entire life. These players should have known what they were getting into in picking up a 16+ game, though Endwalker hardly resembles one at this point with stuff like the Fall Guys collaboration on the horizon.

This is not how you attract FF players to your game.

If I remember correctly, your patch schedule wasn't deemed 'insufficient', it was deemed infeasible and completely disregarding the health and well being of the developers. Which I remember that last part, because I wrote up and almost posted a very, very, very strongly worded, seven or eight paragraph response to it but ultimately didn't post it cause it wouldn't be worth it. Because I've been on the developer side of the fence, and in the games industry in general, for like 13 to 15 years. And I've been through things like hard crunch and the sheer disregard you had/have for the developers health and well being left me rather...livid, to put it gently.

You do realize that my schedule including relic zones releasing in the .25 patch was literally what we had back in Stormblood, yes? Seeing your join date I would think you would have remembered and played through that expansion. In any case however, your personal emotions are not relevant to FFXIV’s current circumstances.

For the past 3 years there has been no content of substance so yes, unfortunately now this large company with ample resources at their disposal is going to have to play catchup. It is not my job to “regard” much beyond the quality of the product I’m receiving.

If you produce work of insufficient quality then expect criticism in return. I apologize if this comes across as blunt, but I am not willing to change my tone when the current situation demands clear and unapologetic communication.

And if this happens continually, it is only natural for the player’s patience to eventually evaporate and drop any pretense or this community’s exclusive ideas like “say something positive along with every negative thing” that hasn’t been helpful in the slightest. The game should not be in the state it’s in right now and advocating against it’s improvements by attempts at stifling feedback, which is an unfortunately commonplace practice, will only harm the game in the long term.

That is not what I want to see happen. I want to see the quality of content improve along with rewards such as in the case of Variant/Criterion – it should not have taken streamers pointing out the obvious when these issues would have been apparent from the inception of that content to anyone who actively plays the game. Unfortunately when articles get written that characterize individuals as “former mmorpg players” you can understand why this is some cause for alarm amongst those of us who still held out hope for improvements.

Plus I think some people really forgot Covid was a real thing and greatly affected how many in the workforce value themselves and their time (part of the reason why the patch schedules we had before were extended by about a month). SE could've easily pulled a blizzard during the pandemic and went a year without updating the game, then what? Some people dont think in terms of reality.

What SE did was worse in my view, releasing no content with staying power for an entire expansion. A manufactured content drought.