What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lunaxia]

Yeah, it's really bizarre. I do hope some more snippets about what exactly went on behind the scenes come to light someday because the tonal whiplash from ShB to EW is honestly one of the most brazen and jarring things I've ever seen in a video game. Unfortunately it's also why I can't really bring myself to be excited about what comes next - because anything I do end up liking could very well find itself receiving similar treatment and just be hastily discarded and/or retconned on a whim.

I feel like those days where they really pushed that honest sort of communication - or open communication at all, really - with the fans are slowly coming to an end. They put the effort in when they needed to save the game from the mess they got themselves in, but now they've achieved a reasonable degree of success they're defaulting to the usual mega gaming corporation behaviour that I suspect will continue unless they dig themselves into a hole again - and now they've managed to pull in the casual RP/ modder/ glamour obsessed communities looking for a new social sim, so long as they keep chucking overpriced outfits on the MS, inserting cyberpunk and modern glams into the game's gear and turning their head the other way at the venue spam, that's not going to be happening anytime soon. Keeping expectations low is probably for the best.

I kind of wonder how the devs feel about it, though, and where these decisions actually come from.

[Halivel]

I feel like those days where they really pushed that honest sort of communication - or open communication at all, really - with the fans are slowly coming to an end. They put the effort in when they needed to save the game from the mess they got themselves in, but now they've achieved a reasonable degree of success they're defaulting to the usual mega gaming corporation behaviour that I suspect will continue unless they dig themselves into a hole again - and now they've managed to pull in the casual RP/ modder/ glamour obsessed communities looking for a new social sim, so long as they keep chucking overpriced outfits on the MS, inserting cyberpunk and modern glams into the game's gear and turning their head the other way at the venue spam, that's not going to be happening anytime soon. Keeping expectations low is probably for the best.

I kind of wonder how the devs feel about it, though, and where these decisions actually come from.

I wouldn't be surprised if the decrease in open communication comes partially from the playerbase becoming as big as it did. It's not a phenomenon unique to game development - it's something you can see in daily life in different communities as well, albeit on a smaller scale (something like discord servers centered around some topic, for example).

It's one thing to communicate with smaller amount of people that mostly share the same view on the topic, and it's another thing to communicate with a community that bloated in size and, as result, has a huge variety of opinions that are objectively impossible to satisfy simultaneously. And wherever creators and members of said communities like it or not, at some point those who're in charge have to somewhat distance themselves and decide which path they're going to take in terms of project evolution (which will cause some people to like and some people to dislike those decisions).

[Halivel]

I wouldn't be surprised if the decrease in open communication comes partially from the playerbase becoming as big as it did. It's not a phenomenon unique to game development - it's something you can see in daily life in different communities as well, albeit on a smaller scale (something like discord servers centered around some topic, for example).

It's one thing to communicate with smaller amount of people that mostly share the same view on the topic, and it's another thing to communicate with a community that bloated in size and, as result, has a huge variety of opinions that are objectively impossible to satisfy simultaneously. And wherever creators and members of said communities like it or not, at some point those who're in charge have to somewhat distance themselves and decide which path they're going to take in terms of project evolution (which will cause some people to like and some people to dislike those decisions).

To add to this, I had a somewhat similar experience as a moderator in a discord server that grew in size over time, from like 10 users to thousands. It wasn't a particularly nice feeling to make decisions that would inevitably alienate some portion of the community, but they had to be done to keep the project going at all, because if you try please everyone at once - you end up with pleasing no one at all and potentially ruining the project entirely. The only thing you can really do in such a situation is to try to stick to a path that you feel is right for your project.

So personally here, so long as developers themselves are happy with what they're doing - I'd say they're on the right path. Even if some of those decisions feel weird to me at times.

[Lunaxia]

I wouldn't be surprised if the decrease in open communication comes partially from the playerbase becoming as big as it did. It's not a phenomenon unique to game development - it's something you can see in daily life in different communities as well, albeit on a smaller scale (something like discord servers centered around some topic, for example)...

It's a tricky subject. That's undeniably a part of it, for sure, but it's somewhat sanitising the truth; that invariably the path chosen will be the one that better appeals to the mass market in order to garner the most profit, and in so doing alienate older players who have enjoyed and supported the game for the majority of its life until that point. It might be the natural road to take - or at least the expected one, so far as corporations are concerned - but it's not necessarily a good one. I don't really think comparing a discord trying to get off the ground is exactly comparable to an established game that was already successful in its own right, either. There is no do or die here.

What we perceive to be the "right path" is subjective, of course, but I think there's a fair argument to be made against that. At this point, though, that is perhaps best left to time to either prove or disprove. After watching the game proceed in the direction it has done for the past two years, and what I've witnessed in the community, I'll be interested to see, to say the least.

[Halivel]

It's a tricky subject. That's undeniably a part of it, for sure, but it's somewhat sanitising the truth; that invariably the path chosen will be the one that better appeals to the mass market in order to garner the most profit, and in so doing alienate older players who have enjoyed and supported the game for the majority of its life until that point. It might be the natural road to take - or at least the expected one, so far as corporations are concerned - but it's not necessarily a good one. I don't really think comparing a discord trying to get off the ground is exactly comparable to an established game that was already successful in its own right, either. There is no do or die here.

What we perceive to be the "right path" is subjective, of course, but I think there's a fair argument to be made against that. At this point, though, that is perhaps best left to time to either prove or disprove. After watching the game proceed in the direction it has done for the past two years, and what I've witnessed in the community, I'll be interested to see, to say the least.

Pardon me for a later answer, it was 3am by the time you posted so I didn't see it until now.

I agree that discord server isn't a perfect comparison, since those are usually non-profit projects and that alone simplifies a lot of things. That's what popped up in my mind though and what I had to deal with myself, so I used it.

My point in general was that even if the devteam wants to be as open as possible - at some point it becomes harder because of the sheer amount of users there are (which also means profits being brought in, since more people = more money involved, as you've mentioned, and that adds to the issues with communication).

And I'd agree that at this point it's best to see where it goes with time. The company as a whole will obviously push for more profits no matter what the development sector thinks about that. I can see during streams that they still have passion for what they do, and honestly so long as that's the case, I'll be glad for them. Now... if (or when) the moment comes where the devteam itself will stop having any love for the project because they strided away from what they wanted to make too far under the pressure of those from financial department, that's where it'll become truly disappointing for me. But that's also not something under our control, sadly, so we can only watch.