2024 is going to be FF14's last chance to tackle its stagnating formula (PC Gamer)

[Myrany]

Well I now have my first real gripe with the game and it is none of the things any of you are talking about.

Scenario: I just got a new computer. With great excitement I downloaded the game and logged in. I discovered that NONE of my settings on my characters were still there. Hud arrangement = gone, skills on bars= gone, game settings like skip cutscenes or open all bags = Gone, Macros I have written over the years = gone. I have now spent 2 days rebuilding most of it on 10 characters all with multiple jobs.

It is absolutely ridiculous that all of that is NOT stored server side. Worse you are not told. If you never poke into the right click on your log in character list you will never find out that it is possible to individually back up all your characters so you don't go through this nightmare. In this day and age this need fixed!

[Jeeqbit]

FFXIV has not typically been described as stagnating historically as far as I know, so you have to ask yourself why this term has become so incredibly trendy.

There have always been critics of the "formula" even back in Heavensward. This was why Yoshi-P had a slot for "experimental content" in the expansion cycle. Palace of the Dead and Diadem were examples of that in Heavensward. The next experiments were with Eureka and Ultimates, then Ishgard Restoration and Ocean Fishing and then Variant, Criterion and Island Sanctuary.

But although I have always bumped into critics of the formula from time to time, especially among veteran players, there hasn't been the degree of consensus there is in Endwalker.

I think objectively if you look at this expansion versus others, it's because Shadowbringers started replacing combat content with crafter/gatherer content, and then Endwalker replaced some of the combat content (Bozja) with a type of content that is completed quickly and regarded as boring (variant) or not done by many people (criterion) and replaced one of the main long-term grinds (relics) with a handout.

Imo it has less to do with the content or even the rollout of the content. It's the desperate bid for ease of play and balance that has ruined jobs and combat, generally, and made the game a snoozefest for most jobs and most encounters.

I don't personally think it is the jobs or rotations that are the problem. I think it is just flat out over-telegraphing mechanics ie. Oschon's Bow in the latest Alliance Raid and allowing gear to make the content unpunishing.

If all the old content I got in roulettes was minimum item level then everything would feel great, but instead they are all striking dummies or allow us to skip or ignore mechanics. It's not as if my tank rotation was more complex in the past, the fights just weren't this much of a joke when they released because our gear wasn't overpowering them as much.

It only makes it worse that the mechanics are so over-telegraphed now that it doesn't feel good that you "know" them anymore ie. fighting Coincounter without getting hit in Aurum Vale used to feel good.

The big audience the devs thought they would draw in by knee capping the entire game all left them once the hype was over. What did we learn?

Returners (within about a 3 month period) make up about 20% of players. SE doesn't need to prevent them from leaving so long as they can get them to return for brief periods and their degree of success with that is the returner stats Lucky Bancho produces.

How is it growing? Subs are dropping

A little bit, within the expected range for the pre-expansion lull. On an expansion basis, subs have not dropped to Shadowbringers' average levels, because Lucky Bancho's stats throughout Shadowbringers were mostly 900,000 whereas currently they are still above 1 million and have been the entire expansion, despite everyone's complaints, and even despite no longer being able to count players below level 70.

players are spending less time playing the game

That part is true, especially for veteran players.

XIV even did a "reinvite a friend" campaign a month or so ago. That was just for fun and not because SE has noticed a spike in disengagement with the game?

They often time that for a patch lull so that they are not giving them the patch for free, but rather bring them back so that they are tempted to resubscribe for the upcoming patch. Regardless of if it's motivated by profit dips, it's a pretty routine thing so if that is their motivation, then they've done it for every other profit dip, dating back years.

[WickedSensei]

Zenos technically in Stormblood. He was just some strong ass guy at that point in time.

And he beat us very easily one on one in our first encounter.

It's really hard to judge the power level of the WOL.

While they are obviously miles a I've the average adventurer...I think physically they have limits of a normal person. But with the power of the echo and blessing of light on top of that.

Not to mention the WOL has more battle experience than mostly everyone else is what gives him an edge.

But the first Zenos fight showed me that my WOL is not a demigod.

My head canon is WOL power level is: Way above average battle experience, blessing of light/echo, getting specially trained in the jobs we have chosen, our job crystals being more special than most(which also means more battle knowledge) and being descendant of Azem.

But still with normal physical limits and is constantly improving.

One thing I want to ask is, do we take open world enemies power as canon?

Because when we go to the new world that lvl 100 rabbit will be a challenge.

[Krokov]

Why should anyone care what a writer at PC Gamer thinks? That's their feelings about the game. Don't let some person judge what you think of the game, play it and decide for yourself, whether that be positive or negative.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Well I now have my first real gripe with the game and it is none of the things any of you are talking about.

Scenario: I just got a new computer. With great excitement I downloaded the game and logged in. I discovered that NONE of my settings on my characters were still there. Hud arrangement = gone, skills on bars= gone, game settings like skip cutscenes or open all bags = Gone, Macros I have written over the years = gone. I have now spent 2 days rebuilding most of it on 10 characters all with multiple jobs.

It is absolutely ridiculous that all of that is NOT stored server side. Worse you are not told. If you never poke into the right click on your log in character list you will never find out that it is possible to individually back up all your characters so you don't go through this nightmare. In this day and age this need fixed!

Thing about the backup is last time I swapped to a new PC I think the UI save only saved my hotbars and I still had to reposition everything on the HUD.

[Menriq]

Well I now have my first real gripe with the game and it is none of the things any of you are talking about.

Scenario: I just got a new computer. With great excitement I downloaded the game and logged in. I discovered that NONE of my settings on my characters were still there. Hud arrangement = gone, skills on bars= gone, game settings like skip cutscenes or open all bags = Gone, Macros I have written over the years = gone. I have now spent 2 days rebuilding most of it on 10 characters all with multiple jobs.

It is absolutely ridiculous that all of that is NOT stored server side. Worse you are not told. If you never poke into the right click on your log in character list you will never find out that it is possible to individually back up all your characters so you don't go through this nightmare. In this day and age this need fixed!

There are two things you have to backup. One is the client config, which saves your settings. The other is character config. That saves all your HUD, hotbars, macros, etc.

[Striker44]

As others have stated, the game is fine IF you are a new player and still have a huge backlog of things to do. But for anyone that has been playing at least somewhat consistently and is more or less caught up, you really start to notice how pitiful the drip feed really is.

Except I've been playing on-and-off since 2015, and as my primary MMO for about 2.5 years now, and yet I still have a whole "backlog" of things to do, because there really is an enormous amount of content available that has been created. Of course, I also tend to only play about 1-2 hours a day, a few days a week, and rotate my time between several games (right now, Warcraft 2 user-made maps, Destiny 2, and Nier:Automata). I would easily describe my playing experience as "at least somewhat consistently" for a few years, which isn't nearly enough time for me to be anywhere close to caught up. Of course, if you're still no-lifing the game like it's 2010 when MMO's were designed to be your second "home", then yes, you're probably feeling bored. But that's because times change.

[Menriq]

I'm not all that interested in the story. Some of this might have to do with having no idea what their plans are, and essentially starting anew. But I'm also tired of nearly every single Scion, and my hopes of acquiring NPCs like Ryne and Jullus (I absolutely love these two characters) seem doubtful.

I would agree with this statement. I feel like EW should have closed the book on the Scions, and started with new characters with the new story.

You just knew at the end of 6.0 that while they said they were disbanding, that wasn't going to be the case. This would have been a great segue to start opening up the 7.0 storyline and slowly teased more out through the patches

[knaveofcups]

personally it's not the predictable formula that bothers me, aside from the storytelling issues attendant with the dungeon/trial structure in the msq
it's more that there's not enough of the content i enjoy in EW.

[Turtledeluxe]

There have always been critics of the "formula" even back in Heavensward.

I don't personally think it is the jobs or rotations that are the problem. I think it is just flat out over-telegraphing mechanics ie. Oschon's Bow in the latest Alliance Raid and allowing gear to make the content unpunishing.

If all the old content I got in roulettes was minimum item level then everything would feel great, but instead they are all striking dummies or allow us to skip or ignore mechanics.
It only makes it worse that the mechanics are so over-telegraphed now that it doesn't feel good that you "know" them anymore.

In regards to telegraphing, I agree. The frequency of attacks and the timing of telegraphs can be way too generous. I guess from my perspective that wouldn't be as much of an issue if jobs and rotations catered to different playstyles i.e people who want adjustments to healers for this reason. Every encounter does feel easy for the reasons you mentioned, but it's all one thing imo-- jobs, the roulette sucks, the meta, telegraphs etc. Casual content just isn't singing harmoniously often enough, something feels off. Occasionally you get an encounter and it's like "oh that feels nice' but it's padded with four other dungeons or trials that feel safe, like the devs don't trust players to get better at the game 75% of the time. It's a strange inconsistency. And once it gets inconsistent it just makes the homogeny of jobs more glaring-- the fact everyone is mostly just there to zerg everything to death with very little threat, even healers, and also very little excitement because there's nothing interesting enough about any Job to care at all about party composition. And I'm not saying I want the game to be unbalanced, it's just definitely not a factor at all what roles are around, in a very bland way
I'm not sure what can be done about this since the combat system is pretty simplistic in concept and jobs keep expanding, so redundancy will only get worse.

I'm just unsure if devs will ever be consistent with encounter design or look at roulette ilvls etc. Even if you look at FFXVI there's options in the combat but they're wasted on an msq that doesn't really push you the majority of the time. So I'm just wondering given BD3's seeming philosophy to make casual stuff a faceroll, they can maybe look at jobs again and make some changes there for people who want more technically demanding roles..but then people say jobs should all be accessible etc go play Ultimates. I just think the conversation is going nowhere and something has to give. To your point, with the dry content cycle of EW, maybe having a roulette that actually challenges you sometimes coild have been a good thing.