/r/ffxivdiscussion: YoshiP comments on regrets over making FF14 too stress-free

[strawberrycake]

I've also been thinking on how we got to the current state of XIV, and I feel like a lot of people have this perception, vs the actual thing they'd actually have to do, and I feel like a decent amount of the playerbase has made mountains out of ant hills, and this can be said for many thing ofc. But when strictly talking about why many aspects of stress have been removed. It's always been adding convinience where it wasn;t really needed.


It makes me think back to when you had to form your own groups manually, but it wouldn't hurt to bring that into more content going forward, especially since we have a UI specifically made for it, party finder. And I think encouraging more players to use PF for the content they wanna do will be very healthy for not only player based interactions, but for players to also play how they want, making content open ended enough that requires partying but isn't so strict thats there only one or two ways of approaching it.


And at times it feels paradoxical, on one hand I see people not wanting to confirm to what works, a meta, but also not wanting to take initiative and have the freedom to make their own choices and rules underspecific confines or design within a form of given content.

[Jeeqbit]

But when strictly talking about why many aspects of stress have been removed. It's always been adding convinience where it wasn;t really needed.

I actually sort of disagree here. Although I think some of the changes have gone overboard, if I'm objective, they have solved clear (and reasonable) problems:

• Tanks can feel stressed about how to position a boss, admittedly even I often did in certain fights despite my experience, so now that gets handled for the tanks. Although, it creates a new stress tbh by forcing the boss to spin when it's my job to stop it doing so, so I have to fight the system to prevent the spin.
• Players can feel pressured to guess if they are close enough to get raid buffs, so the range was extended. Most of the time it wasn't that you didn't try, but that it just missed them by 1y on a technicality and was just annoying. It took me a while to get out of the habit of moving close to the party to buff them... but if I'm objective, I only do that because I've played years and most new players wouldn't understand they needed to, so it solved a clear problem.
• Overwriting buffs or combos expiring or ranged GCDs interrupting combos was annoying and stressed DPS-minded players. Definitely was a pain point, so it solved a clear problem...
• There was way too big a gap between tank players that wasn't good for the game when we had stance dancing, because people either used tank stance 100% of the time or DPS stance 100% of the time, thus this complicated decision for some players was removed. I enjoyed stance dancing, but it solved the gap between tank players so was it entirely wrong to do it? I think we could still have the former effects of those damage stances like Darkside, to be fair, so that went a little overboard.
• New players just didn't know what cast was a tank buster. Without having my level of experience, most people just didn't know every tank buster in the game and its characteristics. I don't like the tank buster indicators because I feel like learning them is part of becoming a tank, but objectively most people never will play enough to learn them all so... was it really wrong for them to add them?
• Positionals are stressful and hard to do and distracting. Moreover, many players don't even know they exist. So the potencies on them were reduced to barely anything and the amount of them was reduced, so the min maxers can do them if they want to but the impact isn't so big if they are ignored. This addressed the clear problem of their difficulty, high level of stress and low level of awareness among players that they exist. So was it entirely wrong that they addressed it?

I do want to say that although they addressed these issues, like many things in this game it was a "you're only addressing it NOW? after all this time?"

It's fair enough to remove these forms of stress but maybe a more tidy and intuitive form of said stress needs to replace it then.

[strawberrycake]

All Valid Fair Points

I feel like so much of XIV has changed, but with extreme fixes in mind vs a more gentle neat touch that could address the pain points over just erasing something that wasn't as big of an issue. WHile something are better with the changes, others things feel like over correction at times and it loses a lot of it's flavor due to it.

My responses are in order of each point you made due to the character limit

• SO I agree and disagree with this, as I feel some fights had the issues of it being tedious due to things like mechanics being too strict or close to when you need to position the boss, the arena being covered in poorly placed AoEs, or tanks not wanting to kill people or in many of the cases I've seen, wanting to Position it like the tanks they saw do it flawlessly and messing up in overcompensation. I think how the team responded to this was an extreme, and it required a much more gentle hand.
• I feel a better way to have handled this was party buffs should be a one time apply at the start of a fight, and rotational CDs should be personal only, over just easy moding it and increasing range.
• For your first point see my response to how they should do party buffs. For your second point, Uptime should be earned, the issues with combos falling off only became worse within the 2 min meta, prior it just felt bad and meant your parse was gonna look poopy. But note, this only applies for savage, it doesn't really matter in any content under that and Ultimate.
• Imo They could have added on more effects to both to make them both viable for high end play, as it would be interesting to use one for extra personal mit and the other for extra damamge, but this is also in mind with how the game played back then prior to their removal.
• We both agree, this doesn't hurt anyone, but I feel like they should be removed from high end content.
• MNK, DRG, and NIN all heavily relied on them and were/are intrinsic to their identity, and with the upcoming DRG rework I full expect them to just remove all of it's psotionals tbh, that being said I feel like this and many other issues can be solved with better tutorials and updated fight design.

[Jeeqbit]

I feel a better way to have handled this was party buffs should be a one time apply at the start of a fight

I'm reminded of Protect. I think they got rid of Protect precisely because applying the buff at the start was a pointless chore/tradition that potentially delayed actually starting fights for no reason.

For your first point see my response to how they should do party buffs.

I actually meant personal buff overwriting, such as pressing a button that overcaps your gauge, or overwrites procs.

We both agree, this doesn't hurt anyone, but I feel like they should be removed from high end content.

It does bother me that the tank buster indicators are in Extreme. I understand that a lot of casual players jump into Extreme and aren't necessarily always good tanks, but it's high-end content so it bothers me a lot. You should know what the tank buster is from the normal mode.

MNK, DRG, and NIN all heavily relied on them and were/are intrinsic to their identity, and with the upcoming DRG rework I full expect them to just remove all of it's psotionals tbh

I think the new DRG positionals will be a copy and paste of RPR, which are made significantly easier because you can delay them as needed to work around mechanics.

that being said I feel like this and many other issues can be solved with better tutorials

True.

[SylvAlternate]

I think the new DRG positionals will be a copy and paste of RPR, which are made significantly easier because you can delay them as needed to work around mechanics.

I am not looking forward to ANYTHING being a copy paste of reaper