Game Design Concepts that the Devs and Playerbase has Forgotten

[Shurrikhan]

Oh, that's funny. Seriously, try saying something positive on here, or daring to raise a counterpoint in any of the avalanche of negative threads, and watch the echo chamber descend on you, attack you, belittle you, and high-five each other while they do it. This place is absolutely a negative echo chamber, and has been for long before DT. Wow.

People generally haven't dismissed your posts for being positive. They do so because rarely have belligerence, condescension, fallacy, and misinformation existed so strongly together as in many of your recent posts...

I don't think much of anyone with soundly reasoned praise for the game would want to claim you as a representative of that camp, at least from recent exposure. It's not a polarized camp issue. It's an issue in the manner of one's posts.

[Magikazam]

Someone seems to have forgotten though that the Final Fantasy series is famed for story more than gameplay (and that this is a Final Fantasy game first and foremost.).

While it famed for it story I can't think of a single mainline game that go out of it way to turn the game into a visual novel simulator. The series usually put big chunk of gameplay around it key story moment. Hell, my favorite of the serie, FF6, known to have one of the best story, split your whole party at the start of the second part of the game and you then need to wander around the map, doing side content like dungeons and exploration to find the rest of the cast around the world. Like, they litteraly give you a gigantic gameplay segment that reward you with character development and world building.

It just sound to me that people who use this excuse never played other games in the series.

3. Echo Chambers - Link

That has nothing to do with Game Design team too, that just a community issues. You can't blame them for that.

[Magikazam]

1. This isn't an arcade game. Not every game needs to be styled after arcade games to be enjoyable. If you want the immediate gratification that an arcade style game can provide, play one. There are thousand of free to play games available to choose from.

This has nothing to do with Arcade game. People don't love being forced into long tutorial or just, bunch of back to back cutscene that lock you from doing what you want. FFXIV take 15 levels b4 giving you the option to even travel to other town or just do a dungeon, In those levels, you just get to play a very generic story that barely introduce scion and basic lore for each town. I could go on, but it no secret that FFXIV early game is bad in more than one way. People who get past the slug early game often do so cause they come in with the knowledge the game become better later on.

2. This game is built around the story. You can skip most of it if you want but that's going to leave a poor experience. Are you sure this is the game you want to be playing when there are plenty out there where the story is just an afterthought?

What if people don't like the story that much but like other part of the gameplay, or worst yet, what if they just want to play some new contents with their friendgroup? Having most of the content being locked behind story has it downside. Like, let say I got a friend who ''new'' into the game and he see me grinding Eureka and ask how to get there to play with me. Well, we can't just do something silly like grind one of his class to level 70 and walk him to Kugane. He need to complete MSQ up to stormblood end.

It seriously weird how people act like there litteraly no possible alternative to playing trought the whole thing or paying extra cash to skip it. I could even add that it funny for a game where story is important to lock tons of lore out of player reach cause we can't play 1.0 anymore.

1. 4. Good game design will be different things to different players.

Not really, it pretty clear what is considered good design or not. What people can argue on is how some bad game design can be used to it advantage. Take the exemples I just gave above with the MSQ. Locking all the content in a MMO behind a long story quest is bad design. Most people play MMO to interact with friends or just other people so locking them like that limit their options a lot until they spend hours into the game. HOWEVER, most people don't mind, cause that encourage you to go trough the important story and you can talk about and share the good moment you had in it with your friend group.

[Reimmi]

Someone seems to have forgotten though that the Final Fantasy series is famed for story more than gameplay (and that this is a Final Fantasy game first and foremost.).

Ok, but every final fantasy game has way way way more combat than ff14 does in its story, so your point is...?

[Malthir]

This.
People are playing this game because it is firstly a "Final Fantasy" game with "Final Fantasy" names attached to it. If this game was "Generic MMORPG with Lore I do not care about, and characters gated behind gacha mechanics" people would not be pulled into it.
The point I'm making here is that if this was not a "Final Fantasy" to begin with, you need look at all the other trashfires Square-Enix has put out in the mobile space that has had poor uptake and they shutdown almost immediately. See what happened with Chocobo Racing GP, they basically gave it 9 months. Most of the people who heard about it's shutdown didn't even know it existed! And those that did saw it for being an evil monetization game and spent their time somewhere else.

FFXIV is Square-Enix's only "successful" multiplayer game, and had it not been a "numbered" FF game, they would have killed it back in 2010 after a few months too. That is the only, single reason, why this game still exists. The company was embarrassed that it put it's big brand marquee on a game that was incomplete and performed poorly.

People want this to be a Final Fantasy game. Not a copy-paste of another game reskinned with FF characters.

Here's an example of where you're wrong.

in FF8 you beat the boss at the top of the satellite dish, the player is then chased through the town by a giant spider bot, you as the player are running from this thing, getting in fights trying to escape, you feel connected, there are 2 cutscenes, one when the player moves from one screen to the next the bot has a 4s cutscene smashing a car as it run, then another roughly 10s cutscene at the end when you jump onto your ship to get away. this is excellent use of cutscenes to heighten the story but leaving the bulk of the actions to the players.

If this was done by theses writers, there would be no gameplay section, you would leave the satellite tower, and the a cutscene of you running through the town would play and then end with you getting on the boat, then while on the boat you would have 6 different 1m cutscenes where the character would speak about the escape 6 times to each character talking about the exact same plot points that have just been covered; Without the gameplay there's not really a game, you're watching a movie with extra steps, and it's a rather boring story where everyone stands still and monologues.

That's the difference. While FF was always a story heavy game, you had alot of gameplay to break up the story beats, individual dialogue ingame cutscenes were rarely longer than 1m broken up heavily by more gameplay.

[Ozmandis]

If you use the story excuse for lack of gameplay, I may ask : why do we even have a game in the first place and why is it a MMO ? Just make a visual novel, a movie or a book then.

[SwadTheFrog]

Oh, that's funny. Seriously, try saying something positive on here, or daring to raise a counterpoint in any of the avalanche of negative threads, and watch the echo chamber descend on you, attack you, belittle you, and high-five each other while they do it. This place is absolutely a negative echo chamber, and has been for long before DT. Wow.

People disagreeing with you in droves does not equate Echo Chamber. No one is attempting to silence you, and dialogue is still possible. Sites like Reddit, in the meanwhile are quite literally DESIGNED to be Echo Chambers via the very specific subreddits and the updove/downvote system. Literally grow up and learn how to have a dialogue with people.

[Striker44]

People generally haven't dismissed your posts for being positive. They do so because rarely have belligerence, condescension, fallacy, and misinformation existed so strongly together as in many of your recent posts...

I don't think much of anyone with soundly reasoned praise for the game would want to claim you as a representative of that camp, at least from recent exposure. It's not a polarized camp issue. It's an issue in the manner of one's posts.

Point proven! Genuine challenge - please show me where I have posted fallacies, misinformation, etc..

Because see, what just happened here is you took someone who posts positive things about the game, lied about what they do, and then used it to attack them (all to the applause of your fellows as the "likes" suggest). That's exactly what I'm takling about.

Also, I wasn't even talking about me, specifically, though you could go to the infamous "strike" thread where I dared to point out that I've found I need to heal more often in DT (which multiple other posters have said as well) only to have the first response just insinuate "you must be bad at healing". That's a glowing example of what I mean.

Or just check out any of the positive threads on here. Watch how quickly the negative group descends on it. Here's a great example:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...hread-SPOILERS

Within 1 minute of posting, before the person could even explain what they liked, you had two passive-aggressive attacks getting several dozen high-fives, followed by multiple others down the line.

Seriously, though. My challenge to you stands. Show me where I've posted misinformation or fallacies. Go for it.

People disagreeing with you in droves does not equate Echo Chamber.

Never said it did. Why put words in my mouth? Look at the sheer number of negative threads about virtually anything and compare to the number of positive ones, then watch how even in those minute few positive threads, the negative posters still come in and flood it. Why deny what this place is? Cut out the whataboutism (Reddit) and let's just acknowledge reality.

[ReynTime]

Oh if you skim through Sakurai's channel you will notice quite a few concepts that Final Fantasy XIV completely ignores. There was one about player reward that was also very relevant.

Yoshida met Sakurai at least once. Harada tweeted a picture of him dining with Sakurai and Yoshida this year. Who knows if that means anything in terms of game design conversation (probably doesn't)

[SwadTheFrog]

Never said it did. Why put words in my mouth?

Because I recognize you from other threads, where all you do is antagonize other people and ignore any form of criticism, no matter how well-structured it is, you tend strawman everything with a very reductvist attittude. This is not a diss at you, by the way, but rather a gentle nudge that you can and should take other people's opinions into account without dismissing them because they don't line up with yours. I agree that DW has a fair few good points (Music, for the most part is really good, and battle content design has gotten better), but your attitude has been genuinely reductive and harmful for discussion.

Lastly, ", then watch how even in those minute few positive threads, the negative posters still come in and flood it. ". You mean how people that are positive on DW come to negative threads to speak ttheir piece, too? Do you think that a thread about positive thinigs in the game shouldn't have people challenging those ideas much in the same way threads that have negative perceptions on things shouldn't be challenged by people that liked DT? You think they should sit on their own corners not interacting? That is literally an Echo Chamber.