DT Job Reworks - Unconfident Developers and Poor Communication

[Carighan]

I get this sinking feeling that Dawntrail has the potential to be FFXIV's "Shadowlands" if something drastic doesn't change. As in a not insignificant portion of the player base is going to come to the conclusion during the next 2 years that FFXIV is simply not for them anymore, and honestly that feels bad.

I mean what is an RPG that has uninteresting combat and a mid story? Ask WoW players circa 2020 - 2022.

Really? Because in WoW that was more an issue of it capping off a steady decline in production quality and a steadily more idiotic story, and then this weird slingshotting on class design. That came to a head in Shadowlands, but the individual problems were all not only around before, but partially actually worse before.

With Shadowlands, it was the thing tha the players as a joke predicted the story beats, meant to be "Hey at least the story isn't this stupid!" and then they go and do exactly that. But gameplay wise, WoW had been at far worse points. And better points. And everything in between. Keep in mind the age of WoW ~2020 already. And just how many iterations everything had gone through.

That's maybe actually the problem here, in FFXIV: We haven't had that yet. Even their "reworks" were mostly rather benign. The only total rework so far was really Summoner. Everything else kept many of the overall elements, it just shuffled things around, merged, split and restructured. Maybe what FFXIV in fact needs is more willingness to actually go and break stuff. WoW had by the time of Shadowlands gone through... five talent systems? FFXIV never even had one!

[jonimated]

Really? Because in WoW that was more an issue of it capping off a steady decline in production quality and a steadily more idiotic story, and then this weird slingshotting on class design. That came to a head in Shadowlands, but the individual problems were all not only around before, but partially actually worse before.

With Shadowlands, it was the thing tha the players as a joke predicted the story beats, meant to be "Hey at least the story isn't this stupid!" and then they go and do exactly that. But gameplay wise, WoW had been at far worse points. And better points. And everything in between. Keep in mind the age of WoW ~2020 already. And just how many iterations everything had gone through.

That's maybe actually the problem here, in FFXIV: We haven't had that yet. Even their "reworks" were mostly rather benign. The only total rework so far was really Summoner. Everything else kept many of the overall elements, it just shuffled things around, merged, split and restructured. Maybe what FFXIV in fact needs is more willingness to actually go and break stuff. WoW had by the time of Shadowlands gone through... five talent systems? FFXIV never even had one!

This is all true. I meant more the game becoming something the players no longer want to play, as opposed to the literal problems which plagued Shadowlands. Could have worded it better.

Job design in current Dawntrail is arguably the most boring simplistic it's every been. 90% of jobs have completely become "follow the flashing lights". Which is a strange inconsistency when you consider the DT encounter design is some of the best it's ever been. It feels like the job design and combat design folks are not only working in separate rooms, but are in completely separate building with no communication at all.

Endwalker had a similar issue with it's job design, and inarguably significantly worse encounter design, but the Shadowbringers/Endwalker story was so good I think players were able to look past it. Now with the story being as divisive as it is, if the game also isn't fun to play what does it have left? I just think there is a real potential for a lot of players to look at Dawntrail and consider that FFXIV just isn't a game for them anymore, since it doesn't have any of the strong pillars which held up previous expansions. There's nothing to fall back on.