Yoshi-P on changes in next expansion: “I don’t want to take a conservative approach”

[ReynTime]

Designing jobs with focus on how they're played in high-end raids is completely stupid. For most players the content you run more regularly is not the raids. The majority of your time spent interacting with combat content shouldn't be tedious just because "it works for savage/ultimate raids".

[CaptainLagbeard]

For DPS and Tanks, it definitely more about how they play in high-end content...

But for Healers, it's about how they play in every piece of PvE content...

[Zelda206]

The contemporary audience houses both old time veterans who have been there since the beginning, and players who have fifteen-second Tiktok attention spans that go on to become English VAs for the FF14 game.
Reworking an old system to make it feel engaging is nice, but that content also includes the MSQ, and making content for "modern" (i.e. contemporary) audiences is a buzzword that puts me on guard than set my mind at ease. Only time will tell, I suppose, and this time it was rather telling.

[poooman]

as a tank main all i ask is that they stop with the forced single pulls. the 99 dungeon is just miserable near the end. "here's 3 guys! there's 2 more behind that door but these ones need to die first (: also after them there's just one artificially beefed up enemy" with the tools we have i could easily handle 3+ pack pulls, but when its not a 2 pull its like one or two enemies with no option to grab more?? it just doesn't feel good at all

[Rekh]

We already see some of these streamers who cry when their job's having a hard time in high end content. Imagine if we went back to Stormblood or even Heavensward level of creative job design where a job's ability to shield puts it way above this other job in the same role? Yoship already saw the reaction to that reality, the high end community cries really hard, even harder than the casual community when things like that happens. He and developers in most mmos worry more about them than the casuals. Blizzard surely doesn't design jobs based on the casuals that's for sure haha.

We'll just have to see which side wins in 8.0; clearly the high end raiders won yet again in Dawntrail.

as a tank main all i ask is that they stop with the forced single pulls. the 99 dungeon is just miserable near the end. "here's 3 guys! there's 2 more behind that door but these ones need to die first (: also after them there's just one artificially beefed up enemy" with the tools we have i could easily handle 3+ pack pulls, but when its not a 2 pull its like one or two enemies with no option to grab more?? it just doesn't feel good at all

From a tank and healer perspective I want more OG aurum vale (pre shadowbringer aurum vale) where you have to plan your pulls and even talk to your party about what to do/not to do. I'd take an entire dungeon with no bosses and solely strategic and even 'gimmickly' placed mobs and puzzles

[genuine_stranger]

as a tank main all i ask is that they stop with the forced single pulls. the 99 dungeon is just miserable near the end. "here's 3 guys! there's 2 more behind that door but these ones need to die first (: also after them there's just one artificially beefed up enemy" with the tools we have i could easily handle 3+ pack pulls, but when its not a 2 pull its like one or two enemies with no option to grab more?? it just doesn't feel good at all

Yupp, screw that dungeon. I will leave that instance and rather take the penalty for leaving than to slog through it.

[Connor]

As a Bard / Scholar since ARR honestly there is nothing on this entire planet that could convince me next expansion won’t just be another 2.5 years of being terrible to play.

Like, sorry YoshiP, but until next expansion comes out I simply refuse to believe you’re not going to remove skills I like lol, because you’ve done it literally every other expansion. What did I ever do to you?! I want my Foe Requiem and Selene back

[Blixie]

Wow.
This feels like a direct hit to me, and not in a good way at all.
Pretty much seems to be saying that the team is not inept, they have a plan.
And if I don't like the plan then I'm "conservative" and not a "contemporary gamer".

So I guess dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks game play and trophies-for-all is considered progressive and contemporary. Honestly, it kinda feels like a slap in the face.

So be it. I know where the door is.

[Eyrilona]

The contemporary audience houses both old time veterans who have been there since the beginning, and players who have fifteen-second Tiktok attention spans that go on to become English VAs for the FF14 game.
Reworking an old system to make it feel engaging is nice, but that content also includes the MSQ, and making content for "modern" (i.e. contemporary) audiences is a buzzword that puts me on guard than set my mind at ease. Only time will tell, I suppose, and this time it was rather telling.

If that was supposed to be another dig at the English VA for Wuk Lamat, which has so far been the only English VA you post a lot about on this account... you know that she's a genuine legacy player, right? Earned the character tattoo the hard way and all? So no, you do not get to try to play on the sentiment of veterans versus younger players on that one. If you do want to talk about an English VA that only started playing the game recently and whose exploration of how to play an MMORPG for the first time is absolutely entertaining (and I say that in the most loving way possible), try Colin Ryan's (Alphinaud's voice actor) stream of his first attempt at the game

[kiotsukete]

If you don’t do savage/ultimate, believe me, it’s a thousand times more scripted and static in those modes…
There is a lot less rng in savage because they want to make sure that those complex/intricate mechanics can be operable on their own without ending in forced failure states due to bad patterns.

Thanks for the insight on savage/ultimate content being even more scripted than normal level content. Even though I don’t play it, I still find it disappointing that at its highest levels FFXIV doubles down on scripted game design rather than good battle strategy and party coordination mechanics. Though I guess it’s true that “forced failure” because of bad rng patterns would really suck after sinking in hours of progression on a fight.

I’ve seen people describe savage as basically DDR, and I do abuse the word myself because that’s exactly what it is at the core, those days more than ever because there is nothing else left from the old days that wasn't feeding into that paradigm (job and party centric battle system mechanics).

I think DDR is a good analogy for the current state of FFXIV, even as a player who doesn’t do savage. When I recently returned to the game after leaving around the end of ShB, I was a little apprehensive about doing EW/DT normal trials/raids after being away for so long. Because in the past, you often used to have to look up guides and/or coordinate who was doing what ahead of time. But then I discovered all I had to do on newer content was just follow the designated “danger dorito”or “safety square” through the scripted steps to clear most fights on the first try.

Then I got Snowcloak on a roulette and was surprised they took out the snowballs on the 2nd boss fight. I later discovered they had also simplified a lot of the other older dungeons in the same way to eliminate/reduce party mechanics/coordination and remolded them to fit the current one-way corridors design paradigm. Players used to pause and explain mechanics or give directions on which way to go when they saw that first time bonus notification, but that doesn’t happen anymore now that even dungeons are down to just “follow the leader.”

I can somehow feel the dev team’s intention to make the game more easily accessible to new players and returners like me, and I sure don’t miss the times of repeated party wipes because one person in a key role couldn’t do their part correctly. These days even healers or tanks going down isn’t necessarily an automatic party wipe like it used to be. And maybe this is just how “contemporary” MMO design is now and I need to just get on with it. But I can’t help but feel like FFXIV has lost some of the magic that makes playing a MMO special and different from other games.