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

[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.