Content Creators and Youtube

[gw1fan]

Hm? Problem? The game has always had problems, and people have always pointed them out. That's the point of my post here. I'm open to hear your elaboration should you like to have a conversation about it.

[Kaurhz]

Hm? Problem? The game has always had problems, and people have always pointed them out. That's the point of my post here. I'm open to hear your elaboration should you like to have a conversation about it.

I think the issue with it that they are eluding to is that their idea of addressing feedback is to:
1. Nuke the content out of the game (Diadem)
2. Plunge the content into obscurity to where it has very little measurable impact on the content loop (e.g., Grand Company updates)
3. Cut a bunch of the side stuff (Concealed nodes, Diadem, general depth from crafting)

They rarely actually examine the issues and the reasons why people take issues.. Their entire feedback mechanism is built on... See issue? Remove the associated content or render it to obscurity, rather than thinking why, and how they can actually improve on the content and address those issues.. Take Coven weapons for example from the Diadem EM... They had vast negative feedback, but instead of thinking "Maybe the issue is that we incorporated layered RNG", e.g., random weapon on top of random stats... They go... "No we need to remove this", and since this very time over 8 years ago they have been deathly afraid of doing even a minutiae of change in their rigid gearing structure, and this has only spread to every facet of the game.

Same exact story with the relic system going from ShB -> EW... The ShB relic wasn't immune to issues, it had very glaring issues... But their solution? Nuke it, not improve it. Hence why we had a glorified tomestone farm, which in no way shape or form transformed the core content loop.. It was simply do roulettes or do hunts (Which people were doing anyway courtesy of the weekly capped currency)

[Exmo]

Same exact story with the relic system going from ShB -> EW... The ShB relic wasn't immune to issues, it had very glaring issues... But their solution? Nuke it, not improve it. Hence why we had a glorified tomestone farm, which in no way shape or form transformed the core content loop.. It was simply do roulettes or do hunts (Which people were doing anyway courtesy of the weekly capped currency)

EW's relic wasn't "a solution" to the problems of ShB relic. It was the solution to the problem of production scaling back & shifting roadmap due to the pandemic.

[Jeeqbit]

EW's relic wasn't "a solution" to the problems of ShB relic. It was the solution to the problem of production scaling back & shifting roadmap due to the pandemic.

It wasn't due to Covid nor was it due to them "being lazy".

It was for the simple reason that there is a split in the playerbase, where half want to work hard for their relics, and half want to be done with them asap. And within the ones who want to work for them, some of them want to do new content and some of them want to farm old content like Crystal Tower.

So the solution they came up with was: let players decide what content they do for it, by making it all tomestones, since everything drops tomestones. The issue with that approach was that it meant you got the weapon through your normal activities such as hunt trains or Expert Roulette, effectively reducing the overall amount of content being done that expansion, and making it feel like it's just handed to you.

They were also trying to solve the problem in ShB of people wanting to do all relics for all jobs despite the ever-growing number of jobs. It all makes sense, but overall, it obviously didn't feel like a prestigious weapon at all getting it that way.

[ZephyrMenodora]

It wasn't due to Covid nor was it due to them "being lazy".

It was for the simple reason that there is a split in the playerbase, where half want to work hard for their relics, and half want to be done with them asap. And within the ones who want to work for them, some of them want to do new content and some of them want to farm old content like Crystal Tower.

So the solution they came up with was: let players decide what content they do for it, by making it all tomestones, since everything drops tomestones. The issue with that approach was that it meant you got the weapon through your normal activities such as hunt trains or Expert Roulette, effectively reducing the overall amount of content being done that expansion, and making it feel like it's just handed to you.

They were also trying to solve the problem in ShB of people wanting to do all relics for all jobs despite the ever-growing number of jobs. It all makes sense, but overall, it obviously didn't feel like a prestigious weapon at all getting it that way.

Personally as someone who does not enjoy Hildebrand or find those quests funny, it was a slog / grind to even get all that chain done for them. After that though they really just felt like generic tomestone weapons. There are a few glams I like from the set but I actually deleted all of my EW relics because I was left with no sentimental value for any of them.

Normally I keep my Relics on a retainer as mementos, but these just ended up feeling like any other Tomestone weapon I would sell/discard after I outlevelled it.

As an aside, I hope Hildebrand is not a requirement in the future. I already stopped doing the 7.0 version of them.

[gw1fan]

They rarely actually examine the issues and the reasons why people take issues.. Their entire feedback mechanism is built on... See issue? Remove the associated content or render it to obscurity, rather than thinking why, and how they can actually improve on the content and address those issues.. Take Coven weapons for example from the Diadem EM... They had vast negative feedback, but instead of thinking "Maybe the issue is that we incorporated layered RNG", e.g., random weapon on top of random stats... They go... "No we need to remove this", and since this very time over 8 years ago they have been deathly afraid of doing even a minutiae of change in their rigid gearing structure, and this has only spread to every facet of the game.

I thought it was something like this, which I and many others agree was a bad direction to take (though the severity of the problem is up for debate). However, we have heard Yoshida directly address this issue in recent interviews and panels, so right now, I, for one, am in a "wait and see" mode. Whatever comes next is out of our hands until we actually get it in our hands to provide feedback on it.

[Kaurhz]

I thought it was something like this, which I and many others agree was a bad direction to take (though the severity of the problem is up for debate). However, we have heard Yoshida directly address this issue in recent interviews and panels, so right now, I, for one, am in a "wait and see" mode. Whatever comes next is out of our hands until we actually get it in our hands to provide feedback on it.

It's honestly less the severity of a given single problem, and mostly just a combination of problems which end up feeding into each other and then going into a full ripple... e.g., removal of systems in HW-era was a lot less severe because the game had depth, whether that was down to jank, or actual dept, of course can be up for debate, but generally it lent itself to people being able to engage more substantively.. Like if I didn't like raiding, then that was OK... What you could do in terms of crafting more than rivalled it, same with relics and the sort.

I am sadly a lot more pessimistic.. I think the damage is done, and I think even if they did or could do all these nice things again,.. I think ultimately they will just get undermined by the absence of that fundamental depth.. Like, take expert recipes for example... These were meant to appease the RNG/difficulty-based enjoys, and I am one of those folk... But without that actual class depth (crafting abilities), it just feels like an empty or very much incomplete experience, and with how they have approached changes like BLM... It just tells me that, that specific principle is still going to persist, even if they try and introduce that stress or difficulty once more.