A design philosophy flaw. Misunderstanding what is fun and reward structure.

[Deceptus]

TLDR: There is no TLDR. This is a well thought out, passionate post. Take 10 minutes out of your day and give it a read.

Final Fantasy XIV is currently, i think, to most players, going through a clear stale period in its development, those of us playing since ARR launch have actually seen very little to no improvement on content areas or significant changes, ilustrated on how basically dungeon and raid design has stayed the same through more than 4 years now.

The greatest issue right now, is certainly its developing team and their, willingly or not, design philosophy arround XIV, the constant, safe played, familiar and recurrent structure of all rewards and content to not deviate from the sucessfull formula, but comedians know, you can get only so far retellling the same joke over and over.

Thinking about what makes XIV unique from the rest of its genre companions, and please think about the MMORPG industry has its context and look beyond your bounds, understand that the MMORPGs are a dying genre basically with 2 or 3 games actually relevant and the rest just cash grabs, P2W korean grindfests and kickstarter projects that might as well be considered vaporware at this point. But what, makes XIV special, aside its unique looks, but systems wise, its the armoire system or the ability to fully develop and switch on a click from one class to another on the same character. (statement fully true till crafter specialization was put... Another big wtf u doin, but i digress)

Considering this is truly the one and greatest asset that diferentiates XIV from the rest of the competition, and is something we are so used to it that we don't really think about it...

Does this game, and the content placed on it, truly work with this big part of the game foundation? Answer is not. Every piece of content is designed around the idea of repetition, every reward is an incentive to either don't miss out on certain time frames (horrid wolf's den reward system for example) or a gear treadmill system that makes gear irrelevant to an extreme, that gear sometimes becomes irrelevant right as it becomes available.

So the only carrot is either specific time frames or time itself, making rarity not about player skill, not about interesting deep progression, not about player cooperation but simply about how much time can one person dump in a repetitive task before it gets tired or gets the reward.

And that has nothing with things like... You know, fun. Or personal achievements, or developing, or anything really. Literally all content in this game is either an RNG check or a grind check, those with tons of free time will do it faster, those who can only play so far will barely make it.

And the worse part is, this doesn't work at all with this game most important a crucial feature, multiclasses. This game reward structure and philosophy is centered arround a primitive fear of "running out of content too soon" and instead of encouraging replayability or social interactions to motivate players to do content, scares them with "you are going to miss out!" and thats just not working.

Who is this game designed for? I once read yoshida said: "We cannot make games grindy like in the past no more, we are adults now" Yeah? You sure? Cause this game is presenting me with ragnarok online levels of grind and repetitiveness right now.

Instead of encouraging players to gear up multiple classes and play and effectively progress through multiple jobs, they literally lock players to 1 or 2 jobs, of course there are exceptions out there and there are people doing literally nothing else but to play this game and as i speak maybe there are quite a few, not your "estandar public" finishing a relic or another kind of content and getting ready to repeat the process again and again.

But the rest of us? Since the quest was released, that has been the same, diferent interfaces, diferent names, but the very same, repeat a task till you fill the quota and then get a reward. Even the quest itself has the nerve to joke arround with how grindy it is, as it was something good, and even if the joke was witty at first, right now is only insulting.

I play almost all classes, i play almost all content, i like this game a lot in diversity of aspects, and i cannot tolerate this kind of grind and repetitiveness anymore. A game where people should be saying: "I finished this goal! yes! now to do it with another class maybe? or call in my friends?" is making people say: "i hope these guys are good, i would love to have some AI controlled bots to help me with this damned grind, there, i made it, im not touching this content ever again."

And the worse part is, there are a bunch of people now saying: "You know what, this content will be dead in weeks from here, these weapons will be irrelevant in a month from here, and there is no real reason in the end to do anything of this."

And i know many are thinking: "But how can i make content to feel special and feel rewarding if its "handed out" easily". I ask back: When was the last time, after a long boring repetitive grind that you truly felt happy and rewarded about finishing it instead of feeling like you finished a task given by your boss? Is it rewarding if you have no fun in the process? Makes it rewarding, that you race the others, burn yourself through the content and get something first-ish than the others? Isn't more rewarding to have fun and get rewarded, even if the value of the reward itself is less valuable-more common?

Of course, this is only like, you know, my opinion, and while people might jump to my neck for saying that grind overall should be heavily reduced and reward should not be locked by timeframes but always be attainable as long as the criteria is met. I truly think that would motivate more people to play more content and repeat the content more times, preventing a lot of issues this game has:

-Dead content.
-Lack of true player interactions.
-Gear irrelevancy (basically make gear attainable much earlier so it stays relevant longer)
-And the fun factor.

Remember the slides yoshida proudly presented once at GDC? Remember the: "If you are not having fun, you are making wrong?"

Its time to learn lessons from both the past and present.

Credit to: AlexDragonfang

[Rinuko]

ugh wall of text. Tdlr please

[Mahrze]

ugh wall of text. Tdlr please

A part of the community thinks they are falling into 1.0 relapse and they should remember their "What we learned" thing, already expressed in other threads "it's not fun" and blah. This post is the current top post on Reddit. [700+/- iirc]

[Fhaerron]

Eureka is just bad.

Much faster to read.

[Gleipni]

It just point the major flow that dev are totaly decconnected from the playerbase,repeting the same mistake over and over hoping people will like it at some point.
The dev just fucked up again.

[Fhaerron]

It just point the major flow that dev are totaly decconnected from the playerbase,repeting the same mistake over and over hoping people will like it at some point.
The dev just fucked up again.

The JAP community is actually super happy with Eureka. And they are the only important part to SE.
US/EU is just extra cash milking, they aren't going to change anything for us.

[Shihen]

ugh wall of text. Tdlr please

The dev team prioritizes safety over fun, resulting in a sustainable but boring, repetitive formula. Please make the game less grindy, or make the grind more fun. Commas.

[Gleipni]

The JAP community is actually super happy with Eureka. And they are the only important part to SE.
US/EU is just extra cash milking, they aren't going to change anything for us.

yes and no,i wento there,a lot of them said that FF14 gameplay is not made for that kind of grind,some say its bad because they dont have time to talk with others,everyone is just focused to kill monsters.

[Caitlyn]

Yeah... what have you learned?



I still like this picture. Its getting more important with each "absolutely new content". The devs should take a huge break and get their minds free. It feels like they try to "force" new content, but it fails.

The community got some nice ideas for new content and solutions for existing ones (including Eureka). SE should listen to its fans (Yes, even NA/EU).

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The JAP community is actually super happy with Eureka. And they are the only important part to SE.
US/EU is just extra cash milking, they aren't going to change anything for us.

That isn't true. People have already linked posts of JP players complaining. Some have outright mocked the devs, claiming "They should have left Ungarmax for this." Eureka is that disliked.