Concern on the current state of FFXIV, and future content

[AvalonBright]

With Eureka’s release, I’ve come to admit I am deeply concerned for the state of this game. There’s a lot of things I love about FFXIV, and a lot I dislike, but up until now I’ve often pushed the things I disliked aside and put up with them as they didn’t seriously detract from the game as a whole. But it’s at this point, with 4.25, that I am realizing this game has a serious development problem and as a fan who has been playing since 1.0, who saved up and bought a new PC strictly to run 1.0, someone who’s literally not unsubbed for a single month since ARR’s release, that deeply worries me.

It’s certainly a widespread meme that Square doesn’t put any of the money FFXIV makes back into the game itself. Naturally, it’s impossible to know if this is true at all, or if it is, to what degree. But the more patches come out in Stormblood, the more I’m wondering if this is less a meme and more truth than we’d like to admit.

Let’s put it into a current setting--but please, do not dismiss this thread as “just another Eureka hate thread”. I am simply using the most recent patch as a backdrop and culmination of where the current development environment has led us. We have been waiting seventeen months for Eureka to release. It has been delayed multiple times. We have been told we’re seeing less content, less dungeons, etc, all for the sake of more original content. Yet this. This, Eureka, is what we got, for all we gave up.

Now I am an old-school gamer. I spent many, many years on Phantasy Star Online, Ragnarok, Everquest, etc. Simply going around grinding thousands of mobs is not something I am unfamiliar with. But that doesn’t cut it anymore. Not without some effort in making the grind compelling, or a combat system that makes the wholesale slaughter across the island entertaining.

Even off the top of my head, I can think of a number of things that Eureka could have come with that would have improved it.

• Add a new Students of Baldesion daily hub. Find more survivors across the island, repower the aetheryte, discover the mystery of what happened to the Island in the first place. Dailies are a minimal form of content to be sure, but it’s still more compelling than what we got! Yet the fact Square still refuses to even look at the reputation system as anything but a vehicle for Beastmen means we missed the mark here.
  
• What about a FFXII style hunt board? One of the few positives I’ll say about Eureka is that it truly feels like an expedition. The island is mysterious, the backdrop is gorgeous, the monsters are dangerous. It’s easily one of the most beautiful zones Square’s created. Do something with it! Make us actually seek out targets that show up more than once every few hours! Do hunts RIGHT instead of the godawful Allied Seal system! Make hunts give meaningful, interesting rewards! Even go Monster Hunter-style and give us numerous mob-themed weapons and gear sets from the island instead of this cowboy business.
  
• Rewards for mapping out the areas gradually? Clever players have realized you can sneak around the entire island with Hide, but remove this and have us chart sections out for various benefits as we travel through the island. Add to the expedition feel!
  
• Sharlayan furnishings, woo! Fantastic, especially for lore nerds! But...why are they just a lame, random drop? Either figure out a way for players to gather while in combat jobs, or have merely interactable nodes in a different way, but new, rare materials! This island is from a part of the world we’ve never seen before! You’re telling me there’s no new flora to catalog, no useful beastie parts? New stuff, let us CRAFT IT!
  
• Relics! Make an interesting, themed storyline around the Island while we gather our relics up! Don’t give us the WORST RELIC GRIND YET! I heard people in Shout yesterday talking about the Relic grind always being terrible, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be “Diadem 3.0 terrible” Why? Why are we okay with not taking Square to task for putting the bare minimum effort in these weapons?

“But Ashe, all of that would take development time!” Yes, that is my point. They had seventeen months of development time to do any number of these, or anything else, but they did nothing. Why it took seventeen months to test a Magia Board and create a grindable island with zero content is beyond me. Even the mob models aren’t new.

And this, finally, is why I am worried about the future of this game, and why this isn’t just “Yet another Eureka hate thread.” In Stormblood, as much as I enjoyed the MSQ, we’ve had less Jobs, no new Race, less dungeons, less content in general per patch, even less effort in raid environmental design--just compare the aesthetic surroundings of Alexander to the empty floating voids and singular arenas of Omega. We’re two patches in and we’ve received no major new, “original” content that we’ve been promised, beyond a new zone that accomplished absolutely nothing of compelling consequence. Even Hildibrand continues the Heavensward trend of no longer including new Trial content.

It’s well known when Yoshi took over the game, the development team played WoW to get a better sense of the genre. Yet, there is something people overlook--the WoW developers played during the development of ARR was Wrath and Cataclysm-era WoW. A WoW that was just barely beginning to step into the modern age, redoing the world, and reinvigorating the concept of questing beyond simply “Go here, kill/grab this, come back.”

Now, prefacing this with the fact I am no longer any major WoW fan--I play for the main storyline now and that’s it--the fact remains, FFXIV has almost entirely failed to innovate and push the limits of its capabilities while we see WoW trying new things almost constantly. Besides the misstep that was WoD, we’ve seen WoW go through Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, Legion, and now Battle for Azeroth. In all of these WoW has innovated, iterated on itself, and improved its basic form regularly.

When WoD was out, I laughed at a friend who still played the game, because I compared the anemic content patches to how much we saw in Heavensward. But now, as Stormblood’s initial hype trickles to a crawl, and Legion reinvigorated the WoW community, I have egg on my face. In Legion, we see further improvements on systems FFXIV Is still sorely missing, like a proper glamour wardrobe. We see fully voiced, properly crafted cutscenes, while we see the bare minimum of voiced content in FFXIV despite years and 2 expansions of being responsible for Square’s profit.

In Legion’s content patches we see not one, but four full, new zones, all complete with their own storylines, dungeons, daily quests, factions, and more--mounts, pets, etc to gather, and so on. We saw the intriguing method of weapon leveling with the Artifact system, even if it had its own missteps along the way. In Stormblood, we see the embarrassment that is Eureka, and again, the worst, soulless Relic weapon grind the developers have come up with yet.

I do love Yoshi-P. I love that he reinvigorated this game, that he gave it life, that he boosted it into being one of the most successful games of the genre. But I fear, more and more, where the future of this game lies. With Eureka more than ever, I worry that we’ll see the same old raid pattern, the same old Beast Tribe reputations, the same old MSQ/sidequest patch style, the same everything with no true, quality innovation. I worry about this development team being up to the task, and Square squandering what good they’ve got all for the sake of FFXV development and dumping more funds into FFVII:R.

FFXIV’s biggest draw at the moment is, in my opinion, its depth of worldbuilding and sense of believability. People like immersion in MMOs, often, and few, if any, manage to craft such a well done universe as Square has. FFXIV’s world is why I continue to stick with the game more than anything. It’s a home, a place that feels like something tangible, where games like WoW become “gamier” than ever with every update despite their breadth of content. But I am greatly worried that eventually this world isn’t going to be enough to make up for a development team that seems stuck in holding, and I beg Square to take a good, long look at where this game is going before 5.0, even 6.0, comes around, and it’s too late.

[Hyperia]

I am also very worried about their current course. I’ve already activated my wow account that was dormant for 4 years because of what you have said. For now, I’ve reduced my account to the minimum and hope to hear more but as of right now, the devs have been very noticeably absent from these forums. I also feel that all of their developers and money is bent redirected to VII and by promoting Yoshi to the board effectively muzzles him on complaining. I have the feeling that this game is taking a back burner to their other games and is on the downhill slide. I love this game and it pains me to see this happening but all good things...

[Mahri]

An extremely good post.

I love FFXIV to death, but the content formula's overall sameyness spells long-term decline. As much fun as I still have, throwing the utter regression that is Eureka into the midst of the predictable formula just emphasizes this. We know Square-Enix can do better, and hope that they will, because this game still has tons of potential longevity.

[MomomiMomi]

I've long felt that Yoshi-P's vision for the game is letting it stagnate. I know, everyone loves him, so I'll probably get some hate for this. He saved FF14, etc.. But then he did nothing with it. His vision for the game is one-dimensional.

I've been saying the same things since HW that a lot of people are saying here now. Everyone said "it's just the first expansion, give it time." Well, here we are in SB, and we're still playing ARR.

[AncientCrystal]

I've been concered long before Eureka, It's obvious to EVERY SINGLE PLAYER who is lv 70 thats theres barely ANYTHING to do outside Savage content. Challenging content with longevity that is. They don't EVER try to add anything to this game that's interesting other than POD floor 101+. Yoshi-P at this point should be let go and let someone who really want to move the game in a new direction take over. It's pathetic.

[Lord_Zlatan]

This thread needs more likes ^^

[Koroem]

The issue I'm having a harder and harder time with is this mentality that if its "casual content" its ok for it to be an insane grind and the items can't possibly be as good or even in the same league as raid gear. I get it, difficult content should be rewarded. However the grind for relic is getting worse and far less entertaining, and the time spent is not even close to being worth the reward given. Why is it ok to keep taking a dump on "casual" content like this? My playtime is over 525 days, I do some savage content, and ex primals. I'm not the worlds greatest player but I'm here quite a lot and Eureka proves my playtime isn't worth a damn thing. Carrot and stick content to float those sub numbers is what it feels like.

[Araxes]

Im heavily concerned too... if it goes the Way of eternal Grind content for the next few patches too i might have look for another Game...... wich is kinda sad thinking how much of my heart i put into this.

[Squintina]

If SE announced FF14 dev team was going to take a break from patches for a while to go explore other MMOs and stay up to date with the genre, I'd be cool with that.

They need fresh ideas. I like the game right now but I haven't been playing for many years. The content feels fresh because I'm newer (came back to a brand new toon last year), but once I found out when things were added and the patterns, it certainly seems like they might have some sort of a creative rut. And it's ok - it happens! But they need to go grab some more inspiration.

[Araxes]

I'm sure that a bot will eventually be created to grind Eureka and that will make the grind much better. Its not like you'd be banned for doing it, either.

That made me smile and sad at the same time.