Concern on the current state of FFXIV, and future content

[NolLacnala]

I've stuck with this game thus far only for the roleplaying community, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to justify a subscription on a game that is barely above today's free-to-play games.

One could make the argument that XIV is currently below free to play games, since F2P games' "subscriptions" option generally gives you storage, lol

[Shurrikhan]

One could make the argument that XIV is currently below free to play games, since F2P games' "subscriptions" option generally gives you storage, lol

Just depends on the base and bonus storage amounts given compared to the average need therefor.

[Alleo]

Perform is new and people have complained about it. Glamour dresser is pretty new as it's a completely new glamour system closer to what people want. PotD wasn't exactly well-received so much as people dealt with it because it was a decent way to level other classes. Ultimate is new, it's an entirely new raid tier, so don't discount it, either. People keep calling for new content, but then being vague about what they'd even want. Just "new and different." I honestly makes me feel that nothing short of a miraculous, game-rewriting element will make people happy at this point.

Things like perform or mini games in the Gold Saucer are nice additions but they are not the main game and thus nothing but nice flavor. Perfom got it complains because it played bad and in the next patch they introduced a better system. Glamour dresser is new but just an overly complicated, restricted system that destroys your items and has a 200 item limit. So its a complete restricion with glamour. You know what people wanted? A glamour catalogue with unlimited space where you can put in the glamour and use it everywhere without the need of extra plates. So instead of creating a system which is already done they again created something which they will have to work on in the future and have to improve but they already told us that they cant just increase things because of the server..PotD was not the most exiting content but it was still way more positively accepted by the community than Eureka.

The community often post really thougth-out posts about what they want..heck we even have a constructive thread about Eureka going on with ideas that would make it much better. We had Diadem 1+2 where people gave quite the nice feedback and what they disliked and yet it seems like they did not learn. Please stop ignoring that the community does post a lot of feedback and nice ideas..its not our fault that SE ignores them. I mean look at housing. People disliked the limit since the very beginning and FC and Private houses being together..heck the Japanese forum even went that far to ask for Yoshida to step down. Yet they did nothing. They did not introduce some new rules to stop people from selling and buying houses on mass until the last rage that was Shirogane. For years people have posted their feedback and good changes on this forum and yet nothing was done.

Please stop blaming the playerbase for not liking bad, boring content..while we give more than enough feedback.

On topic:

I agree with the OP. I still kinda like FF14 so I will stick with it for a bit but if its getting worse I will be done. One part of the problem is SE itself which just looks more and more greedy to me. Selling emotes and stuff with real life merchandise, changing things without telling us about it first, putting more and more stuff behind the mog station..So there is already a big annoyance there. On top of that I dislike the way that FF14 is going. I am fine with perform, Ultimate and new PVP modes if we get enough major updates for the mass..but we were waiting for the newest content for 17 months..and its just bad. I do kinda ask myself more and more if they truly know how to create fun long time content where you dont need to put a huge amount of rewards behind it because otherwise most would not play it. I am fine with grinds..I am fine that not every content is for me. But I am not fine that we get more and more cash shop sells, more people playing and thus paying and yet less content.

I also dont get the feeling that they are truly listening to us. On liveletters you will have questions that are either already asked a lot or not even interesting while quite a lot of posts with huge likes are ignored..it just feels like a show that is there to tell us how they care but that they dont truly do that. Yoshidas sometimes aggressive or rude behaviour towards the community is also bad. Yes some questions are annoying, yes sometimes we might not know what we want..but there is no reason to show this disrespect so openly.

We are also the second expansion in and yet we have no ingame survey about the new content..why? Wouldnt that be the best and easiest way to get a big amount of opinions? Or is it more that this is completely the vision of Yoshida and his way to see the game instead of seeing how the majority wants it? Maybe it is time for some fresh blood?

[Remedi]

Snip

Feels like the last raid I had a feeling of raid was throne of thunder because how it was structured, siege imho while I really like the concept had some problems that probably can be traced back to the fact that it was using a faction city as a baseline.

As for boss design sometimes I feel like that they don't get down enough in the new concept while others they do. Take KJ for example the new darkness tech could've been a much bigger part of the fight instead of just a phase while 60% of the fight was mostly a revisit of the sunwell fight only where this time you stand in the armageddon and the shadowy reflections are essentially a toned down version of them.
Frankly I think that Sunwell KJ was much more epic than the tomb one but I don't know, maybe I'm soured that frankly the wow I liked won't exist anymore and I've no respect for blizzard as a company anymore

[loreleidiangelo]

Frankly I think that Sunwell KJ was much more epic than the tomb one but I don't know, maybe I'm soured that frankly the wow I liked won't exist anymore and I've no respect for blizzard as a company anymore

That's fair, and I likely might be experiencing some of the same burnout from the FFXIV end (I've played since CBT), though as I've said in previous comments I DO try to filter some positive feedback in for this game just so I don't seem like I'm pushing a clear bias. There are some nice examples of raid design and content in XIV, and I will never accuse the devs of "not caring about the game anymore" as I've seen others allude to (Square Enix as a company is a different story, but one we'll never really know), but I won't stop offering feedback on areas that I think are disappointing, and the entirety of Omega's mechanics thus far is pretty high up there, as is the ultimate implementation of Eureka.

On a final note, I respect and sympathize with the fact that the WoW you loved isn't there anymore, even as someone who vastly prefers the version it is now. It's a difficult feeling to reconcile, when the developers constantly change things that you thought were fine, bit by bit, until the game you loved to play is no more and you're surrounded by people you can't relate to because they do love it. There's a good cautionary tale in there for SE in some ways, or people who always criticize their desire to keep content updates "safe and similar" - change things too much, and you risk losing the fanbase who made your entire game successful in the first place. Here's hoping they can find a good balance between "fresh and exciting" and "change just for the sake of change".

[Remedi]

Well I would like that discussions could flow as easily, that's why I've become annoyed with ppl not beign productive.
Your point on KJ has shown me a point of wiew that I totally missed because of my bias for example and I'm grateful.
This is something I can go behind, a confrontation of point iseas helps in creating good feedbacks.

Anyway regarding the content sometimes I wonder if the schedule they are keeping is what is the real root of the problem tbh.
Ppl hated the 1 year ICC/DS/Siege/Hellfire but it also meant that the coming expansion had that much time to polish, while eureka has been announced 17 months ago it's also probably true that development on it started after SB was completed.
Some feedbacks are that gear doesn't mean nothing because how quickly it is consumed so I wonder if spacing tiers more would lead to a betterment of the content for example.

Sometimes I wonder also if they should consider reworking the game system again since it seems that the system as a whole is keeping many things from beign possible too and some problems seems to be nigh impossible to fix (the disappearing of players and monsters for example.) it's possible that devs have been lazy with this poroblems but it's also possible that said problems cannot be hotfixed simply because they are the restrictions on which they have created the game
afterall they kinda rushed it and that wouldn't really surprise me

[Hyperia]

It wouldn’t bother me for them to break up patches more. Release content as its ready and don’t be prisoner to a release schedule. If something isn’t ready, delay it and let us know. If the raid is ready but not other stuff, then just release the raid.

In addition to this, I’d really like them to start making login polling questions, something that takes 5 seconds to read and answer. Like: What kind of group content would you like to see more - 4 player, 8 player, 24 player, no preference
A weekly poll of the active playerbase would help then a lot.

[Mahrze]

It wouldn’t bother me for them to break up patches more. Release content as its ready and don’t be prisoner to a release schedule. If something isn’t ready, delay it and let us know. If the raid is ready but not other stuff, then just release the raid.

That's kind of what they did with Diadem, they announced it on LLPs. And look at what we got? >_>

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Perform is new and people have complained about it. Glamour dresser is pretty new as it's a completely new glamour system closer to what people want. PotD wasn't exactly well-received so much as people dealt with it because it was a decent way to level other classes. Ultimate is new, it's an entirely new raid tier, so don't discount it, either. People keep calling for new content, but then being vague about what they'd even want. Just "new and different." I honestly makes me feel that nothing short of a miraculous, game-rewriting element will make people happy at this point.

Perform is not gameplay, but essentially a side activity only a small number of people will be able to utilize much less want to. Touting it a major feature of 4.1 would always backfire because people want content where they have to play their job not musical instruments. Complaints towards the glamour dresser are due to how needlessly convoluted and restrictive it is. We have a total of twenty six classes/jobs yet only enough plates for not even half. We can't change plates outside City hubs and it destroys your item upon retrieval. When every other MMO can devise a superior system, and has for years. It's hardly a small wonder XIV caught flack. Regardless, glamour isn't gameplay either. You can only sort through so many outfits before you run out of jobs. When people complain there is little to do, they refer to relevant content and progression not necessarily glamour; and certainly not Perform.

[Deceptus]

Perform is new and people have complained about it.

People also complained about perform because with the new "update" the sound is actually WORSE than before.

Before you had individual notes and now you have basically 4 notes that vary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmivUxfgfLA