Should FF14 take a new route? Discussion

[Lyshell]

"hey give us something new and good"

That's a matter of perspective. What's good to you might not be good to someone else and vice versa and that's really at the heard of the issue. How can you please a large number of people who constantly want something "GOOD" when there's no clear answer on what that is. To say that the developers don't try is an insult to them really. They toss out a lot of stuff sometimes it hits sometime it misses.

[Shouko]

::Stares at the numerous people complaining about the NEW Eureka content::

I can't take this thread seriously when I see the developers constantly trying things out and players hating everything because it wasn't how they imagined. I hate seeing here the demand of "hey give us something new" and "oh I hate this new thing." along with "Why do they always give us the same old content?" I would go insane if I was developer seeing all of this.

Nothing is original, everything is inspired from something at some point, Eureka while I don't hate it and I don't love it either.

In this case it wasn't something people expected because they were lead to believe something entirely different, solo (can still do it to a point but not NMs) NMs were supposed to be NMs not bosses.

NM Spawns - Most monsters in FFXI spawn a fixed number of minutes after the previous copy was killed. NMs can spawn like that, but there are often other factors at work. There are various ways that NMs can spawn, and specific terms about them that are listed in the Mob Database:
Timed Spawns: Most NMs respawn within a certain number of hours.

What we got for FFXIV was straight out just boss fates with a NM tag on it.

Devs didn't even try with this, they just copy n pasted mobs, reskin of weapons/armor, copied PotD style loot system, etc etc. They had a chance to provide a lot more meaningful content, but instead they just fell back to their Diadem-like system.

[Stormfur]

Besides the elemental wheel...what is new about Eureka? (I'm genuinely curious because it sure looks like Diadem to me, but with less Fates.

[ko_]

Besides the elemental wheel...what is new about Eureka? (I'm genuinely curious because it sure looks like Diadem to me, but with less Fates.

The fact you can delevel in there? THe biggest change in the game so far that doesn't exist anywhere else in the entire game? That's a pretty big deal. It shocking people forget this. And another thing is you get out of that place what you put in. There are people who have 4 sets of their relic armor and weapon. Go listen to LBR... some of them called in. I'm just saying everyone cries for a change but they aren't even looking at the change that was put in the game.

[Kaonis]

The fact you can delevel in there? THe biggest change in the game so far that doesn't exist anywhere else in the entire game? That's a pretty big deal. It shocking people forget this.

That's not a point in favor of the content. Exp loss and deleveling are products of an older MMO era that were rightfully dropped. Even older games that are still up and running like XI have eased up on that penalty. And that's what it is, a penalty. You can't claim a penalty to be something new as a retort when people are obviously talking about wanting new game play systems. Which Eureka lacks outside the shallow rock-paper-scissors elemental wheel. Beyond that tedious gimmick Eureka is nothing more than a trash mob grind fest with an occasional FATE zerg. Neither of which are new in the game.

[Marluxia]

What so it doesn't count a change cause you and a few don't like it? That's not good.. if that's the case then noone should be on my case when I mention ALL you do is kill the thing.. so nothing will EVER change. I'm just saying that is STILL a change to THIS game. Same with the elemental wheel.

This argument is missing the point.

By the pure literal definition of the word, yes, delevelling and the magia board are technically "new" mechanics.

The argument isn't that "Eureka has no new features at all". Fundamentally, the argument is multi-tiered.

1). Yes, there is de-levelling and the Magia board, but those "new" elements are constructed around Hunt-zerging and FATE grinding, both of which have been in the game for five years.
2). There is not enough new features of sufficient depth to justify the development time spent on Eureka.
3). As a result of #1 and #2, Eureka is deemed to not be worth the potential content that could have been developed instead of Eureka (opportunity cost).

The Magia Board and de-levelling are new to FFXIV, so by a pure argument of semantics, yes the content is "new".

What people are arguing against that those "new" mechanics are built around Hunts and FATEs, both of which are dead horses whom Square Enix are beating so vigorously they're mistaking the twitching as a sign of life.

[LalaRu]

Ho yes. XIV so successful that it needs be changed. Make it like some other f2p MMO that lasted 6 months or less.

If you hate XIV that much, why don't ask for the return of 1.0 too, as icing on the cake?

[Laladyn]

You can only wait for FFXVI or FXVII or whatever the next FF MMORPG will be. This one i doubt will change in any meaningfull way.

[Marluxia]

Silence is a vacuum, and leaving a vacuum will compel people to fill it with speculation.

Case in point!

I've posted this elsewhere but I feel it needs repeating. The problem with Eureka isn't so much what it is as much as what it represents: a bleak future for Final Fantasy XIV.

There are four possibilities for why Eureka got developed the way it did and none of them bode well for the future of the game.

1). Awful project management
This feature purportedly took 17 months to develop, owing to the fact that it was announced in October of 2016. The fact that Eureka feels unfinished stinks to me of the dev team not having a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish, no long-term roadmap, and spent much of the dev time either faffing about or repeatedly starting over from scratch. To me, this is the most likely option, since Stormblood in general is floundering about in most departments in a similar fashion.

2). Engine limitations
Or, the dev team had loads of great and unique ideas that would have made Eureka amazing...but the FF14 engine code is a pile of spaghetti that would shock and awe Chef Boyardee to the point of retching nausea, making it unfeasible or impractical to implement anything other than boring Hunt zerging and mob grinding in a reasonable manner. This also has the potential to spell long-term doom if their systems are incapable of accommodating anything remotely complex.

3). The dev team genuinely thinks this kind of content is fun
I question this because numerous inferential evidence lends itself to suggesting that the FFXIV devs don't play their own game, QA is probably too polite to tell them otherwise, assuming there's QA at all beyond finding bugs.

4). The dev team knows this content is dull but doesn't care
I try not to think this because of Hanlon's razor--there's no such thing as true evil, just varying levels of incompetence--but I'm not sure how to avoid thinking this when they keep making the same mistakes, over and over. There's never been a reasonable margin of people who praised Atma grinding or Hunts or Diadem Dino Island.

Heck, when they announced the Atma stage of the HW Relic, even Yoshi-P said he would skip the step if he could (which is one hell of a condemnation for your own game, man. IF YOU DON'T THINK IT'S FUN, WHY ARE YOU PUTTING IT IN THE GAME?)

What in gods name compelled them to think Eureka would be enjoyable to a majority when content that uses the same fundamentals of Eureka (i.e. spam your rotation until thing fall down) have repeatedly been met with vocal criticism?

Then again, I suppose long grinds keep subs, you know? You don't need to make something actually fun, just make content that is just barely above people's standards and keep that sub money rolling. And they can push the envelope of how low some people's standards will go.

Or any combination of the above. It really doesn't bode well.

I love Final Fantasy XIV, okay. Some part of me has to love it (in partial combination with psychologically exploitative Skinner Box mechanics like weekly tomestone caps and weekly drops, obviously) for me to have played it for 5 years since ARR launched.

But it's hard to call the game's current direction anything other than "foreboding".