Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[ShadowHunterrX]

It's not that the developers are out of touch...........

It's that the FFXIV community has successfully relegated itself to the status of "mostly white noise".

Seriously, look through the history of these forums, the one thing the community has proven to the Devs throughout 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x is that it doesn't matter what they do, we are going to find someway to complain about it.

True, there wil always be some whiners ready to whine over every single detail. But the fact stays, ever since stormblood the content is lacking and you notice that in activity on the servers. Also doesnt help that it looks like SE is in full force cash grabbing mode ever since stormblood.

If I may speak for myself. I didnt even do the story yet or not doing the 24 raid hell for the weekly upgrade anymore. FFXIV is less and less fun lately, feels more like busy work.

[Remedi]

Because 2.0 had such great depth of content that you could spend hours to do right? Man there was so much to do that you were overwhelmed wait......

[FeyaAres]

From my point of view there is no issue on character customization, glams, or whatever "casual content".

The game is more suffering of a patch routine, since years now patch are the same, the patch is coming but without any surprise, we have the 8 man endgame content, later patch new primal, later patch patch new 24 raid... etc...

I would like to be more surprised but at the moment it looks like they are just satisfied, too satisfied.

One big point for me who makes me play as a casual instead of my semi hardcore way of playing is the endgame content.
There is a big lake of stuff optimisation possibility, and I really like to loot my stuff on trash mob (maybe because my first mmo was WoW) but there is some things to take from other MMO.

The boss fight in 8 end game content are amazing, but where's the immersion ? Nowhere... 1 trash or no trash, one boss, let's try hard... meh....
I would like to see a 8 ppl end game content with an epic entrance, trash mob to loot high content ressource, stuff you can sell from them (for sure not good as the one you can loot on the boss), you know, just something epic, something you feel like a team of hero going for an adventure.

The atmosphere they can put is this game is crazy, but for the endgame I can't feel it.

Just my point of view

[Adelaide3]

Yeah their exact patch content cycles are so predictable to the point where we know exactly what we're getting every single time which is basically the same rehashed content with a slightly different flavor.

What we desperately need is harder difficulties for every single piece of group content that gets released. First off, 24 person raids would benefit heavily from a harder difficulty because then different 8 person savage statics can link up with eachother and take on the challenge together. Dungeons desperately needs harder difficulties but that's obviously not going to happen. Ex versions of primals and even the current savage mode raids need harder difficulties but I know for certain that all of the above just isn't going to happen. Ultimate fights were a good thing but we won't be seeing any more of those for a very long time because only a single person on the development team is capable of creating these fights.

If there is no higher challenge to be had then there is literally no reason to even continue playing so i'm just done. Good thing they can continue turning profits off of the lowest common denominators who by some miracle, actuallly enjoy all this braindead content that's being pumped out. It's just not for me.

[Felis]

Yeah their exact patch content cycles are so predictable to the point where we know exactly what we're getting every single time which is basically the same rehashed content with a slightly different flavor.

the devs should do something unpredictable for 5.0
Something like 5.0 8 man raid, 5.1 24 man raid, 5.2 24 man raid 5.3 8 man raid, 5.4 3 trials instead of any raid

[Remedi]

We don't need a rehash of what wow does, with 200 hundreds difficulties that serve no purpose but to inflate the ilvl and then cry WEZ NEEDZ STATZ SWUISHHHHHH!!!!!

Also I put the blame on SE caving too much to the "I want this [insert object of desire here] NOW". srsly that's one of the mayor reason why too much feels shallow .

[ShadowHunterrX]

Because 2.0 had such great depth of content that you could spend hours to do right? Man there was so much to do that you were overwhelmed wait......

I fact that was with 2.0. Everything was new and most players started with nothing. Ofcourse you have the 24/7 who wanted to be first lv50.

[Vhailor]

I fact that was with 2.0. Everything was new and most players started with nothing. Ofcourse you have the 24/7 who wanted to be first lv50.

Still, I must point out, 2.0 was pretty damned shallow. The primary issue is that the MSQ and Job Quests took you through literally everything available, with the exception of a small handful of dungeons and... well, a small handful of dungeons, only two of which were relevant after the MSQ was complete. This is the double-edged nature of using the MSQ and sidequests as the primary mechanism for leveling one's first job: it both speeds up the leveling process, and leaves the player with less to do once the leveling is done.

Case in point, I hit level 50 in ARR within about three days. I wasn't a '24/7' player, but I had significant amounts of disposable income, and I wanted to really soak in Eorzea. In so doing, I leveled quite quickly, because questing is a really rapid way to level up. So before I knew it, in the space of less than a week, the MSQ was done, my primary job was leveled, I'd conquered both the level 50 dungeons, I'd completed literally every available quest flag in the game, and I was left to... well, think about what I wanted to level next, be it DoH, DoL, or another combat job. That's a fairly startling position to be in after a scant seven or so days. It's a large part of why I quit around 2.4, and didn't return until a couple of months before Stormblood hit.

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All this to say, acting as if only the '24/7 crowd' has a problem is just wrong. Similarly, the claim that 2.0 is 'overwhelming' is ludicrous, unless someone is brand-new to gaming. Grand Theft Auto games can be overwhelming. Elder Scrolls games are overwhelming. FFXIV 2.0 was closer to the complexity of Diablo, and wasn't overwhelming in any sense of the word. Eorzea felt downright cramped within a few weeks of playing. It's one thing if only the truly hardcore players felt this way: the Twitch streamers, the students on summer vacation, the people with dozens and dozens of hours a week to devote to gaming. But this feeling impacted me, a mid-core sort of player, a single adult with 4-5 hours of free time per night and weekends to devote to the new game I'm playing. I'm not the type of player who should be able to clear literally every non-Job-specific quest icon within a week or two of ARR releasing. I shouldn't be examining other classes within two weeks of a new MMO, wondering what I'll play next because the end of the process for my primary class is nigh until the first content update lands.

SE has simply made FFXIV too convenient, the grind too minimal. I don't want a return to pre-ToAU FFXI, where leveling an average job to cap could take several months. I do, however, want an update to still feel fresh a week later, and new expansions to still feel fresh after a month. SE has yet to hit that target with XIV, and in fact hasn't even really come close. I, and others, keep clamoring for it, attempting to deliver the message in countless ways, but they're simply not listening.

They're out of touch.

Edit / Addition:

I think before the developers do anything else is first they need better hardware if this keeps going back to server issues.

I don't agree with this. I think the core issue plaguing FFXIV is shallow, overly-convenient content. That's not a hardware problem, it's an overall product development problem, starting with Yoshi-P and working its way on down through the ranks. I do think there are a ton of QoL features we're currently lacking that FFXIV would benefit from, but realistically, if I envision a world in which all of the server-related problems are fixed - housing for all, no bottlenecks because SE pulled a stupid and put a solo instance early in an expansion, a true Glamour Log, a butt slider, etc. - I still don't see a vastly improved game. I see a significantly less annoying game, but one that would still deliver updates and expansions that fail to meaningfully occupy me for more than a week or so.

SE needs to bring back more grind, horizontal itemization, and other mechanisms that slow us down. They're throwing us the tools to go 100mph through the content, and they're only capable of developing content at a speed suitable for, say, 25mph. They've got to put up road blocks and speed bumps for us so that mid-core players like myself don't blink and find ourselves at the end of an entire expansion by the time a weekend has gone by.

[Kaliesto]

I think before the developers do anything else is first they need better hardware if this keeps going back to server issues.

[Kaliesto]

I think when it comes to the length of the MMO is because of much effort he has been putting into the story, something I have never seen really and almost feels like I was playing a single player game at times.

However

I can't say the same for his side quests which are about 80% fetch quests which to me is pretty lazy, and boring. That kind of time and effort should have put into meaningful side quests with a good story backing it.