Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Vhailor]

False
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ges_over_time/

The team size has been constant in it's size, the amount of battle devs have been always low and only with SB they've been able to expand it to alllow them do things like the extra savage boss and Ultimate

Also I remember hearing that FFXIV is the biggest team working at SE but I wasn't able to find that quote so don't quote on me for that

Very good point. Also, again, it cannot be said enough: the XIV dev team is shooting itself in the foot by creating throwaway content.

It's bone-headed stupidity to design content, and then relegate it to the trash (err.... Roulette*) heap after six months. It massively increases pressure on the development team to churn out content rapidly, because the core available content isn't augmented by what you're developing - it's almost entirely replaced. This argument is even more critical if there is a shortage of experienced developers on Yoshi-P's team. They're making some really bad decisions.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Agreed on all points to your post above Vhailor. The forums kinda messed up my other reply, so I'll copy and paste what I had for the edit, but I lost the original response.

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.

Speaking strictly personally here - I don't think the solution to the issue is "more grind" or intentional roadblocks/slowdowns. The problem lies in the fact that the core content systems are shallow and binary. Imagine if a piece of content was actually fun for longer than the handful of times it's meaningful? I know fun is subjective, but treat it this way: If you remove the rewards - would you still participate consistently?

the code is not crap, it was planned for use console and not for this much player.... the game was means to be played by 600.000 player at best and we are more of 5M.

The actual code is optimized quite well for sure. It's actually one of the common points I praise about the game., but it having a redeeming feature of two isn't enough to offset how:

• Awful the netcode is
• Overly reliant on menus
• Clunky
• Bloated

In addition - I very strongly suspect you do not have a source to corroborate your statement that the game was designed for only 600K players OR that the game has 5M players.

Please edit your post to remove the misinformation.

SE routinely makes the bone-headed mistake of designing content that squarely collides with the limitations of their crappy engine.

Eureka is a prime example of this. The idea of an instanced, cross-data-center environment where players can team up in large packs and have a different experience sounds good on the surface.

Until you remember that we can't send /tells from instances, obviously can't join a friend's party if they're in the instance and we're not, can't Black List from within instances, can't form truly durable Linkshells with the people we might meet in instances, couldn't at the time consistently target party members or monsters when enough players came together in one spot... these issues should have sent Eureka back to the drawing board.

Agreed wholeheartedly. This would be the equivalent of designing a race car to enter in the Formula 1 equipped with a Toyota Prius Engine. It's an idea so bad that people should have intervened, but no one did. Yet somehow they're still surprised by the outcome. If that doesn't demonstrate an out of touch perspective I don't know what does. AND to add insult to injury that doesn't even count the fact that they needed to add features to Eureka to make it tolerable in a hot fix. Stuff that any junior level intern with 20 minutes could have identified.

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

No. This doesn't actually change anything. That is not unpredictable. That would be awful. What they need to do is design actual meaningful content with scale-ability and replay-ability.

I know that they took away alot of the developers on Yoshidas team so they can create KH3, FF7 remake and whatever else the company is working on but that's no excuse for not being able to reuse assets and create harder difficulties for the newly released battle content.

You know? or you feel/think? Do you have a source for this? I'd be interested to read it.

I agree with most other points. I think creating an EX primal level 24 man alongside the normal version would be welcomed by the midcore community. I'd argue to make it 8 man though if I was speaking personally.

[Remedi]

Very good point. Also, again, it cannot be said enough: the XIV dev team is shooting itself in the foot by creating throwaway content.

It's bone-headed stupidity to design content, and then relegate it to the trash (err.... Roulette*) heap after six months. It massively increases pressure on the development team to churn out content rapidly, because the core available content isn't augmented by what you're developing - it's almost entirely replaced. This argument is even more critical if there is a shortage of experienced developers on Yoshi-P's team. They're making some really bad decisions.

It also true that the reason why such content exist is because they catered too much to the fast food community imho.
I'm starting to believe that hoever it's less than a yoshida's policy and more a company policy tbh.
In a recent interwiew Yoshida used as an explanation for why they are spreading out content the exact same words for why 1.0 had the fatigue system.

That makes me think that SE got burned badly by the controversy of players fighting mmmh I think it was pandemonium warden or absolute virtue for X hours in FFXI (notice how he asked mrhappy if he slept when they met at E3). As such players well-beign is a sensible topics for them and this is affecting their decisions. I mean it's a supposition but it does fit if you think about it

I mean even FFXV can't be possibly considered a grindy game and FF game (and JRPGs) have been always considered to be grindy

[Vickii]

Yes, don’t get me wrong I have nothing against glamour or people who enjoy that part of the game. I personally find some of the things I see in Limsa a little weird but to each their own, I hope all have fun in the game.

But it shouldn’t be catered for those people so much. It would be like catering wow for the low levels who hang out in goldshire.

When the director speaks for an hour he should speak about the state of the game, class balance, content and maybe at the end take one or two random questions.

Instead he spends 50 minutes talking about glamour and social stuff and barely anything on the actual game.

I’m sorry but this is what The Sims is for.

[Remedi]

The reason why we need grinding back is because there is a intense lack of long term goals, also I'd rather ppl stop using fun as a way to judge content since it's a very subjective choice, some find fun Eureka others don't, just as some like testing themselves in ultimate while others prefer 24 man raids.
Since MMOs targets a wide audience it's impossible to use fun as a metric at all.
I'd rather gut myself than play PvP, but I don't think that Pvpers shouldn't get content at all because of that for example or that they shouldn't receive what they ask of the devs

[KaldeaSahaline]

The reason why we need grinding back is because there is a intense lack of long term goals, also I'd rather ppl stop using fun as a way to judge content since it's a very subjective choice, some find fun Eureka others don't, just as some like testing themselves in ultimate while others prefer 24 man raids.
Since MMOs targets a wide audience it's impossible to use fun as a metric at all.
I'd rather gut myself than play PvP, but I don't think that Pvpers shouldn't get content at all because of that for example or that they shouldn't receive what they ask of the devs

You're showing a severe lack of critical thinking here. Everyone knows that different people find fun in different ways. No one will argue otherwise.

That however does not remove the concept of fun as an important and viable metric in content design no matter how much you wish it so.

For instance you probably found Eureka fun, and I found it to be one of the worst developed pieces of content I've ever seen across a decade of MMO gaming.

But here's the thing. It didn't have to be that way. I could have had fun too, if they actually designed something in the zone for a player like me to do, but they didn't...

FF14's needs to stop designing content for specific skill levels in an isolated fashion. It's an incredibly inefficient process and equally as juvenile. Grinds only artificially boost a given content's lifespan. When designing content they should be aiming to make each endeavor as robust as possible to offer multiple viable avenues of play.

If Chocobo Racing was Mario Kart/Crash Team Racing on Chocobos with summons and magic, it'd be really solid; fun for a lot of people. If it came with PVP and PVE matchmaking and a time attack mode even more would like it. If it had a level editor and shareable designs, you'd find even more people like it. THEN you throw in some cool rewards (speaking personally if I was the dev in charge, I would have put the entire chocobo coloring scheme and a ton of bardings behind this system, but alas they decided menu content was a better idea).

In the first sentence you get some people who like it. Adding matchmaking gets even more (without affecting the others), then you add a time attack mode to grab people who want to just race themselves, and then you add a level editor for people with a lot of free time and creativity, then you put some decent rewards in there to get the rest.

Do you get my point yet? You can design content for the bare minimum common denominator or you can design robust content.

[Remedi]

First of all no I don't find eureka fun since killing mobs zone can only keep my interest for not that long since I've done many of those in the past.
Second of all This zone was designed to be a mobs killing zone as such grindy as such if you didn't imagine that it would become that boring by it's very inception I don't know what to say to you.
You say that chocobo racing would be better if it was like mario kart, Nope would still be annoying to me.

Realize that ppl interests are different as such there won't be anything that will be the be all end all. If I don't like the premise of something coating it with sugar won't make me like it, maybe make it more tolerable but not like it.
The concpet of fun will always be a buzzword used to conceal real problems of implementations.
Fun is not the main problem in eureka, wasn't in diadem ans isn't in any other part of the game, it's the implementation of the features that matters and everytime someone says that fun is the problem is just scapegoating.

So no I will disagree on this fun argument because how much it hides real problems

Many ppl keep buying COD or battelfield does that means that the franchise is excellent btw? Mayority doesn't always mean good

[Alleo]

In the first sentence you get some people who like it. Adding matchmaking gets even more (without affecting the others), then you add a time attack mode to grab people who want to just race themselves, and then you add a level editor for people with a lot of free time and creativity, then you put some decent rewards in there to get the rest.

I 100% agree with this. We know that FF14 is a themepark but imo you should not just add more "rides" that are for certain groups because that 1. will make it not likeable by the rest and 2. if the intented group also does not like it you will have death content. There should be some content that are for a certain group and we do have that with raids and PVP. IMO the rest should be something that the majority can enjoy. Eureka is a good example of how its not good. This is just content for a group of people that like mindless grinding monsters (and there is nothing wrong with that btw) but since this was meant to be THE content for SB this is not good. I would dare and say that Eureka would be as death as diadem if it did not have the relic weapons and sets and certain other items behind it. Which means that for quite some content only the prices keep it alive. Diadem 2.0 had a price (the RNG weapon) that was just not worth it for most so it was even faster death than the first version. If they had made Eureka into something that could be enjoyed in different ways it would have probably became very successful and liked. (Like having something for gatherers, crafters and maybe getting to the relic on a different way than just doing fates and killing monsters)

The same with LoV. This again was designed for a certain part of the playerbase...but at the same time even for those that like this kind of thing it was bad if you are playing it on console..thus even those seems to not play it that much..had they done it more like Pokemon I would say that it would have been much more liked.

So they use their limited time and money and create way too many things that are only interesting for a certain part of the playerbase..and try to keep it alive with prices..but at soon as those prices are done (and in some cases even the prices wont keep it alive) and no new ones are coming later, it will be death.

Realize that ppl interests are different as such there won't be anything that will be the be all end all. If I don't like the premise of something coating it with sugar won't make me like it, maybe make it more tolerable but not like it.
The concpet of fun will always be a buzzword used to conceal real problems of implementations.
Fun is not the main problem in eureka, wasn't in diadem ans isn't in any other part of the game, it's the implementation of the features that matters and everytime someone says that fun is the problem is just scapegoating.

So no I will disagree on this fun argument because how much it hides real problems

Yes it would be unrealistic to have something that is fun for everyone but if they have something that can tickle the itch for many then it mostly will be a success. Like she said, if you have something that is only for a specific kind of group then you will only have that group playing it. (And maybe some others for the reward) But if you manage to greate something that can be interesting for a couple of groups you will increase the amount it is used.

I am also not really sure how we cant measure something with the word fun? How are you measuring content then for yourself? I play something longer if its fun. I might play it a bit if there is something as a reward that I really like but in the long run this content wont see me again. Because for me I play games for fun. For me, the missing fun was the problem for Eurkea or Diadem. I did not have fun playing it and found it boring and annoying. So I am not sure how this is not the problem? Because in the end those that found it fun are those that enjoy this kind of content, so again it was because they enjoyed it that they liked it.

In the end how can you say if something matters if you dont take fun into account? How does it then matter? What are points that you would use to say that something is good content? Maybe it would be nice to write more about this if you are seeing fun as something that should not define content and thus the discussion about it?

[Ayer2015]

Frankly I find the devs stretch themselves too thin creating so many forms of content which provide minimal depth or sense of individual progression. Also we get far too much non-combat related content in this game.

[Remedi]

I'd rather focus on things that are not subjective you know? Like horrible designs that are broken and not really related to fun? And what you know ? that might actually be the problem with the fun.
Point is you find hunts fun? I sure don't yet some do. Do I need to say out loud remove hunts because they are not fun? Do we really need yet another POINTLESS thread were ppl are just arguing about what's fun and forget about terrible game designs?

That's why you should stop you fun as a metric. fun is subjective what's broken IS BROKEN and it's a fact.

Also starting to judge content base on one own sense of fun will inevitability makes your argument vitriolic against those who find it fun, as such Inculusivity is perhaps the best way to handle things