Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Vhailor]

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.

I agree with the first part, not the grind comment here. Or rather, I think grinds, when well-designed, can organically boost content lifespan.

For example, let's consider the leveling process in FFXI, which was incredibly grind-y. The time investment came from three areas: (a) slow XP accumulation rates; (b) lengthy party-forming / party-finding process; (c) transit to party camps. That latter one, (c), is an example of an 'organic' grind that is quite healthy for MMOs. It's also one XIV has eliminated entirely: I can arrive at any point in Eorzea within three minutes, for a pittance of Gil. That's a problematically convenient feature.

Or, let's consider the gearing process in FFXI: this was also an 'organic' grind. By not showering you with gear for free, the game forced you to seek out different avenues of gearing, each of which had its own internal process. You could buy everything, which meant farming Gil; you could level Crafting to try to make your own (admittedly only really useful for second, third jobs, up to around the 40s); you could hunt specific NMs to get key pieces and alleviate any deficiencies elsewhere. There were options. Again, this is something XIV has eliminated entirely prior to level 70 for primary characters: the gearing is entirely automatic now until you're leveling an alternate job or aiming for end-game stuff.

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The way I view longer-term, grind-y content is that it's fulfilling. Throwaway content like XIV offers is the MMO equivalent of a can of soda, or a chocolate bar: they provide a hit of sugar and fun no matter what mood you're in, how hungry you are, etc. But in no way does it provide the fulfillment of tackling longer-term goals and challenges, the MMO equivalent of more difficult tasks like dieting or exercising. The payoff isn't even in the same league. XIV needs to offer more of this long-term, steadier, delayed - but deeper - satisfaction. The key to making it appealing, and not an artificial extension of the time required, is to remove some of the convenience associated with simply existing within the game world. Leveling should have more organic time sinks; transport should have a lot more organic time sinks; market participation should not be nigh unnecessary for people. There's a reason why I love when new Gathering / Crafting gear sets are released: it occupies me for weeks to self-craft them. I have to farm timed nodes, I need to snag Yellow scrip, there's some regular gathering and killing to do, I need to do some Aetherial Reduction. There's significant incidental grind to craft the materials. And, finally, a long-term payoff: BiS DoH / DoL gear that stays BiS for about six months. That's what is missing from other areas of the game, to me.

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.

This is a good observation, and I agree wholeheartedly. But, I'd point out that 'robust' content for a large variety of players is going to necessitate long-term rewards that feature various levels of grind.

I know some players who loved aiming for the Centurio Tiger mount (the 3000 A-rank and 2000 S-rank Hunt Achievement reward). They need content that appeals to them, too, and they shouldn't have to invent it by leveling all the jobs the game has to offer. Myself, I don't want THAT level of grind, but I personally miss the grinds that XI offered, from leveling to Fishing to the Magian weapons that Abyssea introduced.

The one thing this will necessitate, of course, is horizontal itemization. Grinds are made worthwhile by the durable reward at the end: if you get your jollies from Glamours, fine, that's not so hard, but many people won't. I chased the Magian weapons in Abyssea because they were BiS for my BLM and WHM, and I knew they would be for the foreseeable future. I would never spend four months grinding for items that I knew would be nigh-invalidated two months later, bettered by something I could get on the cheap with Tomestones. So, SE needs to branch out more.

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

I think you have a good point here, too, Remedi. The problem I have with using 'fun' as a metric is that it biases an individual in two key ways: (a) they're inclined toward shallow, sugar-high type content, and (b) they're inclined to overlook serious implementation problems because they happen to find it fun on a personal level. It's akin to using public opinion to dictate (rather than inform) governmental policy: people will be biased by what 'feels good' rather than what works or what is fiscally responsible.

It's fine to use 'fun' as a design goal. In fact, developers always should: this is a piece of entertainment, after all. It's a necessary, but insufficient condition for success, and too many people don't remember the second half of that statement. So it's worth taking with a grain of salt. A certain percentage of the population will think almost anything is fun. There are other metrics that must be used as well to help sort out the wheat from the chaff: whether content is long-lasting; whether it appeals to a large group of the player base, rather than just some of the players (this is distinct from whether people are participating in the content); whether it's efficient to create for the development team; whether it fits within the game world; whether its implementation is smooth and unhindered by UI elements or some such. I too often see SE apparently ignoring these metrics, along with many on the forums, and I suspect that's part of why SE can appear to be so out of touch.

[Alleo]

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

The problem is that every opinion about a content is subjective. Maybe not if there are bugs involved but what exactly counts as broken otherwise? If the content function, can it really be broken in a objective way? For me that is not the case. Eureka for example is not broken imo. Its just content that probably a lot of people find boring but you can still do it. Thus why the fun part comes into this. I mean we are not even saying that fun should be the only reasonable way to judge something but its a very good indicator if you have successful content or not. Because if its death by arrival it seems to not have been fun for a lot of people thus there is something wrong with this kind of content.

I dont find Eureka fun thus I go "I dislike it because x reasons" but these reasons are created by my own definition of fun. Thus other might find it fun and see nothing wrong with it and since its functioning then its also not broken. So how then would you argue against such content if you dont like it? Also nobody is saying that just because something is not fun for someone that it should be put out of the game. But there is a problem if a big part of the playerbase does not like new content or that they create something that does not live long enough. Thats two very different points. And at least for me this game just lacks content that can be enjoyed by a great majority of the playerbase for a longer time. If its fun or not is individually, my problem is that there does not exist much of them ingame at all and too much specific content for smaller groups.

Also it feels like you want to try and use a lot of objective views in a discussion but as soon as we go beyond simple numbers which can count as facts, we are going into the subjective part of it.

[Vhailor]

The problem is that every opinion about a content is subjective. Maybe not if there are bugs involved but what exactly counts as broken otherwise? If the content function, can it really be broken in a objective way? For me that is not the case. Eureka for example is not broken imo. Its just content that probably a lot of people find boring but you can still do it. Thus why the fun part comes into this. I mean we are not even saying that fun should be the only reasonable way to judge something but its a very good indicator if you have successful content or not. Because if its death by arrival it seems to not have been fun for a lot of people thus there is something wrong with this kind of content.

I dont find Eureka fun thus I go "I dislike it because x reasons" but these reasons are created by my own definition of fun. Thus other might find it fun and see nothing wrong with it and since its functioning then its also not broken. So how then would you argue against such content if you dont like it? Also nobody is saying that just because something is not fun for someone that it should be put out of the game. But there is a problem if a big part of the playerbase does not like new content or that they create something that does not live long enough. Thats two very different points. And at least for me this game just lacks content that can be enjoyed by a great majority of the playerbase for a longer time. If its fun or not is individually, my problem is that there does not exist much of them ingame at all and too much specific content for smaller groups.

Also it feels like you want to try and use a lot of objective views in a discussion but as soon as we go beyond simple numbers which can count as facts, we are going into the subjective part of it.

I think it's a fine line between subjective and objective, obviously. One thing I'd point out, though, is that there's a difference between one's opinion regarding some piece of content, and what I'll term one's more objective analysis of the same piece of content.

I find movies to be quite illustrative here. There are plenty of movies out there that are awful, truly terrible movies - but which are nonetheless fun to watch. One of my personal favourite examples is the original Mortal Kombat movie. Awful film. The acting was wooden, the special effects were painful, the plot was bad. But I very much consider it to be a guilty pleasure, and it's something of a ritual of mine to watch it at least once every few years. My opinion of the movie is that it's a great time. My more objective side admits that it's bad. The two can coexist, and indeed frequently do.

To tag Eureka here, since we're on the topic: there are things that are objectively broken about it. The most glaring example, in my mind, is the reward imbalance that gave rise to the FATE trains. It's quite clear based on the structure of Eureka that SE didn't envision players taking this approach: it's difficult to navigate at lower levels, monsters are arrayed out in such a way as to support camps, XP chains pointed toward killing multiple monsters in succession. In fact, given some of the more technical issues present - characters disappearing from view in crowded situations and lockbox turn-ins taking forever - it's fair to say that SE likely was so oblivious to the eventual Eureka meta, that they didn't even test the content around it.

That is an objectively bad job on SE's part. Regardless of whether or not it's still fun, regardless of whether or not there are accidental gains, regardless of whether or not an individual noticed these issues themselves, once presented with the evidence, it's obvious that any positive result amounted from luck as much as SE's content design chops, and therefore the content deserves some level of criticism.

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Drawing back to the original topic, I think this side discussion is a great example of not just how SE is out of touch, but why they might be out of touch. Players have a lot of diverse opinions. It can be difficult to sort through the forums, and even harder to determine if suggestions are worth taking to heart or not. This is why SE needs to start actively soliciting feedback, so that they can guide discussion to an extent, and gain information that is perhaps more useful to them. If SE isn't immersed in their own community, if they aren't immersed in what other MMOs are doing, they're doomed to eventually repeat the failure that was XIV 1.0. They've got this whole 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' sort of thing going on, which is a huge powder keg just waiting to explode. They're letting luck determine the future of XIV to a large extent: luck in terms of whether they can add new players as quickly as old ones get bored; luck in terms of whether or not people continue to come back with each expansion; luck in terms of whether or not new MMOs steal their thunder (and their customers).

They need to take control of this situation, start devoting time toward reading the tea leaves, so to speak. Being out of touch is as good as being out of business: it's just a question of when.

[Remedi]

Yes that's precisely my point

[Remedi]

Honestly Vhailor has shown the point I'm making in a much better way that I can do.

The fact that Eureka leaves a bad impression to a newcomer is not subjective, because if that wasn't the case we wouldn't have had ppl complaining about it and the problem is the complete lack of momentum it gives you when you get inside.
Compare it to Potd. The first 10 floor of Potd are a joke even though you are in a depowered state just like eureka.
See what am I going for? The moment you enter Euereka you are meet with a giant wall that doesn't really presents you the content correctly, meanwhile the first floor of Potd really eases you in, even though you are back at your origin you are still the alpha male of the zone it empowers you and makes you want to go, while in Eureka you are weak as shit and then after 20 kills or so you get you protean and you see you need mh I think 2k or so to get what you want from there.

See the problem? if you are neutral to both content the fact that potd empowers you while eureka makes you feel like you are against a wall will make you gravitate towards potd more than eureka.

Problems in game designs are rarely subjective because they have impacts on how they work.
Let's take a laughing stock, lord of verminion. I can tell you that if games of verminion took let's say 30 secs to 1 min, the reception would've been better, what's the problem with verminion? Overxtending, SE went too much deep into a minigame and made it too much complex for it's own good. Gold Saucer is just a side activity zone for optional rewards as such content within it should never overstay it's welcome.
Another example could be the greed only rule for 24 man raids, I mean......yeah.....

[Alleo]

@Vhailor: You do have a point, even though I have a hard time believing that someone that plays games for fun or is a fan of something can truly be 100% objective. I am not saying that one cant see the faults of a system (like you pointed out with the exp ratio) and imo its probably easier with something like a movie but a game?

For example if you hate plattformers and yet you have to review one. Can one be truly objective in it? Isnt there always a part that will influence this? In the end I believe that fun alone is not good but still something that SE can use for future content.

If someone posted that they found Eureka fun, then for us this is not really a deep look at it but SE can say that this person liked the way it was done. So if more people are of this opinion they know that their content works because people find everything as fun. If someone writes that they dont like the content itself but found it at least fun with friends, then SE can take from it that some people will do content that they dont like if they can do it with their friends. If someone writes that they did not find it fun because of x then SE might know that x might not be the way to go and can conclude what the people might like instead. All of this was founded on the feeling of fun with the input of why its fun or why its not.

About Eureka and its content: Well in a recent interview they said that they have forseen that people might react that way (Fate trains) and even just wait in town for a spawn, so can it be really objective broken if they have forseen it and are fine with that? I do agree though that bugs exists and those might count into buggy content.

But yeah maybe we are talking about the same thing in a different way. In the end its important to ask if they take our feedback into mind and listen because we players are the most important part in this (without us they could not produce the game further) and for me it feels like they dont often listen that good. I mean otherwise I just question why we have something like Diadem 2.0 if they did..

[Vhailor]

@Vhailor: You do have a point, even though I have a hard time believing that someone that plays games for fun or is a fan of something can truly be 100% objective. I am not saying that one cant see the faults of a system (like you pointed out with the exp ratio) and imo its probably easier with something like a movie but a game?

For example if you hate plattformers and yet you have to review one. Can one be truly objective in it? Isnt there always a part that will influence this? In the end I believe that fun alone is not good but still something that SE can use for future content.

I imagine reviewers have to do this all the time. I'm sure organizations like PC Gamer or IGN or whatever try to place people into their 'preferred' areas, but what if nobody on the staff particularly loves racing titles? They still have to review it, and their reputation will be dinged if they don't offer a reasonably objective analysis. I'll admit it's a lot to place on the shoulders of forum-goers, but this is why I think SE has to take action themselves. They're the ones working on FFXIV, the ones who will be tangibly impacted if the game begins to falter or fail. Their livelihoods are on the line: they arguably can't afford to take a simple-minded approach (are people saying it's fun or not upon release).

If someone posted that they found Eureka fun, then for us this is not really a deep look at it but SE can say that this person liked the way it was done. So if more people are of this opinion they know that their content works because people find everything as fun. If someone writes that they dont like the content itself but found it at least fun with friends, then SE can take from it that some people will do content that they dont like if they can do it with their friends. If someone writes that they did not find it fun because of x then SE might know that x might not be the way to go and can conclude what the people might like instead. All of this was founded on the feeling of fun with the input of why its fun or why its not.

I'm not so sure this is the case. The problem here is a lack of visible alternatives. SE would be making a massive assumption if they judged a 'this is fun' message as 'we did good, let's keep at it', which is something I feel they've done for quite some time now in XIV. To again use Eureka as an example, let's say someone tells SE 'yeah, this was fun.' Well, the next question would be, how fun? Are we talking a 6/10 review, 7/10? Is it an 11/10? Without knowing even that surface level of detail, the feedback almost has to be discarded entirely; it's useless from a development-guidance standpoint. So, yes, you're right that SE can view this as evidence of a job well done - but they really shouldn't.

About Eureka and its content: Well in a recent interview they said that they have forseen that people might react that way (Fate trains) and even just wait in town for a spawn, so can it be really objective broken if they have forseen it and are fine with that? I do agree though that bugs exists and those might count into buggy content.

I'd be interested in the source here, but I'd suggest that this actually worsens the situation. It means they're either lying to us to save face, or they actually outright ignored a strongly likely outcome from a balancing perspective in order to release content in a problematic state. I'd prefer ignorance to intent, speaking personally. I'd also hesitate to define 'broken' content as something SE didn't intend or foresee. I mean, Microsoft surely foresaw many of the downsides to imposing forced updates on Windows 10 users. That still doesn't excuse them from the myriad problems that arose from this process, particularly in the first couple of years of Windows 10's lifespan. Broken design is broken design: the intent and supporting design / development didn't match the outcome, in a way that proved problematic to a non-trivial population of end users. Foreseen or not, it's still a problem.

But yeah maybe we are talking about the same thing in a different way. In the end its important to ask if they take our feedback into mind and listen because we players are the most important part in this (without us they could not produce the game further) and for me it feels like they dont often listen that good. I mean otherwise I just question why we have something like Diadem 2.0 if they did..

I think we are. I think if we contrast what we have right now with what we had when 2.0 was being developed and just after release, we'll note there's less player feedback, less community outreach. During ARR's development and aftermath, Yoshi-P stressed the value of not developing in a bubble. By all appearances, he's no longer practicing what he preached. Oh, sure, he's still doing the 'Live' letters, he's still doing the media appearances, but they're all so carefully insulated and controlled, they aren't achieving the desired result.

[Alleo]

I'd be interested in the source here, but I'd suggest that this actually worsens the situation.

There are several interviews where he stated that they have forseen that people would wait in town thus even discussed if they should put something in it to punish people but decided against it. Thus it feels like they know how its going to be played. (I mean even the Japanese players are waiting in town) Also seeing how Fates give the most rewards, I cant just see how it would have gone any other way. The thing that shocked me more was his one sentence where he said that more people went into this just for fun instead of rewards..which I kinda wonder how they got that information? I mean they have no surveys, both forums were quite more negative about Eureka and even quite a few that liked it had negative things to say..thats were I sometimes get the feeling that they reading their numbers how they want them to be..

About perform and other minor stuff: I like them theoretically, I just have a problem how much time they put into that since they released it while we lack good longtime content. If we had that they could introduce new minor stuff and I would not care but maybe they should really take a good look at their core content before putting so much work into side stuff. Heck even Yoshida said that they used a bit too much for perform..

PVP, perform, fashion report and so on...all that has their place in the game because people need something else next to all fighting..but please only if we have enough of the core things done.

[Chevronone]

Of course the Devs are out of touch with the game, just look at some of the things they've implemented just recently and other things throughout this expansion like Bard performance actions (who even wanted this? 0.o ) greed only alliance loot, duty recorder (has this even been used one time by anybody?) and the entire loot system for the 8man raids both nm and savage.

...i mean do we even need go bring up Lords of Verminion or Diadem (TWICE!)?

[Remedi]

Their existance is not really a problem, but how they were implemented is. Duty recorder could've been very good for analyzing fights, but for reasons they only know it's bogged down by stupid restrictions. as for Bard performance, well I don't have it unlocked I only know that 4.2 ruined the sounds till 4.3, but ehi some ppl don't have barbershop unlocked either I don't think they are asking why SE wasted time on that either.

So long that additions to the game are made well I don't really see a problem with their existance.