Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[sarehptar]

My concern with these constant "That would be a major change so we don't have plans to do that right now" are less the immediate impacts and more the long-term implications... I don't need more character creation options or a new race right this mcfreakin' instant--I haven't used a fantasia in like two years. But the longer we go without any new options, the more and more obvious it becomes that the game isn't getting the investment and quality of life updates that it needs to remain competitive in the long-term. It's not just character customization options that are suffering. Many requests now are being met with this kind of "We don't have the resources to do that now" response.

The game is okay for the moment. But three years from now, four years from now, will we players really still be expected to be content with four face options, copy-and-paste races, an untenable housing design, subpar glamour and inventory options, recolored gear, below average queuing and cross-server interaction design, bare minimum dungeon content per patch, the same recycled tomestone treadmill? At this point, that's what it feels like. Watching these live letters, reading the community rep responses, I no longer get any sense that the developers intend to sustain this game at any real level above merely operational. There is no sense of "Here is how we are going to continue improving in the future."

The more information I see, the more the words "holding pattern" come to mind...

[Rokke]

Nobody is surprised anymore, though. It's fluff in the live letters, fluff in the patches, fluff in the expansion. I love this game, and I really try not to be too harsh on it. Maybe they don't have the funding or staff and it really is difficult for them. That's fine, but they still have a duty to their paying customers and after years of playing and watching things dwindle it starts to get hard to defend them. It feels like they don't try anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I wish they were willing to put more effort into customization and the like, I was at NA's last fanfest when they said "no updates to the character creation screen in 4.0" and was as disappointed then as I am to hear its still not a blip on the radar. I just go into Q&A's with my expectations as low as I can manage because I know despite there being 10+ pages of assorted questions I'd like to be asked they'll pick questions like "Can we have tacos as a food item in game? I really like tacos :)"

[Claviusnex]

Nah it was bad. I mean, yes people have been asking about Ishgard housing for years... But does it really need to brought AGAIN up at such a special event?? Whoever narrowed the questions down missed the mark entirely.

They hit the mark. The job of the people that filter and select the questions is to ensure they are innocuous and don't back the presenters into a corner. By sticking to fluff they avoid having to make any statements that SE can be held to at a later date. It's why I don't really care about presentations like this as you don't learn anything about what is really going on or the game's direction.

[Corue]

This more or less summed up the QA.

[GrumbleBeard]

I just go into Q&A's with my expectations as low as I can

Yeah it's my bad, I wasn't clear with what I wrote since I was typing in between an alliance wiping us in lighthouse. I used the live letter and character creation as an example of the bigger issue.

snip

This guy got what I was going for and expressed it way better than I did.

[Stormfur]

I ask four questions with 25+ likes to each one...but none get answered. And it's not like I'm asking for Viera butt sliders or minion catalogs or Ishgard housing or any of the things that have been asked 1,000 times over. Poor YoshiP looked so tired... and I'm sure part of that is jet lag but he just seemed...I don't know, aggravated by the questions. I understand the community team has to tread carefully because they don't want to reveal things ahead of time, or slip up...but when only "safe", fluffy questions get asked, it feels like the OP said, that the devs are not engaged with what the playerbase really wants, even though I'm sure that's not the case.

[Squintina]

I ask four questions with 25+ likes to each one...but none get answered. And it's not like I'm asking for Viera butt sliders or minion catalogs or Ishgard housing or any of the things that have been asked 1,000 times over. Poor YoshiP looked so tired... and I'm sure part of that is jet lag but he just seemed...I don't know, aggravated by the questions. I understand the community team has to tread carefully because they don't want to reveal things ahead of time, or slip up...but when only "safe", fluffy questions get asked, it feels like the OP said, that the devs are not engaged with what the playerbase really wants, even though I'm sure that's not the case.

It's too bad, I really wanted to know the answers to all of yours (I just looked them up) - you'll just have to list them again for next time!

Though..just because they weren't asked in the PLL, doesn't mean they weren't passed on to the dev team for consideration. I always ask a ton of questions on the off chance they pass it on anyway. Keep at it and someday it might get answered (either as a question, or as them actually announcing that they're doing it)

[TaleraRistain]

SE is a small indie company, adjust your expectations accordingly.

...please tell me this is sarcasm.

[zztoluca]

...please tell me this is sarcasm.

Its a joke.

[Melichoir]

Personally its

Story>GamePlay>Content>everything else. And Character customization falls into everything else. Its not a big deal for me. Not that I dont want or am opposed to more options for character stuff, but when they say things like "Were limited by a graphics engine" and the like, theyre not giving you bullshit excuses. Adding customization options to the body, face, shading, etc can break a lot of things, or cause a wierd graphical problems or clipping. You cant just tack crap onto the engine and not care what happens. Animations can get warped, Armors may clip weirdly, Lighting may get screwed up, cutscenes may get janked up cause of where the camera may have to track, etc. Theres a lot of things they have to consider and check for when doing those kinds of changes. The customization for characters in this game ISNT bad. Its fairly decent for what you can do. Its not perfect, but its not a terrible dumpster fire.


If theyre going to update the engine and what not, thatll happen MOST LIKELY with an xpac, and one thats probably down the road and not the next one. Updates like those are big, expensive, and time consuming. So youre going to have to just kinda be aiite with what you have now.