Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[Okamimaru]

It's all good to ask for them to shake things up and take this game another route.... until they actually do it and everyone hates it... I think as many of the ideas yoshi p has gotten from games like WoW, he probably also took note of how changing things can cause damage as well... hell if you change the code from the ground up in 5.0 what happens to all the old arr, hw, sb discs out there? My game isn't a digital copy... so what then? You risk losing alot of players from the potential fallout if things go bad... so yeah they've been doing small things little by little... but changing the game some people find "repetitive and stale" also changes the game other people love as is...

[RiyahArp]

I feel like there's a huge communication issue more than anything else.

The thing is though, Japan has a lot more of a media culture when it comes to games. Like they still have at least ten print magazines for them, where I can only think of Game informer in the USA, and its a promotional mag for gamespot now. the usa has only a few websites devoted to it, and less public presence. Not many places in the usa for them to communicate with any more. Remember EGM, official PS magazine, PSM, etc?

[dark494]

They're certainly out of touch when it comes to RMT but who am I to judge

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...eh_since_2015/

[Vhailor]

Hot take: Yes and No.

Sure, we don't get everything we ask for, but there's enough shit added to this game that it's obvious they're listening loud and clear. We got a bunch of cutesy hairstyles and glamour every now and then. We're getting Cloud's ugly ass bike. ffs, they're even entertaining the idea of adding Viera to the game. It's clear they're not above adding anything the community begs for if it's possible.

I think they tend to listen when either (a) the rage reaches a sort of critical mass, or (b) when following through is a relatively trivial matter.

Examples of (a) would be the recent about-face on the Need / Greed changes in 24-man Alliance Raids and the woefully limited housing availability up until this most recent Ward expansion. Examples of (b) would be what you largely described: hairstyles, cutesy Glamours, Cloud's ugly-ass bike, probably Viera when all is said and done (I'll bet significant sums of Gil on Viera being 99% humanoid, just like Au Ra).

Where they don't listen - and where they're clearly out of touch - is in regards to underlying systemic issues (the blandness of content update cycles; RMT; Diadem 3.0 - err, Eureka*; etc.). Here, we get nothing from SE. No real mea culpas, no player surveys, no explanations, no fixes over time. Unfortunately for SE and FFXIV, these areas are quite important. It's hard to say when exactly SE's failure to address them will have consequences, but it'll happen in some form or another. They're poisoning their core fanbase, one small predictable content drip at a time.

[Hestzhyen]

The thing is though, Japan has a lot more of a media culture when it comes to games. Like they still have at least ten print magazines for them, where I can only think of Game informer in the USA, and its a promotional mag for gamespot now. the usa has only a few websites devoted to it, and less public presence. Not many places in the usa for them to communicate with any more. Remember EGM, official PS magazine, PSM, etc?

They have myriad options in other media formats- devs from other games post all the time on reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or heck even their own forums. The death of print media in the US does not mean that Japanese devs are limited in how they communicate to us. SE just... doesn't do it. So our feedback goes unheard and we get feisty and the game stays the same as ever.

[Mikhaill]

I wanna new FF MMO now.
Sorry, maybe they can just start something completely new at this point.
I'm tired of the "we can't do this or that" but what they CAN do is release a Money making App
or throw glamour, hair and other shiz in Mog Station all day.
All they care about is nickle and diming us while a lot of people are tire of the same old treadmill
for 5 years now. Besides, whatever "NEW" thing they do, usually sucks butt so...
Maybe they already know so they're just trying to get more money out of us to fund it lol.

[polyhedral]

If they can't or won't change up the formula, I'd say I'm ready for a new more modern mmo myself, although I'm not sure I'd take another trip down the SE path again.

[Rufalus]

This would be great. When 4.0 released and the ananta primal dropped accessories I thought maybe they were going to begin switching things up a bit, but it see,s to have been a one time thing.

They made Lakshmi drop accessories to make it relevant alongside Susano. Back in HW, both Bismarck and Ravana dropped weapons, with one being higher IL than the other. They acknowledged it was a mistake because the lower ones weren't attractive for longer than a blip.

Yes I think it would be nice for trials to do accessories or something else more often, especially now that there's already a bunch of way to get weapons. Tsuku rewards weapons (patch 4.3) but so do Heaven-on-High (4.35) and Eureka Pagos (4.36). That's a lot of weapon options outside of raiding.

[Rockette]

They made Lakshmi drop accessories to make it relevant alongside Susano. Back in HW, both Bismarck and Ravana dropped weapons, with one being higher IL than the other. They acknowledged it was a mistake because the lower ones weren't attractive for longer than a blip.

Yes I think it would be nice for trials to do accessories or something else more often, especially now that there's already a bunch of way to get weapons. Tsuku rewards weapons (patch 4.3) but so do Heaven-on-High (4.35) and Eureka Pagos (4.36). That's a lot of weapon options outside of raiding.

I agree. I like having something other than a weapon drop. Back in ARR the moogle necks were BiS, and the ring from Ramuh. For anyone who raids, Tsukuyomi weapons are dead on arrival. Even for non raiders, the upgrade item for the tome weapon will be released in 24man soon.

[Rufalus]

Post I was gonna reply to got deleted, but I actually really enjoy the alliance raids. They worked out how to design really fun large-scale battles starting from TWC of Mhach and now they've done 4 in a row at that level of quality. I didn't mind repeating Ridorana many times for the TT card because I have fun in there. They are even debuting new mechanics with each one like Argath's truth/lies and Construct's computation.

They could shake up the patch structure and reward structure, but on pure encounter design and aesthetic beauty I think the team are operating at a very high level. They are doing the best they can within the limitations of this game engine and fast patching schedule. I think the main thing people are wishing for is just more surprising elements in the structure of the game as a whole like how progression works for growing our characters.