Trying to understand the negative posts I keep seeing about the Dev Team

[HyoMinPark]

snip

Yeah, it’s probably a bit easier to understand if you had been playing probably a little bit longer. I don’t think that makes your opinion less valid, but I think it would make it easier for you to sympathize where some of the content criticisms are coming from simply from experience.

I started in Nov 2015, so I’m not an ARR veteran or 1.0 veteran, but I have friends who have played since 1.0 or ARR Beta and some of them are in the same boat as I am. One last night said that he doesn’t even know if he’ll be around in 5.0, and he’s our static’s MCH. Our SCH said that he, too, doesn’t know if he’ll continue on in 5.0. The stagnation that the game is feeling right now is having a negative effect on the playerbase, and I hope that the developers can rectify it. Sometimes I feel like they are more concerned with bringing in new money instead of retaining their veterans.

I’m not a game designer, so I’m not saying that things I would want are the things necessary to improve the game for those who feel disenchanted. And some, you may not be able to change their disenchantment. But I think that something does have to change; if 5.0 is a carbon copy of the previous expansions, I don’t know if I’ll make it through. And I would rather not lose the sole game I play, because FFXIV is the only MMO I have ever played, and the only video game I have played for extended periods of time—I’ve never been much of a gamer, and it surprised me that FFXIV hooked me the way it did.

So, hopefully something changes. And hopefully for the better.


Sidenote: I wasn’t saying that you specifically would disregard my opinion because I’m a raider; I apologize if it came off that way. But it seems to be the “cool thing to do” to disregard the opinion of a poster simply because they raid. Because “lul raiders” or...whatever.

[MicahZerrshia]

I'm not dismissing what you say.....it's just I'm a bit of a newbie since I joined in June of this year

There in lies why you do not see the problems. This game is great and fantastic for new players. Its veteran retention that is the problem. Once you are around for awhile you will begin to see the pattern and realize you are just doing the same thing now you've done for every patch, just with a different skin.

SE needs to innovate and stop letting content fall by the wayside. Their lack of communication is one thing, but their lack of creativity and how they design nothing to last more than 3 months is a whole other. They need to start designing for the long term player instead of the new ones. They are always bragging about how hard core of gamers they are but I personally do not believe them in the slightest since they are making mistakes no actual gamer would make in game design. And it all goes back to Yoshida, which is why I place everything on his shoulders and why I think they should find someone new to take over. Because unless his hands are tied by someone higher up, he is not making choices that are good for the life of this game in the long run. He did a phenomenal job rebooting the game. But it's been a series of bad choices since.

Also lets have an expansion that is its own thing. I have said it before and I will say it again, we have literally been dealing with Ascians and Garlemald since v1 and its getting sooo boring. No matter whats going on we know that is somehow leads back to Ascians and the Empire. /snore I am so ready to move on.

[Stormfur]

The Problem with Pagos

I feel like with the relatively little information we're getting on Pyros and the Logos system, that it's going to be another layer of RNG on top of RNG -- perhaps they feel like if we just stick it out, we'll see what Eureka will become. But if you're traveling on a road and it's full of potholes and parts of it are flooded with trees down everywhere, you don't just "power through it" -- you turn around because it's not worth it.

Relic weapons don't have to be a slog! They can be fun, interesting, engaging...there are plenty of MMOs out there to draw upon for ideas.

PVP: The Mushrooms of the XIV World

And then there's PVP... I understand that they want to turn it into an e-sports thing, but it just isn't built for that. They've made a LOT of improvements though, and perhaps 5.0+ will see it get the attention it so desperately deserves. Right now, Feast especially is a small-and-dwindling community. I swear I think less people participate every season though. The mode is in dire need of an infusion of rewards that can be worked for over time at a reasonable pace to get people participating again, like GARO was.

That and just... so many more suggestions that we don't even know if they reach the devs or not, or if the devs even acknowledge them.

But yes, I'd say overall that some of the negative feedback is warranted -- a lot of it isn't, but that's what you get as a game developer. This isn't just "their" Final Fantasy (yes it's their intellectual property), but a lot of us grew up with the series, and genuinely enjoy it. The WoL's story becomes OUR story, and we want to have some semblance of control in the direction we go.

[Vidu]

Before I start let me say that come complaints are obviously totally valid, well thought through and made with an aweful lot of insight.

...however, I want to emphaises the "some" - I believe that a lot of complaints actually stem from people not really understanding the core of something they deemed a problem or not understanding the issue at all.
The recent DDoS-attacks are a prime example: People dont understand how the whole thing works, but they wanna blame SE anyways.

The same goes for quite a few other things aswell though:

- The mogstation, for example - people make a huge fuss about items being added their "instead" of being available ingame, but they dont realise that its not "instead", but completly extra, aka the mogstation-team isnt creating content for the maingame in the first place. So those items arent being taken out of the game, but being created only for the mogstation - sometimes not even for our version, but for the korean/chinese one and being imported into ours. Yet, people act or assume that they're only in for double-dipping and dont realise that those items wouldnt exist without the mogstation in the first place.

- Lack of content - while I consider those claims more valid at times (and feel like I dont have enough to do myself), I often see them from people who only like a very specific type of content that they burn through to quickly. Obviously, if you only want to raid, FFXIV wont keep you busy for long! Those people often overlook the theme-park-aspect of the game and ignore/discard the vast majority of content - again, we've been getting less content, thats true and a valid thing to complain about. But sometimes I feel people forget that they also choose to only do 10% of the offered content.

- People not understand that certain adjustments take more time than they'd like to - while this isnt an excuse for ignoring certain jobs for a whole expansion, sometimes I'm getting the impression that people think everything should be magically fixed to their likings in two weeks and dont realise that system and the like need to be thought through - job balance, housing issues... they cant just "fix" either of that with a quickhotfix.
They think "Oh, this should be so easy to implement, which cant they do that over the weekend!" without realising that thanks to our spaghetti code or other technical reasons it isnt "this easy" to add more options to the character creation screen.

What they can do however and what would probably ease a lot of complaints is to communicate better - with all their mess ups that are Eureka and job balances and housing and choices for prizes/event-items and so on and so on, people are getting the impression that the devs just dont care about their playerbase. So they got more and more frustrated.
I bet Pagos would have been recived better, if the devs actually adressed some Anemos-feedback and explained why they didnt put in things liek Daily Quests or the like.

I believe the bigger issue currently is that even those who present well thought through feedback (and not just another hate-thread) dont recive any decent feedback from the devs, which leads to the impression of them just ignoring their playerbase. And obviously they can do that and take a stance of "Our game, our rules, our vision", but that would need clear communication aswell then...

Bottomline: I think its a combination of poor communication and slow responses on the devs-part and a certain amount of lack of understanding of underlying systems/work and unreasonable requests by uninformed people here on the forums. I'm by no means saying that the later goes for everyone who posts their suggestions here on the forums - but a lot of times I see complaint threads and wanna ask the OP "...did you even really think about this and do you even realise what you're asking for here?"

[SerLuke]

- Lack of content - while I consider those claims more valid at times (and feel like I dont have enough to do myself), I often see them from people who only like a very specific type of content that they burn through to quickly. Obviously, if you only want to raid, FFXIV wont keep you busy for long! Those people often overlook the theme-park-aspect of the game and ignore/discard the vast majority of content - again, we've been getting less content, thats true and a valid thing to complain about. But sometimes I feel people forget that they also choose to only do 10% of the offered content.

That is one complaint I think is valid as well but I don't blame this on the Dev Team I blame it more on the higher ups at SE not devoting adequate staffing/funds to FFXIV.

[Vidu]

That is one complaint I think is valid as well but I don't blame this on the Dev Team I blame it more on the higher ups at SE not devoting adequate staffing/funds to FFXIV.

As I said - I do consider those complaints valid most of the time. Specially now with Stormblood and them cutting back on content for the mess that is Eureka.

However I'm struggling a bit to take them serious if they're coming from someone whos ignoring most of the content alltogether, aka a person who only has one job at level 70, hasnt set foot into any raid, hasnt gotten any primal-mount, no crafting/gathering classes, maybe not even finished one beast tribe... I could continue my list, but I wont because my point is not that you have to raid or farm ex-primals or craft/gather or do whatever if you dont like it. You dont even have to do that to have a right to voice your opinion that you'd like to see more of the content you enjoy. But I always take it with a grain of salt when I see people claiming "there is nothing to do" when infact they would have plenty of stuff to do or achieve, they just dont want to.
...or maybe I'm just jealous of them because I'm at the other end of the scale - did pretty much everything there is. And while I'd like to see more content aswell, I also realise that the devs will never be able to release so much content that it actually keeps everyone busy for the whole duration of a patch-cycle.

They could do better, for sure! And they defintely need more funding!
But at the same time I often feel like people overlook a lot of content they could do aswell.

But the overwhelming majority of stuff in the cash shop are things that were originally available in game

At least I'm under the impression that thats not the stuff that people are complaining about - a few weeks back we got the werewolf-set from last year in the cash shop and I dont recall any heated discussion about that on the forums. At best a "You can now buy this"-info-thread.
On the other hand, mogstation-exclusive items always lead to threads in which people are venting about the cash shop and how those items should be available ingame.
And to an extend I agree with ideas like "We need more stuff to spend achievment points on" or "submarines should be useful and bring back cooler items!" and so on.
But people dont seem to understand that the devs dont develop something like that whale and then pick the option "mogstation" out of a pool containing stuff like subs or achievment points, but rather "either this goes on the mogstation or its not gonna happen at all".

And they're also quick to overlook everything thats being added ingame - one new outfit on the mogstation? Suddenly it doesnt matter anymore that we got two new glamour-sets with the last patch, everything is now PayToWin and cash-only!
I'm not a fan of the mogstation - but I'm also pretty annoyed by people just complaining about it without proper reflection about the whole matter and treating it like the end of the world that you cant get Minfilias hair ingame...

[Maero]

That is one complaint I think is valid as well but I don't blame this on the Dev Team I blame it more on the higher ups at SE not devoting adequate staffing/funds to FFXIV.

That would be because a large portion of the sub money from this game goes to fund other projects SE work on which i do not agree with but it is how business goes i guess

[Jandor]

- The mogstation, for example - people make a huge fuss about items being added their "instead" of being available ingame, but they dont realise that its not "instead", but completly extra, aka the mogstation-team isnt creating content for the maingame in the first place.

But the overwhelming majority of stuff in the cash shop are things that were originally available in game

[Deceptus]

- People not understand that certain adjustments take more time than they'd like to - while this isnt an excuse for ignoring certain jobs for a whole expansion, sometimes I'm getting the impression that people think everything should be magically fixed to their likings in two weeks and dont realise that system and the like need to be thought through - job balance, housing issues... they cant just "fix" either of that with a quickhotfix.

This would be believable if their "fix" for BLM and SAM wasn't a 3% total dps increase by adjusting potencies. That's just numbers.

[Hazmick]

Lots of good responses above ^ but you also have to consider that people complain easier than they praise.

If something in the game works and is good, people aren't very likely to heap praise on the devs because of course everything should work as intended. If something is bad or doesn't work, everyone wants to make sure their complaints are heard. This is not exclusive to FFXIV, or even video games in general.