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

[SerLuke]

I realize FFXIV is not a perfect game/MMORPG... but I think its a pretty darn fun one. I'm not a super savage hardcore harder, I'm probably towards casual/light mid-core spectrum of things so my opinion might not mater much here, but I think the devs do a pretty good job. I appreciate the story and lore of FFXIV, I love going into a fun environment where I can jump into dungeons with my friends and chat and play for a while without hours of waiting around(I played FFXI back in the day) and I love the wonderful music Soken and Uematsu have composed for the game.

But going from a lot of posts I read it seems like the developers aren't looked very highly upon because the game sometimes has issues(like the recent DDOS attacks), people not liking Eureka, etc, but for me it seems the dev team has done way more good than bad though the posts I read seem to portray them as incompetent and people that should be replaced which doesn't seem right to me, can someone help me understand this?

[HyoMinPark]

A lot of complaints that seem to be common amongst the complaints is that the developers seem to go between not listening to any feedback at all, to just listening to whomever whines the loudest.

With Stormblood, there have been numerous complaints about the balance of some jobs compared to others within their competitive roles (DRK versus PLD/WAR, WHM versus SCH/AST, BRD versus MCH, RDM/BLM versus SMN, MNK/SAM versus NIN/DRG), and it has taken months for the developers to acknowledge some of the problems—and even longer still to do anything about them (see: RDM finally being buffed in 4.4 despite being weaker than BRD since launch; BLM and SAM finally being allowed to be a “selfish DPS” and deal high amounts of personal damage; MNK is actually giving NIN a run for their money now in 4.4, though some groups still prefer TA over MNK’s personal damage+Brotherhood, and no job can uproot DRG so long as there’s even a single physical ranged in the party; DRK taking until Patch 4.3 to get acknowledgment that it had problems; MCH still not being noticed; WHM still not being noticed).

This is in addition to them making dumb comments such as “We cannot give BRD/MCH piercing because then they will be too OP, since we do not balance them around having piercing”, but they seem to have zero issue with BRD/MCH being OP with a DRG in the party (and piercing as a whole has been a problem since Creator—them not balancing BRD/MCH with piercing/DRG synergy is exactly why they’ve been so strong).

Obviously, major job changes will not happen at this point in the expansion, but the complaints about some jobs (DRK, MCH, WHM and their Lily “mechanic”) have been present since Stormblood launch, and some still have never been addressed. Not even with a cursory remark.


With regards to content, people gave suggestions on how to improve Eureka (e.g., adding in a Daily Quests sort of thing for Elemental EXP or crystals; adding in crafting/gathering to Eureka; giving variety to the way you can earn your relics), and, instead, the developers buckle down harder on the most hated aspects of it (mob grinding and RNG), making it seem like they haven’t been listening to feedback at all. Pagos was a blight on the content itself, and it will be difficult for Pyros to redeem Eureka in the eyes of some players simply because of the dumpster fire Pagos was. Honestly, I feel like Pyros is going to be more damage control than much else in terms of Eureka, and I’m not sure how well said damage control will turn out to be. Personally, I don’t plan to complete Eureka or the relics this expansion, because I don’t want to deal with Pagos.

There is also the complaint about the content formula being the same since ARR and how boring/stale that has become, in addition to the ever-present “This content is too faceroll”/“Pls nerf this it’s too hard” bickerments—which stem from the extreme lack of any decent difficulty curve in this game from MSQ to dungeons to 8-mans/24-mans to Extremes/Savage. The only deviation the developers have done from the formula this expansion has been Ultimate. And, as much as I love the content (and I do still think there should be at least 2 per each expansion for the hardcore players), it’s still content for the 1%. There is no innovative content for the majority. Eureka was supposed to be that, but it’s more akin to Diadem than anything else. It takes all the aspects people hated from old-school MMOs and tries to implement them into an MMO that just doesn’t work with old-school design (by this, I mean FFXIV is too fast-paced to make mob chaining a la FFXI fun or enjoyable—instead it’s carpal tunnel-inducing).

The two biggest features of Stormblood—Eureka and Shirogane housing—were both flops on release. And while Anemos was far better received than Pagos, there were still plenty that didn’t like the shift of the relic to it. And Shirogane’s release was just a complete dumpster fire. The addition of new wards was nice, but it was still a band-aid fix to the housing problem in this game.


With regards to the DDoS, that’s just people looking for someone to blame, and not understanding how DDoS attacks actually work and what they specifically target. NA doesn’t have much room to complain about a significant loss of game time due to it—I think we’ve lost maybe a couple hours maximum since the attacks started. EU may have a bigger argument, and I wonder if, for them, it’s entirely DDoS and not infrastructure problems with their specific data center. But it’s difficult to say.

For DDoS attacks specifically, if the attacks are not specifically targeting SE’s servers or infrastructure, but another ISP outside of their jurisdiction (like an Internet backbone), all SE can do is try to put pressure on that ISP to fix the issues. And, even then, DDoS are hard to protect against given how they originate from random IPs and not always the same IP. But they cannot do more, and they are not responsible for offering compensation (i.e., free game time) for another ISP being under fire.



But some of the complaints that I have seen here and on Reddit have different degrees of merit, such as the job balancing and the trash heap that Eureka is. When you feel like your feedback isn’t being heard or is being blatantly ignored, I think people have a right to be frustrated about it.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

While I don't have as many complaints.....there are things the devs do need to listen to especially in regards to Eureka which I've been avoiding like the plague(heck I barely even bothered with Anemos).

In regards to changes...it seems they won't happen until the next expansion...at least for major ones but some balancing still can be done if they listened by the time 4.5 rolls around

As for the pacing in which content is released in.....it could be better.

I'm not asking for new content to be released every day cuz that's a bit too much,just a bit of reduction to the gaps between each patch

I dunno how much restriction Square Enix is imposing on the XIV team at the moment,but they can and need to do better especially since XIV is currently Square's most profitable and critically acclaimed game(well the relaunch not 1.0 obviously) in a decade so they've got to at least give it a bit more push

[Deceptus]

HyoMin pretty much said most of it but I what I think is the developers have gotten lazy and content in what they know works. This is because the times they have tried to innovate, it hasn't been well received. But that's not on the player base. The developers don't DESERVE our appreciation, they should STRIVE to obtain it.

And they have largely failed in that regard since ARR.

They've released lackluster content. We got less content due to Diadam, and Diadem was underwhelming. We've got less content due to Eureka, and Eureka is underwhelming.

Their servers and their netcode are pretty bad.

They don't learn from their previous mistakes. Eureka is literally the 3rd iteration of Diadem. They put multiple early SB MSQ's and Job Quests inside the instanced servers at the begining of the expansion, despite doing this in HW and it doing the exact same thing. And then they wonder why the game is on fire when no one can get past Rauhban or Pipin.

They've clearly went away from the Mantra of "Putting fun first" and "Not relying on patches later to fix content". They have literally gone away from the things they "Learned" from the 1.0 failure.

[Stormfur]

Dev Team Backlash

I feel like the dev team gets a lot of (understandable) backlash from players who feel like their favorite class is being ignored. One of the biggest selling points of this game is that "you can be whatever class you want to be on one character" - yet if you're prohibited from joining parties because you're a DRK or a MCH or whatever -- that responsibility lies solely with the dev team to properly balance that class so that it has an equal chance to enjoy the content they've created. If I could tell them anything, it would be to stop stressing out so much about every class having its own gimmick. Yes, they should play differently, but just because one class has a gauge, doesn't mean they all need one, for example.

And I get it, balancing is hard. And we're going to get even MORE jobs come 5.0, which means MORE balancing, not to mention new skills or traits for everyone to learn as they level up. It's like they're on their very own treadmill, except it's not about gearing up, but differentiating classes while keeping them balanced. Maybe it's more like a hamster wheel than a treadmill!

You Ungrateful Lot!

I'd imagine if the dev team could read the NA forums, they'd probably think we're a very demanding and ungrateful lot. We really aren't, of course...it's just that we love Final Fantasy as much as they do, and we don't want to see it go the route of so many failed MMOs out there. Plus, we put a lot into this game -- both time and money -- and as such, we'd like to think that we have some say in the direction the game goes.

A game which doesn't take the feedback of its players into consideration will simply wither on the vine. Case in point: the latest WoW expansion. After alllll that feedback, they still doggedly insisted "we know better than you", and did it their way anyway. I think there's no better way to demonstrate how little the players mean to them than to spit in the face of feedback like that.

(Continued on next post)

[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.

[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

[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.