Lack of End Game Content

[Xieldras]

Hey now! I like my gambling and being mad at pixels on a screen! ;D

I think the Dev team might be stretching themselves too thin on content overall. I know a few have been considered failures based on the threads about them (BLU, Eureka especially Pagos, Glam Dresser, Housing).

[linay]

The game isn't the same as it was 6 years ago. It has grown.

It has grown with the type of formula it has now. People unsubbing for parts of the expansion are only doing what Yoshida has said he's ok with people doing. The best way to give feedback if you really want change in the type of content they focus on is to quit completely until you see them changing the game. Otherwise, whatever it is they're doing for the past 6 years seems to work overall and they seem to like their current output for each expansion. It certainly works for me and some other players.

It has more revenue, more support and a bigger team. It has more resources it can recycle to create new content which all other games rightfully do.

Yoshida has said they're lacking people to do difficult PVE battle content. That doesn't change with bigger revenue.

As such, if true, then providing more Savage raid bosses probably won't take away from features like bard performance, but perhaps from Ultimate fight. After all, 2 Ultimate fights instead of 3 allowed them to do Baldesion Arsenal in Eureka. So more battle content of one type might take away from battle content of another type rather than from non-battle content.

[Krotoan]

The game isn't the same as it was 6 years ago. It has grown. It has more revenue, more support and a bigger team. It has more resources it can recycle to create new content which all other games rightfully do.
So why are we fed the same amount of content and why does it mean resources need to necessarily be taken away from something? Would it be so difficult to invest a little more into something we can all agree doesn't have a lot currently invested into?

Nobody is implying casual content is worthless. We'd just like OUR side to be a little more sated.

It has grown a lot. Which means every gear set requires even more work, every event and cutscene more testing to make sure it looks/sounds/plays OK with all the ingame assets and so on and so on. It definitely has more revenue, but does this go straight back into FFXIV? It seems not. I would love if it did and if we could be guaranteed that we would simply get more things instead of shifting teams around to sate one group while starving another I'd bet nobody would even bat an eye at your requests. Bigger team? I know they gave Yoshi even more responsibility but not necessarily more people.
The thing is we often get new things at the cost of other things. Eureka cost us content and so did diadem and lord of verminion. As long as the current schedule of content can be guaranteed there will be far less opposition to content as specifically targeted as "challenging endgame". But we cannot. By experience we've had slow releases and outright omissions because of "extra" content.

Both of our situations would be greatly improved if SE would just open up some resources for FFXIV to be expanded, I think that should be the focus of the community. Convince them that FFXIV is worth a bigger team and budget.

This thread became very "Us VS Them" on both sides, doesn't have to be though. We all want the game to be more expansive, but by example that's not what happens overall with this dev group. It's a blanket we're all tugging in different directions and someone's toes always end up sticking out, that's why people react like that.

[Avraym]

It has grown with the type of formula it has now. People unsubbing for parts of the expansion are only doing what Yoshida has said he's ok with people doing. The best way to give feedback if you really want change in the type of content they focus on is to quit completely until you see them changing the game. Otherwise, whatever it is they're doing for the past 6 years seems to work overall and they seem to like their current output for each expansion. It certainly works for me and some other players.

Yoshida has said they're lacking people to do difficult PVE battle content. That doesn't change with bigger revenue.

As such, if true, then providing more Savage raid bosses probably won't take away from features like bard performance, but perhaps from Ultimate fight. After all, 2 Ultimate fights instead of 3 allowed them to do Baldesion Arsenal in Eureka. So more battle content of one type might take away from battle content of another type rather than from non-battle content.

I don't see quitting as viable feedback. Posts like, "I'm unsubbing goodbye forever" are nothing more than shrill, attention seeking posts (something we see often).

Instead, I believe creating an open dialogue about the problem is better.

It worked for the gender lock new races after all.

If they have the revenue but not the people, then hire more staff? That seems like an easy problem with an easy fix.

[Xieldras]

I don't see quitting as viable feedback. Posts like, "I'm unsubbing goodbye forever" are nothing more than shrill, attention seeking posts (something we see often).

Instead, I believe creating an open dialogue about the problem is better.

It worked for the gender lock new races after all.

If they have the revenue but not the people, then hire more staff? That seems like an easy problem with an easy fix.

Agree to a certain point. Yes a lot of "goodbye forever" posts are attention-seeking but even for this game quitting while giving feedback is good for Devs to put a lens on something that might need to be looked at.

Also, for sure open dialogue is the best on forum posts. I know everyone is passionate about what they love but resorting to insults and passive-aggressiveness doesn't contribute to conversation. And respectful conversation is great. Players should be asking together for Square to dedicate more money to its MMO.

And although there will be some communication/culture troubles if they hire Devs overseas, if it's been a problem for so long then maybe investing a bit on that side will prove fruitful.

[Mahoukenshi]

I don't see quitting as viable feedback. Posts like, "I'm unsubbing goodbye forever" are nothing more than shrill, attention seeking posts (something we see often).

Instead, I believe creating an open dialogue about the problem is better.

It worked for the gender lock new races after all.

If they have the revenue but not the people, then hire more staff? That seems like an easy problem with an easy fix.

Based on what was written and quoted in various topics, it's not a simple "hire more" problem, but appears to be more about *finding* staff that fulfills their (high) standards for creating this kind of content. Unfortunately, I cannot find a concrete source for it.

[linay]

I don't see quitting as viable feedback. Posts like, "I'm unsubbing goodbye forever" are nothing more than shrill, attention seeking posts (something we see often).

Instead, I believe creating an open dialogue about the problem is better.

It worked for the gender lock new races after all.

If they have the revenue but not the people, then hire more staff? That seems like an easy problem with an easy fix.

I don't mean posting about quitting. I just mean that you say this game can change its formula because it has grown, but this game grew with its current formula. If it were to lose people on a permanent basis rather than a seasonal basis, then the developer would have to take notice. Otherwise, while they still appreciate the feedback and would want to create more content to appease those who want more challenging PVE, it might not be as high on their priority if they cannot find people to work on it without affecting their current schedule.

And hiring more staff is probably the problem because the people with the right qualifications are not applying from what I gather.

[Saidosha]

I also see XI mentioned a lot, but I'm afraid I do not have any experience with it to know how it properly compares.

The odds of you getting a non-polarized interpretation of XI is pretty small. I played it for a decade, but would have no hesitation in calling out flaws that reflect a creation of castes within the player base, a distinct lack of more modern features to at least make (older) content possible, a push for no-lifing/multi-boxing for certain feats, gross imbalances of enemy AoEs (including status effect spam/buff removal/incredibly high damage), and a hyper-fixation upon the "right way" to do things that tend to parrot the first publicly shared first clear strategy or the like that usually translated outright to job discrimination.

Now, in playing as long as I did, there were obviously things I liked that won me over more compared to WoW. Art style, for example, was a factor, taking on a more realistic western medieval style than the cartoony WoW fantasy take. I don't care for PvP or the common shortcomings it invites ranging from balance to (unreasonable) player expectation. It felt like XI took storytelling more seriously, both in content and presentation (frequent cutscenes compared to text window dumps). I'm still a fan of all jobs/classes on a single character over needing an alt army. Yet, I could also say I wasn't too keen on the complete absence of quest-based leveling in XI or a more solo-friendly process to leveling up in the majority of the game's early years. Meme jokes about DRGs sitting in Jeuno LFG for 8 hours didn't just spin out of the ether. RDMs being favored as a healer over WHM was very real regardless of how well a good WHM could pull their weight just fine. I wouldn't be surprised that if, upon RDM's implementation here, there were people pissed it wasn't a main healer or buff monkey, either. XI basically had a way of instilling... feelings... for better or worse, that sometimes run absent to the evolution of gaming and not just MMOs since its prime. And frankly, you'll still have people who will argue 75 cap is the superior version of the game despite it being just as prone to content exhaustion as XIV is, though with added complications specific to its own identity.

If there is a simple phrase I'd attribute to both XI and XIV, it'd be there's wasted potential. XIV only has the benefit of being the more recent game, and thus the most likely to get any form of significant content update just like Shadowbringers brought. We can point to (artificially) limited resources. We could say there might be a lack of talent to produce in such a timely manner. We can have people that refuse to accept a minority status or assert they're super secretly a majority and the naysayers are just idiots who don't get it. There is a valid concern of focus on Y means less of X. Some can't even decide what the hell a casual player or endgame activity is.

At this point, I'm just going to default to something no MMO has really yet to embrace in earnest: User Generated Content.

Give the players the intuitive tools they need to configure existing game assets into a customized venue and we could actually get the super, extra, difficult hard content some crave when official content is in a lull phase. Players who like jump puzzles could make their own. Those more interested in weaving independent plots can do so. What could amount to housing on crack by making a custom hangout hub is also something people could do. Some folks could configure scavenger hunts. Some could make an arena that's about overcoming specific challenges. Basically, the limit would be a mix of player imagination and the tools they're given, with acknowledgement you'd get no gear or EXP from it. You'd be doing it for the fun, either as a participant or a creator. Though, if it turns out those talking about difficulty won't do it precisely because it lacks reward, I can't say it paints a pretty picture about their true intent.

[Emmanellain]

Someone complaining about lack of content less than a month after expansion launch? This has got to be sum of that gooood bait.

[Xieldras]

Thank you Saidosha for the explanation and the great post, much appreciated! Interesting to see both MMOs kind of being polar opposites of each other in some regards.

Someone complaining about lack of content less than a month after expansion launch? This has got to be sum of that gooood bait.

Aww, someone not bothering to read the thread, contributing to the discussion and dismissing it entirely. So adorable