General concerns with the Devs content philosophy

[Arkfrost]

Hi everyone,

I know, most of you absolutely love the new expansion. I also really love it and in my opinion so far it is the best expansion until now. The storytelling was brilliant, the main villain was amazing, the skill changes are mostly nice (with only a few exceptions like mainly SMN and Healers) and overall I am very happy with how the expansion turned out.

However, I don't like to see everything through rose-colored glasses and I want to emphasize on the negative aspects as well, which I would love to change in the future, since they really bother me a lot and I believe I'm not the only one having these issues with the game.


1. Role Quests:

This point is pretty self-explanatory. Role Quests just feel like a cheap way for the devs to save workload and I am absolutely unpleased with that.
When Yoshida-san announced, that instead of job quests we are getting only role-quests, but to make up for the less quest-count they're getting a lot of quality improvement.

So I have completed all crafter, gatherer and the melee dps role quests. I've also watched the full role quests of all other roles on YouTube.
Now I am asking myself: "Where is that increase in quality?". So far all role quests are of exactly the same quality as the job quests from Heavensward or Stormblood. I see absolutely nothing special there. Not only are they not special, some are even the same thing, gameplay-wise.

For example the level 70 tank role quest is:
Talk to the questgiver, go to Lakeland, look for sin eater mobs at a certain destination, kill these mobs, do that again, done.
Now look at the physical dps level 70 role quest:
Talk to the questgiver, go to Lakeland, lure out a normal mob with bait the questgiver gives you at a certain destination, kill the mob, done.
Or the magical dps level 70 role quest:
Talk to the questgiver, go to Amh Araeng, look for a sin eater at a certain destination, kill the mob, done.
Or the healer level 70 role quest:
Talk to the questgiver, go to Lakeland, run into a black circle, kill a mob, done.

There is no diversity, like former job quests. Just to show you, what I understand as a unique job quest: Many of the White Mage quests revolved around beating mobs, while at the same time healing a certain objective (like that big tree in the Deep Shroud). Or the Dark Knight job quests, where you had to absorb darkness and make sure you don't take too much damage inbetween different waves of mobs.

But these role quests? They just feel like a copy-pasta of the same general quest-concept, just with different NPCs, slightly different lore-details and somewhat different locations.

2. Missing Gunbreaker and Dancer glamour:

This is one of my biggest gripes with this expansion.

When Stormblood was released we got Ifrit, Garuda, Titan, King Mog, Leviathan, Shiva, Ramuh, Ravana, Bismarck, Thordan, Nidhogg, Sephirot, Sophia, Zurvan, Dreadwyrm, Gordian, Midan and Alexandrian glamour weapons for Samurai and Red Mage.

Now when Dancer and Gunbreaker got released, all we got were Omega weapons for both of them and that's it.
I am not asking, that on top of all these weapons we got for SAM and RDM, we're also getting Susano, Lakshmi, Shinryu, Tsukuyomi, Byakko, Suzaku, Seiryu, Genji, Diamond, Ultimate Dreadwyrm and Ultimate Ultima weapons, but at least give us a decent amount of them. Maybe all the Heavensward and Stormblood primal weapons, the Ultimate weapons and the Stormblood raid weapons, but not just 1 glamour option from pre-Shadowbringers.
That is extremely cheap and sad.


3. "Empty" zone design

Apparently since Heavensward the Devs are making the zones bigger just for the sake of being big (and because of flying giving us a speed boost), but in turn they neglect a vital aspect: Making these zones actually look alive and giving them attention to detail.

I made a collection of screenshots, that show, how barren and empty every zone looks:
https://imgur.com/a/mYAReBb

I do understand, that with Norvrandt I can't expect a land filled with people, due to the flood of light essentially turning the land into a post-apocalyptic zone, but at least give us some clutter, some critters, some more bushes, etc. Fill the zone with things.

And if you're saying that I'm just taking screenshots from afar, where objects aren't loaded, here's another collection of screenshots taken up close, showing how empty the zones are:
https://imgur.com/a/qJEM9Ck

Now what would I want, you ask? I would ask, that the zones are actually filled with things.
The most prominent example of an area that looks absolutely non-immersive is the slums in front of Eulmore. I mean, there are over 60 huts, just in front of the gate, but only a handful of people standing around, the street looks clean, there are barely any boxes, bottles or barrels (seriously, do these people have ANY food/drink at all?) and most especially: There is no junk lying around.
To show, how these could look MUCH better, here's an edited picture comparison I've made to show, how this "slum" would look actually believable:
https://s3.gifyu.com/images/ffxiv_18...115908_451.gif
Here's the static version of that image: https://imgur.com/a/jE4UOtv

And to give you an in-game comparison of empty vs filled, look at the bar in the Crystarium vs the restaurant in Limsa:
https://imgur.com/a/YcgfDUK
The restaurant in Limsa could still have a bit more going on, but it already looks alive and you can see the attention to detail there, while in the Crystarium it's just a few empty tables with stools and one or two NPCs sitting around.

4. Most of the game still not voiced:

The MSQ cutscenes are mostly voiced and there is more voice acting in the game in general now, but still, other MMORPGs like WoW and especially ESO manage to voice almost everything in their game - even sidequest stuff (while still retaining high quality. just look at ESO having different dialects for every race and ways of speaking for different NPCs).
I think we're at a point, where Final Fantasy XIV deserves the resources/budget, to get at least all (new) cutscenes voiced. Or at least all MSQ, Role Quest and Raid Quest cutscenes.


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So the main point people usually argue with is "Yeah, but the devs only have so many resources". Oh please, don't get me with that.
Although I hate comparing FFXIV with that game, how come the WoW devs are able to do all these things right? Yes, of course WoW has a ton of flaws that make me not wanna play that game, but these flaws, people usually complain about are general design ideas, like Azerite (which is just a grind system, from which we have tons in FFXIV) for example or boringly designed content (island expedition as an example), but those are not a matter of worload spent, but just having the wrong idea, people would not like.
And the point "But WoW has way more resources" is invalid as well. The dev team that worked on 5.0 was 296 people main staff (in-house), 23 people outsourced and over 1200 people working on it in total. Until a few days ago I thought, that WoW must have like 500-800 people working on it, but there I was mistaken. WoW also has only around 200-300 people working as main staff.

I know, that the WoW community is MUCH more whiny than the FFXIV community, but nevertheless: countless development decisions that happen would cause a community outrage, if WoW did something similar, whereas in FFXIV people mostly do not care or just nag a little bit and are fine with it after a few days of playing.

So how come, a game consider "so crappy" can manage to do all these things right, even without having actually more people working on it?

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Also, a general issue I have is with the Devs unwillingness to make old content entertaining or worthwhile doing again, like for example challenge mode dungeons. They don't even need to make the dungeons any different. Just increase the HP pool of mobs, let them deal more damage and make beating the dungeon harder, so it deserves getting better rewards at the end (stuff like a good amount of gil, extra tomes, achievements, maybe some pets or a pack of materia tokens).
Yoshida stated, that the devs don't want to touch old content, but at the same time we get stuff like old primals getting an invunerability buff during their ult or other unncecessary changes in old content.

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These were the main issues, that just came to my mind at first. Surely, there are even more. However, those are my main concerns as for now.