FF14 devs just keep doing your thing because my god

[Puremallace]

So I keep up on World of Warcraft news and other MMO's to see if they are doing anything interesting that is worth suggesting to the FF14 devs on these forums.

Just got done watching Blizzcon and dear god have Blizzard got themselves into a massive pickle. As predicted the people who said FF14 had systems that were too predictable have now gone silent here and in multiple other forums after seeing how the latest mess has played out.

It is literally so bad that World of Warcraft is about to face the mother of all content droughts as they try to fix the mess they have created and also try to time their next content patch to drown out the FF14 expansion release.

All I got to say is more power to the FF14 devs for having a vision of how they want the MMO played and sticking to without having to reinvent the wheel. I expect a FLOOD of new players leading up to Endwalker because Blizzard just has no vision and yet again they are in clean up mode to fix a mess they created.

If the most we are complaining about is the difficulty in getting a pretty blue glow on my Resistance weapon or how many Ultimates to add then you guys are doing just fine!!

[Reap00]

The heart and soul of Blizzard left with its founders. All that is remains is Activision.

[Puremallace]

The heart and soul of Blizzard left with its founders. All that is remains is Activision.

It is an uncoordinated mess. If you told me the new slogan was "All we got left is nostalgia" I would believe you because it is just night and day how bad it is. Game director basically admitting on stage they have no clue what to do with one of the core features of the expansion and asking the players for help is nuts.

This is not some side feature like glamour but literal core function of the entire expansion and they are clueless how to fix it.

[Shougun]

What they did to wc3 was dirty, my baby. . . (Which I'm blaming to the leadership not the dev teams that worked on it and then got boot scooted out before they were ready).



On a goofy aside though, you said people are silent after blizzard's debacle, pickle, or w.e you want to call it.. but I mean blizzcon just finished day 1.. So it's not like you've actually had time fairly see how people are now talking lol. I just thought it funny. 12 seconds after meeting finished, there is silence. HA YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY FOR YOURSELF!!! Meanwhile me thinking "you didn't even give me time to breathe before you started that".



There are still a number of things I think WoW has done interestingly that I will be happy to reference as "good ideas in action" and then of course a number of things that are proof of "awful ideas, don't copy plz" in action. Just because they stumble here and there doesn't mean people can't reference the game still. Wildstar is literally dead and I still like referencing their housing as a neat concept, that is probably a major reason why it didn't implode instantly. I mean fanboy-ism will make it seem like you can't but, just going to ignore that and call good ideas when I see them regardless of source ("the enemy!!!" *gasp* lol).

[StriderShinryu]

While I do wish FF14 was a little (okay, sometimes a lot) less predictable and by the numbers at this point, I still value that I can largely trust that we know when content is coming and what that content is. There's a certain comfort in that.

But, that aside, it sure seems that whole Boycott Blizzard thing sure didn't last very long, did it? Lots of talk about the show around and how it did and didn't do well, but no discussion at all anywhere about the blink and you miss it moral uproar.

[Ralph2449]

I definitely agree with the title as someone who moved from WoW, the ff14 devs are a lot better and have created a better game with, more importantly a better community because they just focus on content most people are doing, unlike WoW devs where they keep trying to push everyone in high end content if they want any cool rewards or even the feeling of gear progression and worse, force them to play with the most elitist tryhard obnoxious playerbase(That rivals LoL) in order to get said rewards which attracts even more obnoxious types that forget this is a video game.

After playing ff14 it is clear that WoW throughout the years has slowly abandoned everything for the sake of performance and high end content, there's so many small details in ff14 that probably required a lot of time to create yet they are so noticeable and improve immersion so much more and let's not even talk about world building being miles better, WoW especially shadowlands will be remembered as a good example of what happens to a game when you treat casuals like 5th class citizens and keep pushing high end content above all else, all other areas have suffered tremendously.

[Puremallace]

I definitely agree with the title as someone who moved from WoW, the ff14 devs are a lot better and have created a better game with, more importantly a better community because they just focus on content most people are doing, unlike WoW devs where they keep trying to push everyone in high end content if they want any cool rewards or even the feeling of gear progression and worse, force them to play with the most elitist tryhard obnoxious playerbase(That rivals LoL) in order to get said rewards which attracts even more obnoxious types that forget this is a video game.

After playing ff14 it is clear that WoW throughout the years has slowly abandoned everything for the sake of performance and high end content, there's so many small details in ff14 that probably required a lot of time to create yet they are so noticeable and improve immersion so much more and let's not even talk about world building being miles better, WoW especially shadowlands will be remembered as a good example of what happens to a game when you treat casuals like 5th class citizens and keep pushing high end content above all else, all other areas have suffered tremendously.

The actual devs seem really good over there but my god they lack vision and whoever is deciding that new systems need to be introduced constantly just needs to go. FF14 has some improvements it needs but I do not see them throwing out core fundamental systems every expansion for the lulz then laughing when it turns into a non stop train wreck.

I want to see them create cool stuff because then all the MMO devs push each other but wtf

[Vahlnir]

It is an uncoordinated mess. If you told me the new slogan was "All we got left is nostalgia" I would believe you because it is just night and day how bad it is. Game director basically admitting on stage they have no clue what to do with one of the core features of the expansion and asking the players for help is nuts.

This is not some side feature like glamour but literal core function of the entire expansion and they are clueless how to fix it.

What's funny about that is the player base tried to tell them what was wrong with these systems during the beta. Did they listen? Nope. They doubled, no, triple downed on them. This isn't the first time this has happened though. All I know is I jumped ship not even 2 weeks into Shadowlands, and as an 11-12 year WoW veteran I have never done this before. Been playing FF XIV exclusively since. I'm just glad I've been playing FF XIV all along. It really does put some things into perspective.

[Shougun]

What's funny about that is the player base tried to tell them what was wrong with these systems during the beta. Did they listen? Nope. They doubled, no, triple downed on them. This isn't the first time this has happened though. All I know is I jumped ship not even 2 weeks into Shadowlands, and as an 11-12 year WoW veteran I have never done this before. Been playing FF XIV exclusively since. I'm just glad I've been playing FF XIV all along. It really does put some things into perspective.

Say like with some issues people have with healers or bozja I find it likely that also those changes were in part due to feedback, maybe feedback gone wrong in that particular example of Healer at least (at least one of the healers probably should have kept an interesting DPS rotation), but I've always found it interesting that SE, imo, incorporates feedback even though it has the whole language barrier (there is a lot of evidence, imo, of feedback gone right- I don't meant to create an opening for someone to be like "devs should ignore players").



I have seen, a few times, where WoW has had a beta and then magically ignored ALL the feedback beta players gave and then pikachu faced when that exact issue from beta was an issue people had in the release. When Yoshida joked about working at Blizzard (for Diablo) I was like "maybe he should, could teach them a few things". Naturally there will be cases people feel unheard, part of that is just impatience (I swear if people looked at 6 month intervals rather than days / weeks they would see a lot more of their feedback is actively incorporated into the game). Diablo 3, once it was under new leadership, felt like they improved - I was hopeful it was a sign in general, but it seems like it didn't spread :/. Still talented people there, imo, interesting to watch- like EA still makes good games occasionally, just a little bit like your friend decided to abandon you for their new GF (activision) and you feel burned lol.


If only our team spoke back to us lol, but maybe they're trying to save their sanity XD.

[Ralph2449]

devs seem really good over there but my god they lack vision

I feel it is more due to devs sharing a mentality with certain high end players who see casual content as something "beneath them", especially people who use the word "deserve" a lot in a video game as if this is a real life job

They keep making changes to shield their high end from having to do anything in the game other than raid log which means everything else in the game suffers

-Covenants/legendaries, great idea, variety is great, yet they themselves admitted they didnt want to balance covenants much because some players would be "too invested" implying that if they balanced covenants these players would lose the investment and start from scratch, the kind of player who obsesses over minmaxing to that degree is usually not a casual one, so we had terrible covenant balance exactly because they didnt want the high end to feel """forced""" to change

-Balance, similarly to the above the class balance is horrendous exactly because they dont want their high end community to feel """forced""" to change because god forbid their spec is not FotM for a week, this also attracts the worst kind of players because they know if they change to FotM it ll be a long time till it gets nerfed so the community degenerates further into "play X, not Y"

-Torghast, especially twisting corridor that can take 2-3 hours on layer 8 can be a decent solo challenge, yet awards 0 gear, hell you only get a dumb mount to make another grind slightly faster, they said early on they did this to avoid repeating visions because their high end raiders complained they had to do visions instead of just raid log, and with the removal of titanforging this effectively ends solo gear progression which has lead many to be stuck at 200ilvl which is worthlessly low in random bgs or warmode with 226+ players running around

-Casual content, they have no idea what to do with it now because their high end players complained they had to play the rest of the game because casual content included some form of power gain, so instead they removed all power gains from casual content, made it ridiculously time gated and grindy and called it "casual progression" aka all those anima buildings and upgrades and expensive mogs, they might not share the mentality of "casual content is inferior and doesnt DESERVE rewards" but if they act to protect the people who do have that mentality the difference is irrelevant

-Esportification design, over the years they have abandoned many aspects of the game for the sake of performance, responsiveness etc, I only noticed that since I started playing FF14, a far more immersive world, from minor facial movements that express clear emotions, weather systems that affect the world/your clothes/hair, great animations that feel good to press, a far superior world building, all these in WoW have been completely abandoned for the sake of performance