FF14 devs just keep doing your thing because my god

[TheNight]

Boy did this post age well

[AwesomeJr44]

Boy did this post age well

This thread makes milk look like it ages well lmao

[CStrife912]

This thread makes milk look like it ages well lmao

Well technically it still is accurate to a degree it has aged well.. blizzard still keep screwing up other IP like Diablo 4 and overwatch cause they have no clear vision. WoW technically has had one decently received expansion after 3 back to back bad experiences but that’s one game in their library. 14 has a consistent vision still regardless if it’s one you like or not and they have pretty much still stuck to their guns on it for better or worse. Probably going to have to wait till 7.1 before we see if truly we need to course correct (player count is still very healthy for an mmo, yeah not the healthiest it was but either way)

[Shurrikhan]

Unintentional necro, but...

so we had terrible covenant balance exactly because they didnt want the high end to feel """forced""" to change

That was the reason given for being cautious and incremental with buffs that could force degens to grind for 40+ hours to get back to their former power with that faint bonus... just before or after a new raid would be launching. Bigger changes, therefore, were purposely staggered away from raid release / progression periods.

They wanted those who had swapped to X not to immediately have to swap to Y and grind it out because they'd inadvertently made the previously 3rd place covenant that much better than the current 1st place covenant. That was never given as a reason not to balance covenants at all. Such was instead the nature of each covenant ability doing something unique, meaning that even if as as balanced as can be, one would often be better for BGs, another for Arena, another for AoE or M+ (most weeks), and another for Raids or single-target or maybe certain high-key M+ dungeons on Tyrannical weeks.

They could and should have made those skills a bit more versatile, perhaps even sacrificing a bit of that uniqueness and the thematic component for that greater breadth of content for which a given skill would still be useful, but it was precisely because they prioritized story-telling and the more casual content side of things that we ended up with that 'problem'.

-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"

This was, again, true only during raids' release. Once most servers have already finished up any competitive span of progression, that no longer applied at all.

And consider the alternative, such as making fine adjustments away from raid releases and big changes right when the new raid comes out:

Let's say you play Arcane Mage and it did quite well last raid tier after its first couple weeks of being undertuned (having been accidentally overbuffed in compensation). It also saw very few nerfs in the time since, so you don't bother gearing up many alts on the off-chance you'll be nerfed.

Then the new tier comes out and only then is Arcane made to suffer for having been accidentally overbuffed last tier... and your main is ****ed, while the alt you didn't bother gearing because its kit isn't very flexible and you just don't like it as much... got gigabuffed because its inflexibility hurt it last tier, so now you have to scramble to deal with that.

Is that matter of being thrown to the wind and having to reroll and regrind right in the middle of release-week progression somehow more fun than just having only incremental and cautious buffs/nerfs during progression and saving the larger tune-ups and reworks for between tiers?

-Torghast, especially twisting corridor that can take 2-3 hours on layer 8 can be a decent solo challenge, yet awards 0 gear

Even when Layer 8 was current, it took under an hour. Heck, back then, the "soft-timer" (a one-shotting boss, the Terragrue, slowly pursuing you) would have booted you from there long before.

And it gave the resources required for legendary gear. You know, the pieces that could be responsible for over 10% of your throughput?

-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

People are free not to enjoy content. Imagine if to progress in Savage, you had to do Crystaline Conflict.

Note that they were fine with people being able to use Visions to get good gear. They just did not want to be forced to do it just to progress in wholly separate content.

-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

AP was never a "rest of the game" system if obliged at the rates it was for raiders. It was Maw of Souls spam, then Islands spam. By tuning raids around having well-leveled Artifact Weapons or Hearts of Azeroth, raiders were obliged to narrow the content from which they'd get AP to just the most efficient, since there was no hard ceiling on how far they could be progressed.

You may as well say that Endwalker's Relic Grind gives players all the freedom in the world by which to progress said relics... all while releasing that grind at the same time you release a Savage tier balanced around having those Relic weapons maxed out. See how many actually go and explore all the activities available to them, and enjoy doing so, rather than just spamming Hunts and perhaps a daily Expert Roulette. Oh wait, even without that urgency, that's already what people do now.

-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

???

None among an immersive world, minor facial movements, weather systems, skill animations, or world-building were removed or 'abandoned' for the sake of Esports. There never were any weather effects, NPC conversations, or open worlds... in arena, M+, or World First raids. And they sure as heck weren't removing stuff like that just to give a streamer an extra frame or two in speed-leveling in WoW Classic.

At worst, Esports is arguably a tiny part of the reason why WoW removed the ability to clip many skills animations (you'd previously just pop 5 buffs within the same 0.1 seconds and one-shot someone, if your class was able), but that's it. Even that, though, was primarily because people disliked being no-telegraph one-shot, regardless of whether the super-bursty specs had poor sustain outside that ridiculousness.

_________

There are PLENTY of real problems in WoW to complain about, so I don't know why anyone would try for this BS instead.

Introducing some degree of actual cap to borrowed powers progression made sense. Not having major balance changes or spec reworks drop right with new raids made sense. Allowing people to play just what they wanted, instead of different forms of content being dependent on one another, made sense. Incentivizing alt-leveling and reducing the individual grind required per character just to keep up, made sense. And Torghast, for better or worse, had the largest reward in the game at the time, not "0 rewards".

Should they have released Covenants as reps and made each skill more versatile? Absolutely. Should they not have skimped out on Torghast, leaving it a bland portion of what was promised? Duh. Should they not have half-assed the story-telling and story-pacing, generally ruined characters, etc.? Obviously. But the 'problems' you're focusing on here... weren't problems.

[Xlantaa]

The problem is that Blizzard is not Blizzard anymore, it is Activison. This is why I do not understand why there are some people asking to Yoshi-P leave FF14. They do not understand what amount of disasters can bring a new director. Who will you put? Kitase or Nomura? They are good in their stuff, but I don´t see them managing a MMO.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is that Blizzard is not Blizzard anymore, it is Activison. This is why I do not understand why there are some people asking to Yoshi-P leave FF14. They do not understand what amount of disasters can bring a new director. Who will you put? Kitase or Nomura?

While I have to agree with your "the devil you know..." warrant here... I feel like a lot of people are feeling basically that exact same energy from XIV of late; that it feels less like any sort of project of love so much as a cash-grab, and Yoshida himself --if only because he's the face that's there, be it to enshrine or burn in effigy-- has become pretty synonymous with that kind of jaded contentedness that many feel is increasingly condemning to a crash that will at best be moderately graceful.

At the same time, I wouldn't trust Kitase or Nomura over Yoshida. But, show me new blood with some real zest and zeal and at least a mostly reassuring amount of experience, ideally alongside proof that more of the game's revenue would be going back into the game and that they're changing things where reasonable to finally beef up their talent, and I'd jump ship real quick.

[Lunalepsy]

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!!

Both games are meh. The genre needs a revolution.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Both games are meh. The genre needs a revolution.

Ashes of Creation hype/copies baby!

I'm suuuuuure it'll be the genre savor that so many MMO players are hoping it to be.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Ashes of Creation hype/copies baby!

I'm suuuuuure it'll be the genre savor that so many MMO players are hoping it to be.

It's never going to release, and even if it does, it's going to flop hard.

[Aword3213]

Ashes of Creation hype/copies baby!

I'm suuuuuure it'll be the genre savor that so many MMO players are hoping it to be.

I'm sure my great grandson will be elated about its release