Criticism of Shadowbringers and the hostility there in

[Jojoya]

This expansion did see several cuts, and thats still worth criticizing, which every consumer has a right to do. One of the main issues with FFXIV is the lack of it as it stands, no company or game is infallable, and no company or game should be held above it.

And the credits mean nothing, they had a large team work on the 5.0 patch story and content, which was then reduced to a smaller team to work on the fureture patches.

We also got new content this expansion to offset the reduction in other content. The Firmament is completely new content. We likely would have had Island Sanctuaries this expansion if not for COVID screwing up the development schedule (it was teased at the 2018 FanFest so we know it was already in development). Save the Queen is getting multiple raid instances where Eureka only had one and Diadem had none. Dungeons might have been hit but we got other new content to offset them.

Did we end up with slightly less overall content this expansion? Yes, but the reduction is not as great as some players want to make it seem. I'm far happier with less content if it means quality is maintained over more mediocre content released just for the sake of saying "we gave you more content". Pushing bad content to release is a waste of everyone's time, both developer and player.

[strawberrycake]

The problem is also the lack of information
There are interviews with Yoshida completely in Japanese that if it is not for the fans themselves we would not have information about ANYTHING, so difficult was it to maintain a flow of information regarding the status of Ultimate instead of releasing everything on the Live Letter?

If I had said that they had problems months before the live letter, it would be understood, but they didn't say anything, not to mention that they haven't said ANYTHING about why we don't have a new Frontline.

What little they have said about PvP has been about 6.0 and it svague as per usual

[Caurcas]

No amount of niche content will fix busted, and/or boring gameplay systems.

[strawberrycake]

Nice fan-fiction

They're not understaffed (just have to check the staff roll), and thus they don't lack budget, and FF16 doesn't impact much FF14, if at all (they're more intelligent than that). The inertia of FFXIV is a conscious and continuous decision from the devs and Yoshida. They panic at the idea of players being "lost", so we have all these shitty quests, the linear dungeons, the shallow game systems, etc. and changing this would lose players, and anything slightly different is very carefully put aside, or even outside, like Eureka, Bozja or Blue mage.

It wouldn't if they actively created better tutorials, updated information and re-evaluated a lot of the older aspects of the game, the issue is that none of that happens, making the game has more depth doesn't mean players wil leave, not teaching them how to properly play the game will make them leave because the game isn't intuitively giving them the tools needed to do so. And in that the problem begins again Not criticising SE, or in some cases choises made is why some things stagnate.

Stop being afraid of change, it doesn't mean casuals can't play the game, it doesn't mean hardcore players get more fun over you, it means keeping the game up to date so the people developing it no longer have to stagnate themselves in a system thats dated and old.

Also the Battle team is literally 4 guys and their interns, thats undermanned, the Credits and staff roll means nothing if they aren't working on XIV. Creative Unity 3 is working on multiple projects, the staf of that Unit worked on the Initial 5.0 patch and then were moved.

[strawberrycake]

Problem of the Live letters is not only the language, but that most of the time the questions are chosen amongst japanese players who may or not share pressing issues to ask, plus theres always tons of questions wasted on things that were answered already, or are 100% pointless.

Probably due that questions are selected already most of the time but im surprised no one asked Yoshida about Y'shtola sex life of things like that yet...

That doubles back into none of the interviews done in Japan being shown the player base at large.Yoshi P covers a wide array of topics at times, and so do the devs of the game, a lot of this never makes it to the Westtern playerbase

[Kuroka]

The problem is also the lack of information
There are interviews with Yoshida completely in Japanese that if it is not for the fans themselves we would not have information about ANYTHING, so difficult was it to maintain a flow of information regarding the status of Ultimate instead of releasing everything on the Live Letter?

If I had said that they had problems months before the live letter, it would be understood, but they didn't say anything, not to mention that they haven't said ANYTHING about why we don't have a new Frontline.

The whole viera backlash could have been avoided if they would have said so right from the start and not... "maybe, please wait for the next fanfest" lol

I get they're japanese and i respect some things just run differently there, but as well they should do that and at least adjust a bit more to our regions, at least english...


Also i still miss my 2nd ex dungeon, i just cant help...

[Alaray]

I agree that a corporation should do better by their customers, and dedicate more resources to something that's bringing in as much money as it does (while monetized further with the re-selling of event items, extra inventory space via retainers, mogstation existing etc...).

Still shocks me the battle team is as small as it is, granted it's grown, but for a team that works on everything it's pretty yikes.

And still remembering when they mentioned they can't do coil-level cutscenes in the future due to the cost requirement.

But if people don't seem to care, and the company continues to provide less, they have little incentive not to. Especially when there's people ready and willing to defend them for it.

[kaynide]

It wouldn't if they actively created better tutorials, updated information and re-evaluated a lot of the older aspects of the game, the issue is that none of that happens, making the game has more depth doesn't mean players wil leave, not teaching them how to properly play the game will make them leave because the game isn't intuitively giving them the tools needed to do so. And in that the problem begins again Not criticising SE, or in some cases choises made is why some things stagnate.

I for one would love for them to actually take some time and budget and do a proper expansion level TLC update to the game, but I don't think it will happen.

While it's true for a lot of countries, Japan especially has a huge push to develop disposable, short-lived things in the interest of making things feel fresh or attempting to drive sales. Like we're talking a new flavor of kitkat or pringles every month or two..never to be seen again.

I expect this mindset is in part why older content is basically tossed aside when it really shouldn't be hard to cap iLVLs to maintain some form of challenge (eg crystal tower series raids don't even do mechanics anymore)

[strawberrycake]

I for one would love for them to actually take some time and budget and do a proper expansion level TLC update to the game, but I don't think it will happen.

While it's true for a lot of countries, Japan especially has a huge push to develop disposable, short-lived things in the interest of making things feel fresh or attempting to drive sales. Like we're talking a new flavor of kitkat or pringles every month or two..never to be seen again.

I expect this mindset is in part why older content is basically tossed aside when it really shouldn't be hard to cap iLVLs to maintain some form of challenge (eg crystal tower series raids don't even do mechanics anymore)

Thats one of the main things I do worry about with the game, while Yoshi-P may say he wants to do this for the rest of his life, we don't know what the board members and investors feel, we have no clue whats internally being talked about or said about how XIV is being handled internally. But with how so much of this game is aged, very poorly aged, and out of date, it makes one wonder.

Along with the scaling being touched up with Endwalker, it would make more sense to add in resonable ilvl caps, as well as take another look at the jobs and how they're scaling as a whole within said content before the release, possibly things like classes getting AoE earlier since the newer jobs already have it low lvl, update the hall of novice to teach it, update the tutorial pop ups for it, and thats just one example. So much of this game has changed since ARR and it needs to reflect that.

I don't blame so many for being scared of High end content, or change, or anything really, when the game itself doesn't teach you how to even play anything right.

[BunniEclair]

Thats one of the main things I do worry about with the game, while Yoshi-P may say he wants to do this for the rest of his life, we don't know what the board members and investors feel, we have no clue whats internally being talked about or said about how XIV is being handled internally. But with how so much of this game is aged, very poorly aged, and out of date, it makes one wonder.

Yoship is a board member now, iirc. We can assume he did not make that statement lightly or without any internal knowledge on plans for the game. Things can always change but for now it’s safe to assume FFXIV is here to stay for a while.

Coupled with his brief mentions of looking into engine updating options, I think we will get updates in the future to help bring the game up to more modern standards...just probably slower than we would like.