More downgrades...(Pandaemonium Savage spoilers)

[Batbrat]

The voice should have been there tbh. The music though-I think one of their glaring issues is that they've been working with their same little team this entire time. Of course thats very heartwarming and pretty much guarantees them success since they're a proven golden group. BUT. The problem is the game is so big now that they can't really keep up with everyones expectations anymore, just being that main group. They have to expand and hire new people to keep up with all demands. On one hand it sounds easy, but on the other I know the feeling about it is most likely something along the lines of, "ah @#$ now we're gonna have to deal with newbies who might get a big head and change the work atmosphere" which-that's a very valid concern too. New people on board does change things. Personally, I dont know if that risk would be worth it. It could go either way. It could be a success and easy transition or it could be a nightmare where everyone hates the new releases because its by someone else and you can tell + the new employees are barking about what they think they deserve and posting twitlongers because yoshi didnt smile one day he walked in lol. Complicated issue, but I wish them the best.

I'm not stupid, everyone knows companies don't give a toss about any of us. But them not caring about us doesnt mean we suddenly have to act cruel to the one we know is behind the music. I dont care, I dont care. You can be bitter if you want, you can cry about it all day long. Slide down the walls of your room if youd like. I'm content just knowing Soken survived. I'd much much rather that than 2 songs and he didnt make it. Slide down your wall with Simple Plan's 'how could this happen to me' playing. There's a song for you, how about that.

[KuroMaboroshi]

Some context on what was been classed a "downgrade" here:

• usually none of the normal raids have voice acting. This is consistent across expansions. Eden had some outlier fights in that regard, but didn't set a new consistent standard.
• whether or not a bonus phase gets a new song is inconsistent at best. e4s (using an old Primals arrangement for 3rd phase that is also used in The Weapon's Refrain) and e8s had no new music, while e12s did. If someone wants to argue "downgrade", it happened during Eden compared to Omega, as the latter had extra music more consistently due to its use of door-bosses every tier. However, Omega was an "upgrade" over Alexander in that regard.

I am not saying whether those things being "standard" for the raid is good or bad. I don't think anyone would ever argue wouldn't like if we got more instead of less things, but it's important to actually compare datapoints fairly rather complain about broken standards that never existed.

[Jandor]

Phase 2 doesn't always get different music, new music doesn't seem to have quite as consistent (some might say rigid) a pattern as many other things in XIV do.

Maybe Soken had a bit of writers block? Spent too long coming up with new bangers for P8S & P12S and didn't have any any time left over to slap something together for P4S?

[Iscah]

It just seems overly picky to me to tally up exactly how many new bits of music we got. Would you also go through the MSQ and work out how many new tracks there are in each expansion? How many minutes of music in total?

From memory, Eden has more tracks but a lot of them are remixes of existing music. I assume a lot of Omega is the same but I'm not so familiar with the tunes to recognise them.

The current variety is on par with Alexander's first tier and we haven't seen the rest of the raids yet to compare.

[Wilford111]

For me personally, it isn't just the music in the raids that have been getting downgraded. Almost every song in this game is remixed/using the same composition from one of the two expansion theme songs, or one of the new zone themes. Either that or straight up copy/pasting a song from a previous expansion.

I dunno I think the soundtracks for this game (as catchy as they are) are getting lazier and lazier. I This isn't a new thing I've been thinking either, I got this impression all the way back in Stormblood when the music in the first dungeon is literally just Limsa but in a minor key. That's the laziest example I can think of and it's the one that got me to really pay attention to just how small the amount of original compositions are in this game.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Im just gonna say it. The music in Endwalker is a downgrade. Soken was very ill and thats awful. Im so glad he is doing better. They should have gotten other composers then.

[technole]

Considering phase 2 doesn't really 'leave' Dracula's castle doesn't immediately warrant it. On the other hand we knew they cut corners this expansion to get things out the door before 2022, so could chalk it up to that as well.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Some context on what was been classed a "downgrade" here:

• usually none of the normal raids have voice acting. This is consistent across expansions. Eden had some outlier fights in that regard, but didn't set a new consistent standard.
• whether or not a bonus phase gets a new song is inconsistent at best. e4s (using an old Primals arrangement for 3rd phase that is also used in The Weapon's Refrain) and e8s had no new music, while e12s did. If someone wants to argue "downgrade", it happened during Eden compared to Omega, as the latter had extra music more consistently due to its use of door-bosses every tier. However, Omega was an "upgrade" over Alexander in that regard.

I am not saying whether those things being "standard" for the raid is good or bad. I don't think anyone would ever argue wouldn't like if we got more instead of less things, but it's important to actually compare datapoints fairly rather complain about broken standards that never existed.

I’m comparing it because you would think the expansion succeeding the expansion that broke record sales would add some upgrades in some places. I’m directly comparing first tier of this to the first tier of the other expansions. Eden had 5 songs, 3 if you don’t want to count the remixes in p4. Omega had 3. This tier has 2, with the second song just being a remix of the first song.

It just seems overly picky to me to tally up exactly how many new bits of music we got. Would you also go through the MSQ and work out how many new tracks there are in each expansion? How many minutes of music in total?

From memory, Eden has more tracks but a lot of them are remixes of existing music. I assume a lot of Omega is the same but I'm not so familiar with the tunes to recognise them.

The current variety is on par with Alexander's first tier and we haven't seen the rest of the raids yet to compare.

Its the fact that on top of things like this we're already missing out on a lot more things despite this expansion having a 6-7 month delay. I really dont see how its nitpicky to expect at least some effort be put in for the savage version of a fight seeing as its pretty high end in difficulty. It seems like theres no winning with criticism though. Go too in depth and its why are you even playing the game. Call out one thing and its "nitpicky." Personally im not okay with getting less when the company is making the most it ever has been but good for you if thats the case.

[BaconBits]

The fact it took only 3 minutes for someone to try and shame you because of your disappointment in the music is actually kind of wild lmao.

[Xuled]

While I sympathize for Soken’s circumstances - he isn’t the only individual present who can craft beautiful pieces of music.

Also I think it’s completely unfair to even suggest the OP is being apathetic toward someone’s plight because of their willingness to criticize . While it wasn’t outright said, you’re belittling their character by making it seem that way and it kind of sucks.

welcome to how this "great" community operates btw. its all passive aggressive and emotional manipulation. most commonly found in male viera, catboys and male au'ra who turn out to be the biggest predators in this game ALWAYS.

anyways to the topic, yeah it sucks SE lets everything fall to Soken but what can we do? yoshi and him are pretty tight so if he wants to retain control i don't foresee yoshi-p changing that. sorry for bad formatting in pvp