Future direction of FFXIV

[Atelier-Bagur]

Ive been lurking and interacting with the forum here for a good time. I know I havent been here a good majority of this game's history; or at least havent been in the forums long enough to gauge general feeback and topic trends but from the majority of people here I'm curious about something.

Do you guys feel like the current dev team is incapable to lead this game 6.1 and beyond because of the good amount of complaints between gameplay, story, and general content releases. Should we shuffle devs around or replace Yoshi-P? Are people overall happy with the state of this game?

Wanna know people's thoughts.

[RobynDaBank]

Not gonna lie, the difference between the creative unit in charge of FFXIV and the rest of Square Enix is huge. I feel like people wishing Yoshida and co leaving would be a monkey's paw. Can't imagine SQEX's chosen replacement being anything but worse.

[aveyond-dreams]

This game has ups and downs but FFXIV's current management is still representative of the best SE has to offer. Make of that statement what you wish.

[Minarisweet]

This game has ups and downs but FFXIV's current management is still representative of the best SE has to offer. Make of that statement what you wish.

I feel like part of why yoship has the game in even a decent state is because he knows how to play around square enix's bullshit. There's a lot of talent in square enix but the company itself gets in the way of the devs a lot.

[Jeeqbit]

Do you guys feel like the current dev team is incapable to lead this game 6.1 and beyond because of the good amount of complaints between gameplay, story, and general content releases. Should we shuffle devs around or replace Yoshi-P? Are people overall happy with the state of this game?

I don't know how you could have possibly got this impression. Yoshi-P is regarded favorably and something of an internet legend at this point for how well he runs and develops the game and manages his team.

If Yoshi-P were ever not doing this, the future of the game would be in question because throughout history, a change in the person at the top more often than not sends everything downhill. The person who replaces them does not have the same passion, experience, beliefs and just magick that make it work. I'm confident they are aware of this too.

I don't know if I've ever seen an MMO with so much faith in its developers and operators. It doesn't take long to get that faith. In your first few quests, it only asks you to kill 3 enemies instead of 100 of them.

The "complaints" on the forums are here because this is where we've been asked to put them. The most important ones get changed eventually (but it can take at least two years because a lot of changes happen at expansion-level). When something isn't changed it usually relates to old content or isn't a major problem.

There are times when players are just in a minority about their complaints or they don't consider other players whose interests differ from theirs and this is where Yoshi-P is good at knowing when to listen, and when not to listen.

[StriderShinryu]

I wouldn't say a complete overhaul is needed, but I do think the game could use a breath of fresh air. I'd personally love to see forward progression in the game slowed for a while so that development time and resources could be spent on addressing the long term health of the game.

While the 4 month constant update schedule always means there's something right around the corner to look forward to, it also means the developers are locked into a rigourous, tightly scheduled development march that doesn't leave enough room for being really creative or for addressing some of the underlying issues that the game has faced for years now. The best we get is band-aid fixes that they can slot into the regular development schedule as time and staff are available, and only in things surface level enough to be created while the game is seeing completely active development. Frankly, with the end of the current story arc this would have been the perfect time to do it. Put out fun little side stories and combat instances but essentially go into at least partial rebuild mode with much of the rest. It may not seem like much now but 10+ years on, the cracks that exist now are going to be massive fissures.

[CrimsonGunner]

as things goes on , i don't see the healer role staying in the game and might even be abandoned/deleted later down the line.(both by devs and players)
they don't seems to address any of their issues, make bad implementation of their skills and leave it there for an entire expansion, healers among themselves are poorly balance to the point that identical skills(identical in every aspect of design and potencies) have 1 job cast them faster and less mp while another have them cast slower and cost much more mp(looking at ast and whm) not to mention current design is 1 button press most of the time when no healing is required which is most of the time in casual content(going from level 1-90 having only 1 dps button and 1 dot through the entire leveling experience), while having said content be done without a healer role in a party easily right now and such issue was not even addressed by the devs with evidences showing relevant content can be done without them (including current harder content that should not have been cleared without healers).

[HyoMinPark]

Ive been lurking and interacting with the forum here for a good time. I know I havent been here a good majority of this game's history; or at least havent been in the forums long enough to gauge general feeback and topic trends but from the majority of people here I'm curious about something.

Do you guys feel like the current dev team is incapable to lead this game 6.1 and beyond because of the good amount of complaints between gameplay, story, and general content releases. Should we shuffle devs around or replace Yoshi-P? Are people overall happy with the state of this game?

Wanna know people's thoughts.

Addressing the complaints that range from job balance to job gameplay to even smaller things such as content release schedules can be effectively addressed without replacing Yoshida or the development team. I don’t believe that replacing them is the way to go. They are clearly passionate about the game and what they do, and I prefer that in a team. Who knows if the replacements would be as passionate.

What the team needs to do is start listening more to feedback. And I don’t mean just blindly responding to whoever screams the loudest. They need to carefully consider each feedback, and then consider whether or not this feedback comes from players who are familiar with job or content. Listening to DPS mains or people who primarily play DPS with regards to healer gameplay issues is not the way to go; just like you wouldn’t listen to a healer main with regards to DPS balance. Listening to a non-raider with regards to Savage or Ultimate balance is not the way to go.

Sometimes I feel like the complaints that are considered come from people who scream loud enough, and not from the portion of the playerbase that actually matters with regards to the complaint being put forth.

[Jeeqbit]

while having said content be done without said role easily right now and it was not even addressed by the devs with evidences showing it can be done(including current content that should not have been cleared without healers).

I've done a lot of dungeons with 4 DPS before. The distinction between roles is not designed for them to be required but for them to be desirable, because in some dungeons 4 DPS can be very challenging.

[CrimsonGunner]

I've done a lot of dungeons with 4 DPS before. The distinction between roles is not designed for them to be required but for them to be desirable, because in some dungeons 4 DPS can be very challenging.

its not just 4 ppl dungeons, you have plenty of videos showing trials/normal raids and even savage raids being done without healers(sync) and its not just old content but right now EW relevant dungeons and every other old content when they were relevant.