Future direction of FFXIV

[KizuyaKatogami]

What was the 10th type of content? Also that is kind of sad that there was only 1 new content type, 20 additional quests, and a whole 6 more bosses after 3 expansions.
I assume the new content type was the 40man? And the 6 bosses, were the bosses in the 40man that could be done with 5 players.
There was 1 additional cutscene and we got 2 hours of additional cutscene length. I guess I understand why EW felt like a movie now 20 more quests and 2 more hours of cutscenes.
Seeing how the UI is still pretty terrible that tasks for the UI team should be doubled. Maybe they should put tasks completed cause it doesn't feel like they have complete 219 changes to the UI.
Don't care about how many races need to equip with gear. Dont care about the items.
I do like more scenes are voiced.

What’s interesting is, let’s look at stormblood for a moment. Had the normal amount of dungeons like HW. Had deep dungeon, new housing district, 4 relic zones, two ultimates, primal weapons for the new jobs, full voice acting for the 4 fiends fights, voice acting in the alli raids. The best part? None of this really came at the cost of any other content. Now look at ShB where they cut dungeons, cut deep dungeon, no primal weapons for the new jobs, no voice acting in the alli raid and weapons series, 2 relic zones, etc etc. I find it pretty funny that they chose what looked best on them, i’m very curious on how it would look had they compared SB to ShB.

The fact we still cant at the very least get dyable dungeon gear 3 expansions later is pretty telling, but not only that, now theyre literally cutting gear from dungeons. Whats next at this point?

[SeverianLyonesse]

What’s interesting is, let’s look at stormblood for a moment. Had the normal amount of dungeons like HW. Had deep dungeon, new housing district, 4 relic zones, two ultimates, primal weapons for the new jobs, full voice acting for the 4 fiends fights, voice acting in the alli raids. The best part? None of this really came at the cost of any other content. Now look at ShB where they cut dungeons, cut deep dungeon, no primal weapons for the new jobs, no voice acting in the alli raid and weapons series, 2 relic zones, etc etc. I find it pretty funny that they chose what looked best on them, i’m very curious on how it would look had they compared SB to ShB.

The fact we still cant at the very least get dyable dungeon gear 3 expansions later is pretty telling, but not only that, now theyre literally cutting gear from dungeons. Whats next at this point?

It's really difficult to compare the 5.x patches and 6.0 to prior expansions because of the pandemic.

Some of the EW dungeon gear is dyable, as it was in ShB.

And on top of things we've been dealing with stuff like removal of TP in ShB, the stat squish in EW, the graphics update, the DC visiting, and of course we can't forget the server crashes and login queues.

I just find people whinging and trying to bookkeep whether the content is "deficient" or not to be a lot of aimless nitpicking. Pick a couple things you want the devs to work on (that they actually *can* work on) and promote those ideas. Don't expect the content to be comparable from expansion to expansion--it never has been in ANY MMO.

[IdowhatIwant]

It's really difficult to compare the 5.x patches and 6.0 to prior expansions because of the pandemic.

Some of the EW dungeon gear is dyable, as it was in ShB.

And on top of things we've been dealing with stuff like removal of TP in ShB, the stat squish in EW, the graphics update, the DC visiting, and of course we can't forget the server crashes and login queues.

I just find people whinging and trying to bookkeep whether the content is "deficient" or not to be a lot of aimless nitpicking. Pick a couple things you want the devs to work on (that they actually *can* work on) and promote those ideas. Don't expect the content to be comparable from expansion to expansion--it never has been in ANY MMO.

TP was pretty obsolete even in HW. It existed but I don't remember people having the TP issues that ARR had. Server crashes should have never happened as it should have been fixed the first time back in ARR but they were quick to blame player internet rather than looking into the issue themselves. And the Pandemic is such a old excuse. This is a multi-billion dollar company and it is not my problem how they address working around the pandemic. Delays I think are understandable, but I can't excuse poor content as a fault of the pandemic. I have worked during the entire pandemic with little hinderance and my company is only multi-million dollar company. I don't care what about what excuses the player base makes for the short comings of the dev team because unless you are part of the dev team, your excuse is nothing more than a hypothesis.

Simply all I really want is the raid content to feel like something different than trials, and some class diversity back in tanks, healers, and ranged dps. I would not mind if classes actually had a decent skill ceiling and a skill floor again. I do believe some changes they have done were smart, Blood of the dragon and enochian being a trait is a good example, because these buffs were maintained basically by you doing your rotation correctly, and the change to a trait just removes the activation button. Some of the things seem so counter intuitive like removing stance dancing but keeping tank stance as something to turn on to generate emnity and turn off to halt emnity generation. It's basically a more boring version of stance dancing.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It's really difficult to compare the 5.x patches and 6.0 to prior expansions because of the pandemic.

Some of the EW dungeon gear is dyable, as it was in ShB.

And on top of things we've been dealing with stuff like removal of TP in ShB, the stat squish in EW, the graphics update, the DC visiting, and of course we can't forget the server crashes and login queues.

I just find people whinging and trying to bookkeep whether the content is "deficient" or not to be a lot of aimless nitpicking. Pick a couple things you want the devs to work on (that they actually *can* work on) and promote those ideas. Don't expect the content to be comparable from expansion to expansion--it never has been in ANY MMO.

Things were missing in ShB long before the pandemic even started though. The dungeon cut, deep dungeon, hildibrand, primal weapons, and voice acting were all confirmed cut before the pandemic came, and even when it did, the devs themselves stated they were working at 95% efficiency and that’s BEFORE they even took the what was it, 3-5 months to accommodate the loss of time due to the pandemic? I think when a game makes the most money and has attracted the most players it ever has, we should at the very least see the same amount of content. The fact we can’t even get things that we got 3 expansions ago now is beyond absurd. Some of the EW dungeon gear is dyable sure, but there are reused sets that they still couldn’t even make dyable, or even role swap them. We are in 2022 lmao. The game has made record breaking profits. SB gave us server travel and again, you didn’t see a cut in content. People have been picking things for the devs to work on for over SIX YEARS and they’ve been ignored by the current dev team. This is why i say it’s no wonder people want a change. I don’t see it as aimless nitpicking when we all pay to play the game. We’re all funding the game i expect to see peoples money going to the right place.

[GeminiReed]

I think when a game makes the most money and has attracted the most players it ever has, we should at the very least see the same amount of content. ... The game has made record breaking profits.

Sorry for cherry-picking but while those statements are true those events are much more recent than the event that settled the budget for EW and likely a good chunk of 7.0 work. Now that Yoshi-P is on the board XIV stands a much better chance of retaining a better portion of the revenue it generated.

Even if the funding problem has been solved that doesn't directly translate into content. XIV has long struggled with hiring enough talent to create that content. I have no idea how Square treats their developers but the wider gamesdev industry is looking much more like a career stain than a dream job. On top of that it's a workers' market with employers going to great lengths to attract talent.

[Ransu]

So you want pointless trash pulls and pre-clears and running back to the boss after a wipe and other nonsense from raids to come back? Nah I quite like the current raiding format being similar to how trials are. Queue in, boss, done. Wiping resets your CD's so you don't have to pointlessly sit there and wait for several minutes for CD's etc...God forbid someone used a pot late in the fight.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Sorry for cherry-picking but while those statements are true those events are much more recent than the event that settled the budget for EW and likely a good chunk of 7.0 work. Now that Yoshi-P is on the board XIV stands a much better chance of retaining a better portion of the revenue it generated.

Even if the funding problem has been solved that doesn't directly translate into content. XIV has long struggled with hiring enough talent to create that content. I have no idea how Square treats their developers but the wider gamesdev industry is looking much more like a career stain than a dream job. On top of that it's a workers' market with employers going to great lengths to attract talent.

The playerbase and income has been at a steady rise since HW. Why is it that SB, the middle expansion was able to give us much more content, yet ShB somehow couldn’t despite having peak ratings and income. Let’s say for a moment that those earnings didn’t go towards shb, i’d at least expect them to be put towards EW, yet still, we are seeing cut things and nothing changing and more reused assets.

[GeminiReed]

The playerbase and income has been at a steady rise since HW. Why is it that SB, the middle expansion was able to give us much more content, yet ShB somehow couldn’t despite having peak ratings and income. Let’s say for a moment that those earnings didn’t go towards shb, i’d at least expect them to be put towards EW, yet still, we are seeing cut things and nothing changing and more reused assets.

20/20 hindsight is a hell of a drug.

Stormblood wasn't nearly as well received as Heavensward. SE did SE things and diverted funds to other projects they felt would have made more money (oops). IIRC Yoshi-P wasn't added to the board until around the time Shadowbringers released. Endwalker had its own challenges with the COVID lockdowns and the WoWpocalypse.

With Yoshida on the board and EW doing well enough hopefully that should insulate XIV from the funding shenanigans they've had to put up with. My fervent hope is that they take a good solid look at XIV and deal with the things that make it unapproachable and unengaging for newer players. And I don't mean it needs more dumbing down, quite the opposite.

[iWaRTuRTLeS]

This game is so linear. New update/expansion, one end game content to get best gear, on top of that the content isnt even hard. Miss the good old days of ffxi where you had about 5 diff end game contents to get gear that was considered good. hard ass story quests that net you a bis piece. Relic quests where you can upgrade any way you wanted depending on your playstyle. Wide gap between what was great in the past and where this game is at.

[KizuyaKatogami]

20/20 hindsight is a hell of a drug.

Stormblood wasn't nearly as well received as Heavensward. SE did SE things and diverted funds to other projects they felt would have made more money (oops). IIRC Yoshi-P wasn't added to the board until around the time Shadowbringers released. Endwalker had its own challenges with the COVID lockdowns and the WoWpocalypse.

With Yoshida on the board and EW doing well enough hopefully that should insulate XIV from the funding shenanigans they've had to put up with. My fervent hope is that they take a good solid look at XIV and deal with the things that make it unapproachable and unengaging for newer players. And I don't mean it needs more dumbing down, quite the opposite.

Afaik, while the SB story wasn’t well received, i thought people spoke highly of the content side of things in SB. We got a whole housing district, and 2 ultimates in a single expansion, along with eureka which was pretty 50/50 hit or miss. Compared to ShB which was missing a lot and cut a lot…

Honestly i’m not so sure covid can keep being blamed for things. I understand it may have impacted *some* things, but that’s why they took a 4-5 month delay, to accommodate that. I’d understand if this happened 20 years ago but we were in 2021 at the time and now 2022. Tbh while it’s easier said than done they just need more people on the team, and while idk the specifics it doesn’t seem the team has grown at all in 6 years. I saw a thread recently of people comparing other mmo’s class design teams and apparently 14 only has four??? That isn’t even enough for all of the roles lol.