Future direction of FFXIV

[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.

[Mapleine]

It was a great Final Fantasy game and I absolutely enjoyed my time with it over the past eight years.

That said the tale is over, everything has reset and we're still on Heavensward's rather plain end game so currently it all feels a bit empty... Thus we dwell on things! As much as I love this game my biggest pet peeve is the smoke screen a chunk of the community applies to the games issues.

As always the content is good, great even but the spread is just miserable. It is simply unreasonable to try and manage an end game group with four bosses, no dungeons and no other form of content or growth.

I'm also dreading if 7.0 is just another JRPG on the stack with no new starting point or ability reshuffle or other changes. Boom is over and I can't imagine further erosion from keeping both a poor early and late game experience. "Just play these five full length Final Fantasy games while spamming Unleash for 300 hours until Yoshi P says you can have a second button!" cannot be the future. The team is better than this and Square needs to loosen the purse strings.

So personally I am looking forward to new things but I do worry about the future without foundation repair and a hard look at end game. Also, before someone hits me with it: Yoshi P's "you can quit whenever!" has always been PR nonsense to anyone who actually plays. We have caps, we have lockouts, Ultimates need a large BiS grind, houses fall down, etc.

We've been running Cataclysm's end game reward structure since ARR launched and they've never taken a moment to account for the job system either. Eight years later and I still do anything for an alt job.

[Jeeqbit]

As always the content is good, great even but the spread is just miserable. It is simply unreasonable to try and manage an end game group with four bosses, no dungeons and no other form of content or growth.

There are also at least 2 extreme trials to farm 99 times and occasionally an ultimate.

It's intentional that it alternates between 1 raiding patch (6.0, 6.2, 6.4) and 1 casual player patch (6.1, 6.3, 6.5), because both types of players exist and Yoshi-P wants to cater to both.

The people who really enjoy this game enjoy both the raiding content and the casual content. When you only play a certain piece of content and not everything else, of course you will experience long gaps of time where you are bored unless you play other games.

How ever I will say they need to stop giving into to some player feed back particularly from NA. IMO a good example of this is the introduction of soloing the story from 1 - 90 through a newly implemented trust system. This takes a lot of dev time for something to appease what I would consider a smaller portion of the player base. I could understand if the game was designed differently or if this was to ensure new players could complete the story.

The Trust system is not being implemented to "appease a small portion of the player base". In fact, it is being implemented into ARR to convince millions of people who play the single player FF games to try out this game by telling them it is soloable.

[IdowhatIwant]

There are also at least 2 extreme trials to farm 99 times and occasionally an ultimate.

Expecting to farm 2 trials 99 times is a very bad expectation of any player base. This is the sort of thing that cause issues with other games.

It's intentional that it alternates between 1 raiding patch (6.0, 6.2, 6.4) and 1 casual player patch (6.1, 6.3, 6.5), because both types of players exist and Yoshi-P wants to cater to both.

The people who really enjoy this game enjoy both the raiding content and the casual content. When you only play a certain piece of content and not everything else, of course you will experience long gaps of time where you are bored unless you play other games.

Although on paper this sounds nice, it still makes players wait anywhere between 6 - 10 months to receive content for there particular play style if they choose not to enjoy both. The development team should expect not all players are going to opt into everything. This is why people want them to change up the formulaic patch cycle because both groups experience a drought.

The Trust system is not being implemented to "appease a small portion of the player base". In fact, it is being implemented into ARR to convince millions of people who play the single player FF games to try out this game by telling them it is soloable.

Does not change that it is the wrong direction for the game to go as well was as requiring a large amount of dev time.

[Jeeqbit]

Although on paper this sounds nice, it still makes players wait anywhere between 6 - 10 months to receive content for there particular play style if they choose not to enjoy both. The development team should expect not all players are going to opt into everything. This is why people want them to change up the formulaic patch cycle because both groups experience a drought.

How many other games release DLC every 4 months? Not even that, because there are sub-patches distributing more throughout that 4 months. Development takes a lot of time.

Usually with any other game you just play a different game until there is new DLC to do. That is exactly how a lot of people play this game too, so it's designed around this behaviour.

If you don't want to pay a subscription for the months without DLC then you don't have to.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

How many other games release DLC every 4 months? Not even that, because there are sub-patches distributing more throughout that 4 months. Development takes a lot of time.

Usually with any other game you just play a different game until there is new DLC to do. That is exactly how a lot of people play this game too, so it's designed around this behaviour.

If you don't want to pay a subscription for the months without DLC then you don't have to.

you play nay active game that is not ff14? i give yo some maple story each month. genshin impact. any active fighting game. any live service game. new world. if you like i can give you more.

[IdowhatIwant]

How many other games release DLC every 4 months? Not even that, because there are sub-patches distributing more throughout that 4 months. Development takes a lot of time.

Usually with any other game you just play a different game until there is new DLC to do. That is exactly how a lot of people play this game too, so it's designed around this behaviour.

If you don't want to pay a subscription for the months without DLC then you don't have to.

Comparing a patch in a subscription based MMO to another games DLC content is a very skewed view. This is a online game, that requires others to complete tasks. When you are splitting the patches as casual and raid, you are splitting the times when player bases would be subscribed. So when Player X decides now to want to go do Savage raiding when a casual patch is coming out, there are players that are still around to do it with. That is where the issue lies with the idea of just unsubscribe when your content is not here as a solution, when that in fact becomes the problem. That is why the game really does not respect our time as Yoshi says. Sure there's droughts in the game content to go play other games so it "respects" my time in that aspect, but it certainly does not respect my time in game.

[LittleImp]

The Trust system is not being implemented to "appease a small portion of the player base". In fact, it is being implemented into ARR to convince millions of people who play the single player FF games to try out this game by telling them it is soloable.

This game would not hold up well if assessed as a purely single-player experience, even once trusts are added to the entire MSQ. When compared to other major FF single-player titles, the game would appear extremely shallow and almost totally devoid of actual content, all the while bearing a 60 usd pricetag with a 12-15 usd monthly subscription if someone wants to continue playing. I am extremely skeptical that 'millions' of people are actually interested, and on top of that willing to spend that much money for something they know will be a suboptimal experience.

[Jeeqbit]

This game would not hold up well if assessed as a purely single-player experience, even once trusts are added to the entire MSQ. When compared to other major FF single-player titles, the game would appear extremely shallow and almost totally devoid of actual content, all the while bearing a 60 usd pricetag with a 12-15 usd monthly subscription if someone wants to continue playing. I am extremely skeptical that 'millions' of people are actually interested, and on top of that willing to spend that much money for something they know will be a suboptimal experience.

A lot of people would disagree with that and some would even say that it is the best FF story of any FF game. I agree that the subscription fee might still put people off and so might the former association with the MMO category. I doubt they expect to win everyone, but I do wonder if they underestimate how significant these things are in making people decide to avoid it.