What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[HReincarnate]

Every single time I look at one of these threads I see them devolve into a few people arguing with each other for 10+ pages until the next group of people take over.

This is why SE isn't listening to this feedback, because this 63 page thread isn't a sign of community consensus - it was a few pages of community feedback followed by ~60 pages of personal squabbles.

Aside from a few pissed off SAMs & house bidders (the latter will hopefully be fixed soon), the game is in a fine state. The upcoming content seems more promising than SHB's, 6.1 was the best x.1 patch I can remember & launched to wide praise of the alliance raid & pvp updates, and as always job balance is more or less fine :P

I do wonder if people crying doom are playing the same game sometimes, but I do acknowledge that as someone not playing Hrothgar & only casually playing SAM, I'm not really affected by those problems. As for healing - it is what it is, and it will continue to be so until the game ends; I accepted that after Stormblood started things by gutting the SCH kit.

[Denji]

Every single time I look at one of these threads I see them devolve into a few people arguing with each other for 10+ pages until the next group of people take over.

This is why SE isn't listening to this feedback, because this 63 page thread isn't a sign of community consensus - it was a few pages of community feedback followed by ~60 pages of personal squabbles.

Aside from a few pissed off SAMs & house bidders (the latter will hopefully be fixed soon), the game is in a fine state. The upcoming content seems more promising than SHB's, 6.1 was the best x.1 patch I can remember & launched to wide praise of the alliance raid & pvp updates, and as always job balance is more or less fine :P

I do wonder if people crying doom are playing the same game sometimes, but I do acknowledge that as someone not playing Hrothgar & only casually playing SAM, I'm not really affected by those problems. As for healing - it is what it is, and it will continue to be so until the game ends; I accepted that after Stormblood started things by gutting the SCH kit.

unless you're working for square all you've provided us with is a shaky supposition at best.

"not listening" to your fanbase because they're debating would be stupid since you're already observing the threads in order to know this. you would essentially be paying someone to track and relay information and then not act on it.

i think in the end it's just some ol' fashioned feature creep and they're now struggling to maintain it all. removing features is never popular but if you don't add new things, people start to question why they bother paying to do the same stuff every expansion.

[SargeTheSeagull]

Aside from the story part, I agree. Though I think 14 is still overall the best MMO on the market, nothing lately has given me much confidence. The only white pills I've gotten are how interesting job actions in PvP are and the fact that Yoshi P said they're considering reverting the SAM and NIN changes in 6.2. Healers have sucked for years, nothing outside of ex/savage/ultimate is remotely challenging, Hrothgar hair, and fewer and fewer community problems have been addressed lately. It's all a bad sign. It could be that they're hoping 14 peters out a little bc 17 is gonna be the next ff MMO, could be they're planning on releasing a single player version of 14 in the next few years, it could be 16's development messing with things, it could be that they're just understaffed, it could be the devs are just plain exhausted. I don't know. I do know that there are a few main things they NEED to fix fast otherwise the game's population is gonna drop like a rock.
1. Healer design. Healers are actually indefensibly bad right now and if you disagree you need to try healing in literally any other game.
2. Job homogenization and simplification. Every DPS cooldown is either 60 or 120 seconds. Most are 120. Every AoE other than dragoon's is a circle. Every tank's cooldowns (aside from invulns) are identical. Every healer has 1 DoT and it lasts 30 seconds. The summoner rework is almost universally hated for being too simple. Machinist is dead in the water. Healers, again. Dancer's rotation being dumbed down. The samurai/ninja changes in 6.1. I could go on but we'd be here all day.
3. Hrothgar and Viera hair/hats. The fact that players are resorting to using mods to fix this is laughable. The fact that modders were able to fix it in a matter of weeks after release is even funnier.
4. No challenging content aside from savage/ex/ultimate. When I say challenging I mean "requires effort." Every level 90 dungeon is as difficult as a level 50-something dungeon. In some cases, easier. I shouldn't have to do things that require job research and hundreds of hours of practice to feel like i'm doing something that requires effort. I shouldn't be able to run the newest dungeon with 4 DPS. I shouldn't be able to do any trial with no healers. Things are easy to the point of being boring. I'm not saying everything needs to feel like Bloodborne or a mythic WoW raid but at least force me to think.
5. Side content nobody asks for. Fellowships for example. Ya, know. Those things they added in 5.4(?) that nobody wanted and nobody uses. Those things I forgot existed until I accidentally selected it the other day. Adventurer plates are awesome. Let's be honest, there are lots of things the devs could have spent their time fixing instead. Making the menu's look more modern. Making the menus less of a hassle to navigate. Literally anything I mentioned above.

The most pressing are 1 and 2. If they don't seriously change direction before 7.0 I very well may stop playing.

[Avenheit]

why do people keep saying endwalker is controversial? what part of is controversial????

[Laphicet]

why do people keep saying endwalker is controversial? what part of is controversial????

Venat and her actions, and how we're forced to react positively to such in-game (go look at the lore subforum if you don't believe me on that one being badly recieved). The Summoner changes, the lack of healer improvements and general outright ignoring of the role, the Samurai changes, Ninja changes, several other job changes, LACK of changes/improvements for some classes like Machinist, poor handling of server stuff on expac launch despite being aware of it for ages, and lastly the attitude the director has had in the past several live-letters, especially regarding healers and veteran players ("We're never going back to the heavensward days so you can stop asking for it" (mostly directed at DRK players IIRC as they were the ones mainly asking for a return of their HW class version), "if you don't like current healer gameplay just go play ultimate", etc etc).
Outside of that its just the usual stuff of "x instance is too hard please nerf it" and other related complaints that always show up.

[Nethereal]

Venat and her actions, and how we're forced to react positively to such in-game (go look at the lore subforum if you don't believe me on that one being badly recieved).

I had a bigger gripe with that cop-out of an ending. The only person who should've died, died. And everyone else lived, for no reason. Way to cheapen the sacrifice.
Though to be fair the story lul, is pretty asinine to begin with considering the reason anyone died on that last planet to begin with.

But yet Venat she's something. Get sundered.

[Avenheit]

Venat and her actions, and how we're forced to react positively to such in-game (go look at the lore subforum if you don't believe me on that one being badly recieved). The Summoner changes, the lack of healer improvements and general outright ignoring of the role, the Samurai changes, Ninja changes, several other job changes, LACK of changes/improvements for some classes like Machinist, poor handling of server stuff on expac launch despite being aware of it for ages, and lastly the attitude the director has had in the past several live-letters, especially regarding healers and veteran players ("We're never going back to the heavensward days so you can stop asking for it" (mostly directed at DRK players IIRC as they were the ones mainly asking for a return of their HW class version), "if you don't like current healer gameplay just go play ultimate", etc etc).
Outside of that its just the usual stuff of "x instance is too hard please nerf it" and other related complaints that always show up.

oh, i see. i thought the controversial tag was about the story but it didnt occur to me that the lack of or terrible gameplay adjustments should be included. WHich is funny since I live in breath samurai and are currently really sad about the changes.

[CrownySuccubus]

oh, i see. i thought the controversial tag was about the story but it didnt occur to me that the lack of or terrible gameplay adjustments should be included. WHich is funny since I live in breath samurai and are currently really sad about the changes.

The "controversy" of the story only really exists within a small subsect of the community. When Endwalker first released, the plot received almost universal praise and people who didn't like it were a massively-downvoted minority. But as more people start reaching the end of 6.0, or have more time to think on it after the spectacle and rush of first-time-play has died down, we've started to see more criticism. Despite that, the VAST majority still love the story, whether or not they acknowledge flaws.

But as I've said before, you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise, because the plot-critical threads on this forum have been teetering on becoming an echo chamber.

[LyraMaru]

I'll answer in spoiler tag to the question were the story is controversial:

I do not know where to start? Maybe at the point that Zodiark gets burnt in the middle of the addon. Meteion appears out of nowhere. The second part in Labyrinthos were mostly soulless filler quests. Doomsday was really well crafted and the menace was palpable. However, what I really missed was that apart from Thavnair and Garlemald, no other areas were really affected. I hoped to see a fight between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, in live or as echo. Also, the pacing of the story was very slow at times. Overall it felt to me like they wanted to tell the story of two in one addon. Which in itself is a contradiction in terms as the story still felt slow.

[aveyond-dreams]

I'll answer in spoiler tag:

I do not know where to start? Maybe at the point that Zodiark gets burnt in the middle of the addon. Meteion appears out of nowhere. The second part in Labyrinthos were mostly soulless filler quests. Doomsday was really well crafted and the menace was palpable. However, what I really missed was that apart from Thavnair and Garlemald, no other areas were really affected. I hoped to see a fight between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, in live or as echo. Also, the pacing of the story was very slow at times. Overall it felt to me like they wanted to tell the story of two in one addon. Which in itself is a contradiction in terms as the story still felt slow.

There was supposed to be a Garlemald expansion that was cut in order to get Endwalker out. Now we live with the results.