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

[Yura_M]

too busy making FF16

spoiler: is going to flop like FF15

FF15 got shit on but didn't flop, far from it if you look at the sales.
Vocal minority can be pretty vocal.

[OhNooo]

It shatters their illusion that this is a perfect game. I've noticed that some people (mostly on the FFXIV subreddit) are so heavily invested in this game that they take any criticism of the game as an attack on themselves, so they can't help but become defensive and say something in retaliation.

Reminds me of that whole situation that happened with the streamer Scottzone. He was welcomed with open arms when he first started playing the game and had a lot of praise for it, then got turned on when he gave criticism of the first tier of Eden raids. Like a complete 180 of people harassing him and sending death threats. Just sad.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Since the thread has devolved into talking about people and not the game it seems pointless now.
It's a catch 22. You can't be positive here without being called sheep. You can't be negative here without being labeled a hater. Turns into infighting and goes nowhere. I think it's fine for folks who think the positives outweigh the negative and vise versa. But I have to say if there's so much wrong say your piece, then unsub to send a message.

[Rufalus]

I don't mind the side content bubbles, but the delay on them is a real killer. They really need to start dropping some of that non-standard content into the X.1 patches.

Wasn't it 5.3 before the Shadowbringers relic finally started picking up some steam? With the new 4 month cycle, that'll be 12 months after launch if it takes that long to get going in Endwalker.

They did once but never again. 3.1 had verminion and the first incarnation of diadem which was mixed gathering and battle content, gave an alternative way to get competitive item level equipment. Secondary stats randomised so you could farm forever in pursuit of small upgrades if you wanted. Parser people hated not be guaranteed the maximum possible stats.

I actually liked some of the ideas. When it was unpopular they never tried to innovate the gearing system again or give an alternative path to getting stronger, just stuck with tome+raid where everyone has the same stats and restricted to slow progress by weekly limit.

Yeah things like 'relic' have been introduced really late into the last few expansions and deep dungeon is usually X.3 too, so a year after xpac launch at the current pace. Personally I don't need several normal dungeons in each X.0 if it delays getting less braindead content. There's no non-linear or randomized content at all in the first year.

[SturmChurro]

It shatters their illusion that this is a perfect game. I've noticed that some people (mostly on the FFXIV subreddit) are so heavily invested in this game that they take any criticism of the game as an attack on themselves, so they can't help but become defensive and say something in retaliation.

I've said this before, a lot of players in this community have tied their personal identity to this game. In fact, a lot of their world revolves around it. I've seen some nasty fallout on Twitter. It's like an extreme form of escapism. Any attack on the game is an attack on them, as it's something they love.

Sadly, many players, particularly the younger playerbase that can't yet fully grasp the operation of a major corporation and its shareholders, will have a hard time accepting that SE is starting to make the same mistakes that Blizz had made in the past.

I don't think that's necessarily true. A lot of the people brushing aside criticism are like 30 something year old boomers (or older).

[Semirhage]

I actually liked some of the ideas. When it was unpopular they never tried to innovate the gearing system again or give an alternative path to getting stronger, just stuck with tome+raid where everyone has the same stats and restricted to slow progress by weekly limit.

What I disliked about the Diadem wasn't even the randomness in the rewards- it was hopping into a 90 minute instance and grinding the same 5 infinitely respawning field mobs for an hour and a half. It reminded me of the dullest parts of Korean grinder MMOs from the early 2000s, and I wanted no part of it. When they announced Eureka as a continuation of the core concept behind that, I groaned. No endless field mob grinding please for the love of god. I thought we moved past that.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

I don't mind the side content bubbles, but the delay on them is a real killer. They really need to start dropping some of that non-standard content into the X.1 patches.

Wasn't it 5.3 before the Shadowbringers relic finally started picking up some steam? With the new 4 month cycle, that'll be 12 months after launch if it takes that long to get going in Endwalker.

Hard agree on the delay. The delay kills the hype for the content for me especially when said content fails to deliver. Heaven on High vs. Palace of the Dead as the best example. I loved PotD and waited nearly a year for HoH only to find out it was only a measly 30 duty finder-able floors compared to PotD's 100. It lacked a story unlike PotD and I also had no reason to keep playing it as I had all the jobs I wanted to play already leveled to max by the time HoH dropped. That's really when I noticed a downhill spiral of barren content.

[AziraSyuren]

I’d imagine that if they were as laser-focused on the bottom line as some people like to believe, we’d be getting a lot more content that would be a lot lower in quality. Instead their big releases are things that don’t even work right like hous-

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[kpxmanifesto]

Being a creator for FF14 must truly suck. Imagine coming in and being told to make hallway number 43 and two packs of mobs for that hallway and then copy paste that hallway for the rest of the dungeon. Or a raid where it's just a circle or square.

I'll play devil's advocate. If I were a dev for FF14 this would be awesome for me. I can do minimal work by recycling the same hallways and the same packs of mobs over and over again, and much of the fanbase will love me and thank me for it. I get to reap the rewards even after performing insufficiently at my job. Minimizing workload while maximizing income - this is the dream for a large business like SE.

[Manofpassion]

I’d imagine that if they were as laser-focused on the bottom line as some people like to believe, we’d be getting a lot more content that would be a lot lower in quality. Instead their big releases are things that don’t even work right like hous-

oh

Precisely. Hype something up for a year, get everyone excited for housing and maybe even try to partake in content that is even more exclusive than Ultimates - shit the bed with the entire system not working for 80% of players. Results might be rigged and the entire new system has shattered the trust of most of the playerbase.

If square don't want people to be angry at them, perhaps don't hype something up for a year and fail to deliver the most basic and fundamental part of that new feature.