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.

[Midareyukki]

I mean they already were offering jobs in one off the Live Letters iirc. Ik folks blame the devs for alot but I honestly believe SE isn't helping them out as much as they should be. I'm just glad they have still put out quality in EWs story and raid content

A little too much quality there XD I for sure would rather keep my ears than seeing animated sugar cubes or the million and one animation bones Miqo'te ears now seem to have.

But snark aside, I do agree. They were offering jobs, and it's become beyond clear that SE doesn't treat its BDs as it should. We've known for years their practice is to randomly migrate people at random from business division to the other. It's information as old as Carbuncle Glamours.

But the fact remains that they do need to hire people and maybe not promise stuff they can't dish out. Stuff that when they come out are in an unfinished and unpolished state. They should have foresight.

[DrFlesh]

While Im still all for reworking healers to have more dps toolkits, the thing is....theres a little secret to this game involving the fact that "you can play other jobs" which is HUGE for an MMO. I dont know how people like to stick to one main class when this game encourages you to experience different play styles. Healer gets boring? Well then play a tank or a dps. This is what I do whenever I start to get tired of a class, I easily switch to something else or roll a job for the day and helps keep myself from getting burnout from having to play the same style over and over again.

I think this is probably why the devs have been trimming jobs lately because of this philosophy of switching to a class whenever you wish that allows more room to have fun rather than stick to the archaic MMO design of having a "main".

I still do play a main but I make sure to switch up the jobs whenever I feel like it. Just my own thoughts

perfect, now make it so i can get gear for all my jobs at the same time every time i clear a savage fight and i will happily change jobs every 30 mins

[Avenheit]

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

[Haventale]

If there is a game where healers do a lot of healing I’d like to know.

Guild Wars 2.

[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.

[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.