Is it time for yoshi to step down from ff14?

[Liam_Harper]

Yes.

He's an amazing dev and certainly pulling ARR from the brink of death is a great accomplishment. He has a rare mindset when it comes to putting players first. But he clearly needs a break. He's been working non-stop on FF14 for a decade and now has two projects going on at once and that's enough to wear out anyone. Years of listening to complaints, even legitimate ones when you're working flat out, is going to pull you down eventually and build a gradual resentment and it's clear he's reaching that point. There are hints of it in Live Letters. He's also running out of fresh ideas and is too attached to his big project to risk innovation or big changes to it. And sadly arrogance can creep in even with the best people and after a decade he's developed an "I know best" attitude regarding the game, with the spike in subs from WoW falling flat just reinforcing this mindset. This is where developers stop making a game for the players and end up making it for themselves.

He did amazing, but it'd be healthier both for Yoshida and the game if he stepped back and took some free time off.

[Midareyukki]

Except despite all the complaining here, the "playerbase" keeps growing with every expansion. So how out of touch is he?

The game has been growing and there's been a lot of good things said about it. That said, there's also quite a lot that's been neglected in the past and has since been festering. There are topics that Square Enix didn't even address until it was too late. Responses have been tone-deaf, not realizing that people had been complaining for a while and end up giving answers that they wouldn't have given had they been paying attention.

For me and a lot of Hrothgar players, nothing embodies it more than April 1st. Him going dork-faced at the reaction the community gave was stupid. Anyone would have realized it was coming, because Hrothgars, who didn't have a single update in 3 years, had been asking for attention all the while. Meanwhile, communication was heavily centered around Viera, mentions of updates were focused around making stuff for Viera, and Hrothgar were only ever mentioned in conjunction with Viera rather than addressing complaints Hrothgar players themselves were giving. Stuff that Viera players didn't have to deal with (their awkward posture and animations, the glamours that they couldn't use which are a different list than Viera, and even the fact that to change hairstyle we needed to pay a fantasia).

Others will point to different scenarios, such as him dismissing the lore, him telling Healers to play Ultimates if they wanted a bigger challenge...

Those are two separate realities: the game is growing while there is stuff being awkwardly addressed about the game.

And even if the game is growing... so what? Just because people admit Yoshida is lacking in touch with the game's fanbase, it doesn't mean that people inherently believe the game sucks and isn't growing. One statement doesn't mean the other. I can be fine with the game and support Yoshida while still saying "You're out of touch, please be more mindful".

I personally don't think he should leave or be replaced. Have some of his responsabilites be delegated to someone else? Possibly. But gone entirely? Absolutely not. And it's not just because of 1.0, it's because Yoshida just isn't as bad as people claim he is. Square Enix has far, far worse. Other game companies have far, far worse. Yoshida might do things we disagree with and have some stuff we'd like rectified, but he's certainly not as bad as his colleagues in other Creative Business Divisions...
But he should at least strive to do better than what he's been doing the past year or so. Because the latest appearances have left much to be desired.

[WhiteArchmage]

if you look around the problem in 1.0 was that SE forced a bad engine that the team did not wanted to use, then SE management force a strange game game loop to cover the fact the the game was short and not much end game

And following that thought, SE would be the ones to name Yoshi-P's replacement. So even by this logic things would end up worse.

Is the man perfect? No, hell, no. But he's also stopped many a worse thing to happen to FFXIV (The Mog Store was a demand from SE to let him reboot the game, and he fought tooth and nail to keep it from being invasive. It wasn't until the players themselves asked for a way to try on store items that he allowed the dreamfitting in-game, and even then it doesn't encourage you or even allow you to buy from inside the game itself).

At the end of the day, SE is a company that cares about profits, the devs may care about their individual projects, but they're beholden to their own higher-ups and Yoshi-P's had to walk a very fine line between keeping investors happy and keeping the playerbase happy. It's led to some compromises I'm not entirely happy about, but certainly not enough to try my chances at whoever Yosuke Matsuda decides to put in and start selling NFTs inside the game.

[SassyAssassin]

No but they could hire people to dye mogstation costumes and give us the damn hairs.

[ZephyrMenodora]

The game has been growing and there's been a lot of good things said about it. That said, there's also quite a lot that's been neglected in the past and has since been festering. There are topics that Square Enix didn't even address until it was too late. Responses have been tone-deaf, not realizing that people had been complaining for a while and end up giving answers that they wouldn't have given had they been paying attention.

For me and a lot of Hrothgar players, nothing embodies it more than April 1st. Him going dork-faced at the reaction the community gave was stupid. Anyone would have realized it was coming, because Hrothgars, who didn't have a single update in 3 years, had been asking for attention all the while. Meanwhile, communication was heavily centered around Viera, mentions of updates were focused around making stuff for Viera, and Hrothgar were only ever mentioned in conjunction with Viera rather than addressing complaints Hrothgar players themselves were giving. Stuff that Viera players didn't have to deal with (their awkward posture and animations, the glamours that they couldn't use which are a different list than Viera, and even the fact that to change hairstyle we needed to pay a fantasia).

Others will point to different scenarios, such as him dismissing the lore, him telling Healers to play Ultimates if they wanted a bigger challenge...

Those are two separate realities: the game is growing while there is stuff being awkwardly addressed about the game.

And even if the game is growing... so what? Just because people admit Yoshida is lacking in touch with the game's fanbase, it doesn't mean that people inherently believe the game sucks and isn't growing. One statement doesn't mean the other. I can be fine with the game and support Yoshida while still saying "You're out of touch, please be more mindful".

I personally don't think he should leave or be replaced. Have some of his responsabilites be delegated to someone else? Possibly. But gone entirely? Absolutely not. And it's not just because of 1.0, it's because Yoshida just isn't as bad as people claim he is. Square Enix has far, far worse. Other game companies have far, far worse. Yoshida might do things we disagree with and have some stuff we'd like rectified, but he's certainly not as bad as his colleagues in other Creative Business Divisions...
But he should at least strive to do better than what he's been doing the past year or so. Because the latest appearances have left much to be desired.

I mean, every MMO game I've ever played had complaints about this or that, things players view as "tone-death". Every mmo has people on forums saying the devs aren't in touch with the community or doesn't listen to it. Name me one that meets with universal praise and good-will? Most are hemorrhaging players and their peak popularity is behind them.

[Dyvid]

if you look around the problem in 1.0 was that SE forced a bad engine that the team did not want to use, then SE management force a strange game loop to cover the fact the game was short and not much end game

Yea... No. That wasn't even close to the problems 1.0 had. 1.0 failed because it was bad from the top down. The graphic engine was just one of the many many issues.

[Zebraoracle]

Yea... No. That wasn't even close to the problems 1.0 had.

Considering we are still having issues with the engine today... is it that far from the truth? You wanna elaborate on why they're wrong instead of just saying "that's wrong"? I'd actually be interested in hearing it, knowledge is great yo.

[Dyvid]

Considering we are still having issues with the engine today... is it that far from the truth? You wanna elaborate on why they're wrong instead of just saying "that's wrong"? I'd actually be interested in hearing it, knowledge is great yo.

Well lets see, the zone where just copy and paste. There was no quest, no jobs, no NPCs outside the city, no direction. The combat system was nothing like it is today. These were failure of the Development team, not the game engine. It felt like they wanted to make a sandbox MMO but had no idea what a sandbox MMO was about. Feel free to search the internet for more in-depth information.

FYI, compared to 1.0 engine the current one we have runs like a dream.

[Kes13a]

Well lets see, the zone where just copy and paste. There was no quest, no jobs, no NPCs outside the city, no direction. The combat system was nothing like it is today. These were failure of the Development team, not the game engine. It felt like they wanted to make a sandbox MMO but had no idea what a sandbox MMO was about. Feel free to search the internet for more in-depth information.

FYI, compared to 1.0 engine the current one we have runs like a dream.

BUT, it was very very pretty with no quests, no jobs, no npcs.... if your system could even run it.

[Dyvid]

BUT, it was very very pretty with no quests, no jobs, no npcs.... if your system could even run it.

LOL, that it was. I remember my long empty run to Coerthas in search of the "missing" game content. Pretty but bland.