Can Square Enix stop killing off old content

[Kes13a]

This is the same issue that made me leave Gw2. Arenanet (the devs) have a tendency to introduce new systems every expansion that usually require the involvement of many players, only to abandon them and make it impossible for newer players to complete. People often told me XIV was the mmo where even old content was still relevant but it's no different.

I hate to break it to you, but we the players are completely to blame. as a group players demand new things to make it interesting. we demand new jobs, and like it or not, the developers add them in. this will always seal the fate of old content as they are not going to rewrite the entire 10 years of the game to keep it all relevant.

any game, I dont care which one you name, but any game that has been around for any period of time... if you arrive "too late" as you say, the player base has moved on to the new content. thats just a fact of life in mmos. just be happy they have not gone the Destiny 2 route and simply removed a ton of previous content completely. that game has lost any relevance to a story. as a new person, there is nothing at all to get emotionally invested in like the old players.

[Eorzean_username]

What's the point of developing whole-ass systems if you're just going to abandon them and never build on it?

Unfortunately this is an actual game design philosophy — especially in "theme park" environments like modern MMOs — and I think there's even a buzzy name for it like "accretion" or something.

I think that the basic philosophy goes something like:

1. Try something
2. If the response isn't dramatically-successful enough to justify continued resource investment, abandon it to maintenance-mode or just keeping it functional
3. Else if the response is successful, attempt to identify the core reasons why, and magnify and exploit them until the content is efficient and formulaic to produce
4. Repeat from top

And the reasoning for it goes something like:

a) Not trying anything new risks losing player interest, or not providing enough variety of things for new players to do, reducing capture rate

b) Continuing to develop something that isn't significantly-increasing capture rate is a waste of constrained time and team resources, so don't bother doing it just to please the 5 people who do passionately engage with [failed new thing]

c) Removing something that has already been implemented, and has no significant maintenance burden, is (effectively) even more costly than producing it in the first place

d) Producing new content that pleases long-time captured players is more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive than passively allowing fresh prospective captures to consume large amounts of content that is, from their perspective, entirely-new; by the time they "use it up" or "get bored", they've already gained the same amount of engagement time as older players originally did, so it's an "evergreen" investment in terms of increasing new capture engagement time.

e) Therefore, allow anything you add to "accrete", without necessarily being expanded upon, because it still functions to add more attractions to your theme park, and once it's implemented, it's "basically" free to just leave it there and allow it to passively increase interest or capture rate for both some small segment of captured players, and a potentially-large segment of prospective captures (who have not yet consumed the accreted content).

So to some degree, the crap-i-fication of FFXIV systems is very likely entirely-intentional: it's more cost-effective to just leave them sitting around like dusty junk in a hoarder's apartment than to either develop, iterate, renovate, or excise any of it.

Under this philosophy, Duty Support is an example of an incredible value: after the initial investment is made, it requires no further developer engagement and basically "pays for itself", while providing a near-infinite source of engagement for fresh prospective captures in preexisting content that doesn't ever need further iteration or development — especially because nearly all of the parameters are static and controlled-for (eg, no need to worry about how it interacts with future adjustments to player tuning and toolkits, as the NPCs can be relied on to solve any issues using their unchanging kits, and will never complain about said kits... etc etc).

[Shurrikhan]

Unfortunately this is an actual game design philosophy — especially in "theme park" environments like modern MMOs — and I think there's even a buzzy name for it like "accretion" or something.

I think that the basic philosophy goes something like:

1. Try something
2. If the response isn't dramatically-successful enough to justify continued resource investment, abandon it to maintenance-mode or just keeping it functional
3. Else if the response is successful, attempt to identify the core reasons why, and magnify and exploit them until the content is efficient and formulaic to produce
4. Repeat from top

The problem is that their Step 3 seems to only ever support surface-deep analysis and the failures themselves get even less.

This often causes those magnifications to accentuate problems more than successes or provide no side of novelty (unmuddied by / having learned from what parts weren't successful) by which to keep something that would otherwise look like an improvement from appearing dull/hackneyed on arrival.

[Heroman3003]

I love how this forum's denzinens claim anything not being constantly in flood of new content is 'being killed' when in most other games that wording is reserved for things being outright removed. I'm honestly glad all this older content even still exists rather than just being gone, like some other MMORPGs might do with their 'deprecated' content. Minion battles and Chocobo racing are basically minigames in finished state , Levequests literally serve 0 purpose in overall game's design and state, outside crafter ones which actually do get updates in newer expansions (seriously, battlecraft leves are absolutely useless even for leveling, what are you supposed to do them FOR?) and Master recipies keep getting added, so that point is moot.

[Shurrikhan]

I love how this forum's denzinens claim anything not being constantly in flood of new content is 'being killed' when in most other games that wording is reserved for things being outright removed.

There's a difference between past content simply not getting updates... and said content being emptied of a majority of its incentives, having its scaling/difficulty mangled, etc. Even when the content may still be available, the experience of it, and community around it, may very well be gutted in ways that could have otherwise been pretty easily avoided. And when the benefits of not letting the content 'die', then, would seem plenty worth those efforts, yes, letting that content die out would seem a fairly active measure.

At that point, it's not such hyperbole to say the content was "killed off", especially given that literally removing content takes more effort than just leaving it as it was, and the phrase would otherwise point at an even less realistic and more extreme happenstance.

[Ilyn]

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being . Since they wrapped up the 6.0 they have been giving us a buttload of QoL updates, revamping old content from Arr thru SB and even getting a graphics overhaul in 7.0 in preparation for the next 10 years. My main concern is if they're gonna cap jobs at 100 in 7.0 (which I hope) and just sync IL going forward into future expansions so w/e new content can be expanded on w/o level being an issue . Let the 1-90 experience be it own thing so people can enjoy the epic story and tackle the old content with the leveling process but for 100 and beyond I truly hope they switch up the status quo with how they treat content . Like I wouldn't mind a side story/exploratory area that expands across multiple expansions with its own gearing system uniquely separate from Raid/Instanced gear (maybe why the said they wanna expand Gear Set slots !!! Hhmmm ) Like I love eureka and its many ways of getting more powerful with epic loot ....but eventually seems pointless to have once you done BA. God what I wouldn't give for some old-school job specific artifact loot that would buff/altar abilities

[Shougun]

Do you have anything in mind for chocobo racing? Just curious. I was a little sad it appears chocobo breeding's fate died in that content, but on a large scale was curious what you'd like to see chocobo racing offer. Bacent would probably want the shoes... haha.

If you ever played Warcraft 3's ENFO or "TD Mauls" I had suggested using the minions in that type of content, thought it could be fun... For the minion system as it is, adding X-Hero like system and wish they could somehow speed up the loading / value, and perhaps consider slots for choices (at least in the modes I did- as it was like "take basically everything and only need to use 3-5 different ones for most things").

Levequest I had wanted to see a madlib sort of epic leve that you could do weekly that consumed a large amount of leves (or see leve in general have substantial increase in rewards with a substantial decrease in total number of leve you could hold / regenerate, but that would be more complicated to properly rebalance). The madlib I thought could be fun as it might be similar to those cross content epic WoW quests, but the reward due to being limited weekly could be substantial. Portfolio leve might be another one, where you get a couple assigned to you and have to complete them all. The NM system they have in some of them I thought was really under utalized especially, like what if you could spend leve at the hunt board to go hunt additional B ranks and they could have increased difficulty (and rewards).

I have some fun with crafting but never bothered with expert so /shrug.

Certainly other systems I've wished were better touched upon, with a sidelong glance at some of GW2's better open world examples. Hunts (w/ hunt UI instead of the GC hunt UI we have currently), chocobo hot and cold (+archelogy), revamping value of beast tribes with scaling and perhaps relic help with old relics, adding leve level system (and improving FATE scaling, akin to GW2), etc..

[Atelier-Bagur]

There's a difference between past content simply not getting updates... and said content being emptied of a majority of its incentives, having its scaling/difficulty mangled, etc. Even when the content may still be available, the experience of it, and community around it, may very well be gutted in ways that could have otherwise been pretty easily avoided. And when the benefits of not letting the content 'die', then, would seem plenty worth those efforts, yes, letting that content die out would seem a fairly active measure.

At that point, it's not such hyperbole to say the content was "killed off", especially given that literally removing content takes more effort than just leaving it as it was, and the phrase would otherwise point at an even less realistic and more extreme happenstance.

Its either that or the game starts to suffer through feature bloat.

[Seraphor]

They haven't killed off that content though. That content still exists, you can still play it, and most of it still offers unique rewards so there's the incentive too.
Unlike other 'live' games which will actively delete redundant content. The only thing that's been deleted form the game is the original Diadem.

I just ran through my Squadrons this year to get the exclusive emotes. That content is 5+ years old, and hasn't been updated in that time, but it still exists and you can still do it today.

[BRVV]

What i thought this topic was about: Old alliance raids that you can barely get a group for
What it actually is about: Content that can be solod and works completely fine