FFXVI has now officially proven to have taken over Yoshi's time

[MonsutaMan]

Obviously 7.0 is going to be set in Vana'diel so they're celebrating the 11th anniversary instead.

If your Eorzea Jobs do not transfer to Vana'diel versions of the job....it is a moot point.

Vanadiel Rune Fencer, Blue Mage and Monk are legendary.



Female Elvaan are baddies; that RUN design is chef kiss.......However, SE did not even allow XI players to explore all of Vana'diel. There are a number of areas we have yet to visit, mentioned in the lore/game. Your sarcasm would be cool though lol.

[4clubbedace]

you know yoshi is the producer of 16, not the director.

[TheDecay]

Ah, to be clear, I think that this is absolutely correct, in case I came across wrong.

FFXIV definitely does not offer much to "gamer" players with its initial combat experiences. (I use "gamer" here just to mean, "someone who enjoys playing games for the mechanical gameplay", and not in any other loaded sense)

And this has especially-exacerbated over time, as more and more basic complexities at the early levels have been stripped away, both intentionally and incidentally, and more and more "actual" combat gameplay (in terms of systems, considerations, and rotational breadth) have been heavily-backloaded into the top-end gameplay (which is not a "new" observation in these discussions, but bears repeating for the sake of context).

Partially, this is thanks to SE's obsession with trying to "reward" reaching very high expansion levels by just unlocking basic Job features and gameplay.

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At the same time, I think there may be an underestimation of the number of potential players who are drawn in specifically because there is the promise of not having high pressure or "complex" (taken in a relative sense, here) systems to fight with or figure out along the way, and combat design that is essentially as approachable and forgiving as single-player turn-based games.

So there's "genre-external" — as a single collective superset of "not normally an MMORPG player/fan".

And then specific subsets of that — such as, as you listed, Shooters, ARPGs, action, adventure, etc...

...but also an entirely-different crowd coming from other places, like single-player JRPGs, Animal Crossing/community management, simulators, visual novels, etc.

And I think those very different genre-external sets will tend to prioritise very different aspects when evaluating whether this is "an MMORPG that I actually like"... or etc.

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So I think it's correct that FFXIV's initial X hours of "gameplay" are some combination of boring, underwhelming, or confusing to a definite chunk of incoming "gamer" players (which does not have to be the mythical/stereotypical "elite gamer", but just "anyone" that enjoys the mechanical gameplay aspect of games).

I don't honestly see how that idea cannot be true, given how objectively paper-thin the early FFXIV mechanical experience is at this point, and how severely tuning changes, Duty Support adjustments, and years of potency-refactoring/bloat have served to water-down the leveling content.

Instead, I'm just saying that SE may be running numbers, or rolling dice, and deciding that the "n" players that get fed up and leave because the combat gameplay seems bizarrely-limited, are outweighed by the "m" players that are one of:

a) Would be happy with more, but aren't perturbed enough to stop, due to other factors being more important to them
b) Really don't care that much either way
c) Genuinely like the "nonthreatening" and "almost impossible to do wrong" early combat systems (perhaps because they feel that it doesn't intimidate or interfere with the rest of their fantasy experience, etc)

I have no way of objectively proving this, and it's also not meant as an implicit invalidation of the players that legitimately do bail / complain because they feel like they are doing barely anything (mechanically) for way too many hours of game progression.

I'm just trying to reason-out why SE keeps going balls-in on this direction, rather than braking and course-correcting even slightly.

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There is also another consideration, which is that XIV has honestly underwhelmed a lot of new players with the early mechanical experience from Day 1 all along.

And so SE/CBU3/Yoshida/etc, may simply not perceive this as a focus of concern, or a design problem — see the now-infamous, "If you are seeking more challenge as a healer, consider doing Ultimates" statement.

For example, even back in HW, I distinctly remember Rouletting into leveling content with Healers coming from other games, like WOW, who would frequently ask things like, "Why is healing in this game so easy/boring?" and "Does the healing ever get more interesting here?" and, etc.

And even back then, a lot of those players would lose interest and wander off, either during the leveling process, or after reaching endgame and realising that they were still spending most of their time DPSing.

Well, but those are "genre-internal" players who aren't finding what they've come to expect from the genre, becoming (understandably) frustrated or underwhelmed, and then returning to an environment that feels more in line with their expectations.

I say this not as a dismissal, but on the assumption that "genre-external" players unsatisfied with XIV's challenge would seem more likely to return to their originating genre (eg, Shooter, Survival, MOBA, etc) than to start cycling through alternative MMOs.
I think, though, that in that case, those players have always been a large part of not just FFXIV, but modernised MMOs in general — those who are drawn forward like fluid in a straw by the clear, constrained focus of "leveling up" and "completing the storyline", and then kind of "lose their momentum" once opening up into the endgame.

Those players — still excited from their leveling / story-completion high — will attempt to dabble around a little bit in the more open endgame environment for a time, but since it lacks the concentrated driving factors of leveling-up plus a long, linear story-arc, their interest soon wanes, and then they wander off.

As I understand it, this is a phenomenon that MMO designers have fought with for a long time, because they can't just give you "infinite leveling content".

At some point, for resource-efficiency/feasibility, an "endgame loop" has to be established, and that loop mentality tends to only be compatible with only so much of the population, while the initial leveling segments tend to be more universally-enticing to a very broad selection of players — as seen in how MMOs tend to see massive spikes in sales and play-rates during expansion releases, followed by sharp and/or steady declines once all those players start to complete the leveling story and hit the expansion's "endgame".

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But conversely, if someone displeased with the early gameplay actually manages to sit through the process long enough to reach endgame, then that should be the point at which their interest begins to pick up and remain focused, right?

So if they're reaching endgame and still dissatisfied with the gameplay or lack of challenge, and also not tackling Savage/Ultimate, then they're either

a) Choosing not to seek it out (in which case the developers can, perhaps, be blamed for not directing players more clearly into the content), or...

b) Probably never going to be satisfied with what FFXIV has, and more importantly, is-willing-to, offer.

There is also the legitimate argument that FFXIV tends to deliver content in only 2 stark flavors: "Excruciatingly trivial" and "Very hard" — but I think this has a lot more to do with resources devoted (or not) to producing successive difficulty gradations, than to specific class rotational designs.

In that case, SE may be making the calculation that the total retention loss from mechanically-disappointed players is not significant enough to justify designing around it. (I'm not trying to argue whether this is a good thing for the health of the game — I'm just trying to reason-out what SE's motivations are, because they clearly aren't stopping this trend)

I can't personally argue with most of this — I found Stormblood overall "tough but fair" at the time, and I don't — anecdotally — recall talking to a lot of players who were any more unhappy with how their Job played as they are today (as opposed to more focus on just vexing balancing decisions that implicitly constrained comps, such as Piercing Debuff or Samurai's undertuning).

Both Jobs and content could be frustrating (PFing Midgardsormr was certainly an experience, and I don't exactly long for a return of DRK's Dark Arts RSI), but it also felt like there were clear and comfortable paths by which to improve and refine (excepting the inevitable outliers that were clearly "overdesigned" for the era and more HW-like, such as SB MCH).

And, again anecdotally, I cannot really recall talking to a single Healer who expressed feeling threatened by what SB design expected of them — I really don't see how, for example, taking away simple mechanics like Aero 3 or Shadow Flare or Time Dilation made any serious difference at all to the ability for players to function and concentrate in the Healing role.

All good points, and perhaps SE also sees it the same way — ie, the spectacle of watching players clear Ultimates is not, from their perspective, affected or enhanced by how sophisticated a given player's Job execution is, vs. the mechanics themselves, the team coordination, etc.

It's true that a lot of the most (as it were) sophisticated aspects of FFXIV Job gameplay have historically tended to be largely "invisible" in the immediate moment, and only apparent when analysed numerically by external tools.

In that sense, it may be something that SE sees little payoff in continuing to develop further.
This is a pretty interesting point, and I think you highlight one of the few serious dangers that SE could take from the situation.

Unfortunately, SE — like most businesses — seems to live in the here-and-now, and I also suspect (with zero proof, lest it come across wrong) that Yoshida (or higher management) may have already made the shrewd assessment that FFXIV will have zero realistic competition at any near-future point, because the MMO genre has one of the most dramatic barriers-to-entry for new potential products of possibly any gaming genre in existence.

Even Dragonflight, which has somewhat "redeemed" WOW in many ways, has failed to seem to really dent FFXIV very strongly, despite the fact that Dragonflight offers significantly more robust mechanical gameplay than XIV, especially in the Healer role.

And other MMO competitors, even when the raw gameplay itself is promising (eg, arguably, Lost Ark), universally seem to fail to capture their audience for very long — either due to pernicious maintenance systems, excessively-aggressive monetisation practices, underwhelming long-term content, unsatisfying or generic world presentation, or etc.

FFXIV may simply be feeling relatively-invincible at this point, with the assumption that they're basically retaining "as many as they're going to retain" each cycle; that frustrated veterans will inevitably return for lack of any serious equivalent; and that there is more to gain from broadening "accessibility" than there is to lose by disappointing players looking for more depth of gameplay investment.

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I can definitely see why SE pursued this strategy, but I believe that, at least for job design, there is a good middle ground to land on, and Stormblood for the most part landed on that solid middle ground. It's unfortunate that, as you have said, that middle ground seems to not be something Square Enix wants to financially invest in, whether that be some form of content between the "very hard" and the "easy", or job design that satisfies both casual players with low skill floors and "elite" players with high skill ceilings.

I completely agree that SE feels "completely invincible" at the moment, and I worry that they are falling into the exact same trap that Blizzard fell into for 2 expansions. I would very much rather that SE does not rest on its laurels and really tried to deliver on their promise to reinvigorate this game.

What I wish we would see in 7.0, though this is a long pipe dream, is a multi-tiered approach to job design. What I mean by this is that, instead of having one job cater to both the hardcore and the casual playerbase, they should try designing variants of jobs that go from very easy to very hard.

The way I think this can be accomplished is to introduce Logos/Lost actions into every job, taking inspiration from the role-specific ones that significantly mix up the playstyle. For example, Lost Blood Rage is a stacking buff that requires the tank to press their gapcloser at specific timings in order to enter Blood Rush, where they'll then do a long, extended burst phase where all their CDs is reduced by 75%. This burst phase, at least on Shadowbringers WAR, is actually not trivial to pull off, particularly if one wishes to extended Blood Rush indefinitely by popping another Lost Blood Rage within Blood Rush. This example shows that a single Logos/Lost action has the capability of significantly altering and increasing the complexity of a job. By limiting the high-complexity variants of jobs to being unlocked behind high-end content in some way, this could potentially allow both high-end players and casuals to be satisfied as casuals will not need to deal with it in normal content at all.

Of course this is just a sketch of a potential way of implementing the system, and there are balancing and technological concerns. For one, players might wish to use those actions in normal content. I think we should allow them, but make it completely optional and something that you have to unlock intentionally (whether for free or perhaps locked behind an underutilized piece of content like Variant/Criterion). Second, the benefits of these actions cannot be as absurd as they are in Eureka/Bozja (chained Blood Rage literally allowed a Warrior to be at the top of the DPS chart in Delubrum against Martialist SAM using Lost Power). They should, I believe, at most contribute 4-5% of a player's DPS. Enough for high-end players to care, but not enough that perfect execution of these actions are required to clear anything. It could also be designed so that only odd patches or post-Savage patches release these actions, so that they have no impact on early Savage prog and will only feel like a "bonus" instead of a mandatory requirement for later Savage prog or weeklies. Furthermore, doing it this way also means balancing is not a huge concern, as by the time these actions are out, week 1 prog is long over. Jobs can be further apart and it shouldn't matter that much for players. And, even if they want to balance carefully, they would only really need to tune the Lost Action itself rather than dealing with the whole job.

The ideal timeline for me would be something like this:

7.0 - MSQ
7.01 - Normal Raid (2 weeks later)
7.05 - Savage Raid (4 weeks later)
7.08 - Variant/Criterion (10 weeks later), actions are unlocked through Variant and/or Criterion, usable in 7.0 and 7.1 endgame dungeons, trials, 8-man, and 24-man raids optionally and will not be automatically granted. For gameplay/immersion purposes, perhaps these unlockable actions are the ones that are given to you from the start.
7.2 - Normal Raid (2 patches later). While 7.08 actions can still be used in 7.0 and 7.1 content, they will not be usable in 7.2 content for balancing and fairness reasons, so that week 1 proggers do not feel forced to do variant/criterion.
7.21 - Savage
7.28 - Variant/Criterion, another set of new actions.

In this way, it both gives Variant/Criterion dungeons some sort of staying power (for example by requiring 5 weekly clears to obtain the action), and effectively put both simple and complex jobs into the game without any side feeling forced to play one version of it.

[VelKallor]

(for example by requiring 5 weekly clears to obtain the action )

..and if you dont clear it you have to go back and do it again..and again..and again...making it mandatory content because you will be crippled if you dont have them.

This is borrowed power as per Blizzard. See, as you said, the actions wont be usable later, so you have to go back and clear it another 5 times...no thanks.

Mandatory content that locks player power behind it = WoW's artifact weapons = no. If you dont do these then you lack abilities other have..sounds like Torghast. Remember that dogs breakfast?? Blizzard tried to make POTD and instead all it turned out to be was another mandatory grind. ( Choreghast )

FF 14 doesnt HAVE "mandatory content", CT for example is now part of the MSQ and yes you need to do it... but it doesnt lock player power behind it.

Thats a no.

[VelKallor]

How poorly Blizzard executed that requirement is held as an example.

Agreed. Blizzard has abandoned borrowed power approaches, AND has admitted Torghast did NOT met with approval, in fact that instance had I think it was "soul ash" that made it mandatory as well as other player power items..why they just didnt go with the original POTD concept I dont understand.

The idea and model is sound..so why borrow a proven idea and then wreck it with a mandatory grind? I still cant work out what they were thinking.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

I've intentionally avoided this thread until now for a lot of reasons. But Final Fantasy XIV does not exist in a vacuum. There are other, arguably more successful MMO's out there, and their mistakes and successes are often very relevant to discussions about Final Fantasy XIV. Especially when the game director and those around him have said many times over the years that they have been inspired and gotten ideas directly from WoW. I hope they realize now that WoW is no longer a formula to copy, and I think it shows in game.