Revisiting the 10 year roadmap

[Aravell]

I don't think they're even catering to the Final Fantasy fans because they've stripped out so much of the RPG elements as well. If you're someone that enjoyed the older titles, you wouldn't enjoy how bland this game is in terms of RPG customisation and such.

[thevanguard]

I don't think they're even catering to the Final Fantasy fans because they've stripped out so much of the RPG elements as well. If you're someone that enjoyed the older titles, you wouldn't enjoy how bland this game is in terms of RPG customisation and such.

Well, maybe not old FF fans who have largely moved on, but new FF fans who button mashed through FF13 and enjoyed the ride.

It's kinda sad that the direction this franchise is going in is one of imitation, of trying to appeal to a "wider" basket of gamers, that end up doing nothing particularly better than anyone. The latest example is FF16 where as an action game it barely holds up against GoW or DMC.

Maybe if they stopped trying to make shit like FF7: Battle Royale edition or FF: gamba auto-clicker edition their games would actually have the same level of prestige.

FF fans may not know it because the community is absolutely insular but these days the franchise is seen as a joke. I guess, at least it's marginally better than even worse jokes like Assassin's Creed or Fallout.

[Iscah]

I don't think they're even catering to the Final Fantasy fans because they've stripped out so much of the RPG elements as well. If you're someone that enjoyed the older titles, you wouldn't enjoy how bland this game is in terms of RPG customisation and such.

Customisation has never felt like a defining aspect of a JRPG to me.

Like, sure, they might have some customisation to varying degrees but it's rarely ever something that excites me to play around with unless it can be freely rearranged and corrected later. Switching around jobs in FF3 is fine; picking who to permanently assign bonus skills to in FF4 Remake makes me dive for a walkthrough I can follow.

[Dzian]

I don't think they're even catering to the Final Fantasy fans because they've stripped out so much of the RPG elements as well. If you're someone that enjoyed the older titles, you wouldn't enjoy how bland this game is in terms of RPG customisation and such.

They haven't catered to final fantasy fans for a long time. Some might say even when they uturned and went the wow direction for ARR.

Even back then there were tons of comments and criticisms about staple elements of the final fantasy franchise being totally scrapped and gutted. Diverse bosses. Elemental wheels. Status effects. The list goes on and on.

Xiv is just face roll keyboard and you win. No thoughts no brains.. and yes the game is incredibly bland and dull as a result..

[CStrife912]

Outside of the unknown for 6.5/6.55 they’ve been pretty forward about what to expect and they delivered that when they announced that roadmap early last year. I think they’ve got their hands full on the visual update among other things and yeah I know time and time again people say graphics don’t make a game however more people can be put off by dated visuals that if at least improved can bring more people in.

In regards to the single player focus I don’t entirely see it that way. I think they don’t intend to have a new starting point so if you have to play everything else to get to the new stuff then more and more players will hit walls with long queue times for old content that doesn’t reward us end game players. Yes some people like to help out etc but doing dungeons with trusts etc seems to be an ok approach it allows them to continue o. And learn the game and then when they hit trials then they can go into the social aspects of it. Granted not everyone is social and yeah we have no global chat but I don’t really want to see it spammed like Limsa chat or any city chat anyway.

What the roadmap didn’t show was a lot of QoL and foundational work being done to the game… a lot of it needed doing because if they intend to keep it running for another 10 years then the game needs a lot of QoL there are still too many instances of menus in menus that could be trimmed and they are slowly getting there. Until 7.0 is shown or we see what direction they want to take it in post EW, I’m treating this expansion and post as a sort of ARR again like visual update, QoL, server hardware improvement and data center additions like these aren’t small things so they’re planning something.

Base difficulty needs buffing, healers to heal more due to tank busters and vuln stacks meaning something. Get rid of the 2 min meta, you wouldn’t have to change much to bring some job identity back honestly. I just hope they take the right feedback because 7.X patches will be indicative of that and a lot of people here just have passionate hatred and bias then actual middle ground critique. The game can be better it’s just a matter of when or if it’s too late. (The lucky bancho numbers prove the game is doing something right if you exclude the wow exodus the game is still getting consistent growth)

[thevanguard]

I agree that 7.0 is going to be the make or break regarding the battle system. 2 Min meta is unpopular everywhere and has been the spawn of more balance issues than I've personally seen since starting this game. Crits, buff drift, DH, downtime, certain jobs being so genuinely bad at a fight that they are all but excluded, MELEEWALKER... They must know it's completely out of control or they wouldn't have nerfed the DPS check of Anabaesios into the ground.

Not only that, but none of the game has any difficulty while leveling. Then you join an EX fight and get your shit pushed in because you've been on easy mode for 100+ hours at this point.
The difficulty curve is bad. By Stormblood, dungeons should be asking more of people. By Endwalker, dungeon bosses should have enrages (still loose ones), insta kill abilities (make them slow casted), and mechanics that use at least two brain cells instead of one. Think of the Vault before we greatly outgeared it.

This is one and only area of CBU3 that I genuinely hope they just flat out fire everyone (job team) because they are incredibly incompetent.



- ultimate
- raid tier
- tons of fishing (please save me)
- housing
- place to hang out/RP with my friends
- too many hours collecting stuff
- leveling more jobs on my raid alt so i'm not locked into a certain role
- making gil for the ugly gold mounts and prep for ex shiny weapons I like.
- pvp

I'm having fun. I personally get my money's worth. Could it be better? Absolutely. See above.

Lmao fire the balancing team? More like firing everyone in SE starting from the NFT acolytes

[Tsumdere]

Lmao fire the balancing team? More like firing everyone in SE starting from the NFT acolytes

I just think everyone else COULD possibly learn. The job balance team has dents in their heads that destroyed the frontal lobe and there is no saving them.

[Kes13a]

The job balance team has dents in their heads that destroyed the frontal lobe and there is no saving them.

I havent played any game yet where the developers have been able to balance to satisfaction. why? because of the players. unless all jobs are exactly the same, you will always have one that does more of something.

people complain about something being unbalanced so they "balance it" and then people complain about loss of "job identity"

bottom line is, the problem with balance is your fellow players. once someone learns a job well, they will naturally outperform people who do not. the player base screams for the mythical balance to counteract that, its an endless circle of demands that has led us to exactly what we have today.

[Tsumdere]

I havent played any game yet where the developers have been able to balance to satisfaction. why? because of the players. unless all jobs are exactly the same, you will always have one that does more of something.

people complain about something being unbalanced so they "balance it" and then people complain about loss of "job identity"

bottom line is, the problem with balance is your fellow players. once someone learns a job well, they will naturally outperform people who do not. the player base screams for the mythical balance to counteract that, its an endless circle of demands that has led us to exactly what we have today.

Hi!

Don't!

The hardest jobs in the game being lower than melee is not balance (except now BLM after buffs because we can't let BLM be bad! fuck the other guys tho.)
Being able to lose DPS checks due to poor RNG (happened to us once in TOP because we legit low rolled all LBs and none of us crit big skills) is not balance.
The devs admitting they overtuned something and it being basically impossible to beat in certain comps is not balance.

Removing Kaiten is not good design.
2 Min Meta is not good design.
Pruning meaningful skills while leaving AoE skill bloat is not good design.
Removal of a job archetype and not replacing it is not good design (DoT).
Healers not having to heal, but also not having a DPS rotation is not good design.
Oblation is not good design.
Enhanced Unmend is not good design.
BRD is not good design.

This isn't about perfect numerical balance, but their decisions making no god damn sense. They remove Kaiten because of button bloat but leave a ton of pointless AoE skills? Why does DNC do everything better than the other phys ranged - mobility, support, damage, and ease of use? Why is DRG getting a rework but not BRD? Why do they insist on taking everything away from healers leaving them as hollow shells of "press glare, sometimes assize". Why do both Crit/DH exist? Why keep making skills auto-crit? Because of damage variance? But it will continue to exist because of DH and the absolutely insane potency of some of these skills. What is the point of crit then?

They are dent heads.

[Semirhage]

bottom line is, the problem with balance is your fellow players. once someone learns a job well, they will naturally outperform people who do not. the player base screams for the mythical balance to counteract that, its an endless circle of demands that has led us to exactly what we have today.

Check the giant, visible cliff between melees+BLM and everyone else. That's not "learning a job well". That's melee favoritism.

My ice-cold take that rarely sees agreement is that FFXIV has never been particularly well balanced. Numerically, sure. Prior to Meleewalker the numbers were usually close enough. However, Square Enix tends to "balance" things in such a way that makes one job just...flat out better than the others in its role. Even if it's by 1%, there's seriously nothing better about its competition. Good balance means classes have different strengths, not that one is designated the designers' favored child and it gets the best of everything. That's been the story pretty consistently since ARR.