WoW is adding multiplayer Trusts....

[Atelier-Bagur]

Sorry for the tangent, but this just made me reflect. The more I think about how able and willing the WoW team seems to be to add or change things to adapt to the evolving nature of their game over the years, and just DOING IT, the more frustrated I get when I look at XIV and how we always seem to get if's, and's, and but's when it comes to some of the most basic sh*t. Small indie company Squeenix just can't muster up the manpower for some things, I guess.

Im not one to praise Blizzard because they have made a lot of serious Ls even recently but I cant also pretend that their recent Ws dont exist either. Cant be this black and white, but I really like how the current dev team is being more open faced and communicative to the playerbase than FFXIV's devs have been with us.

Most of the time, we dont know what their thinking is with their decisions and its always a guess on their side.

[Absurdity]

Im not one to praise Blizzard because they have made a lot of serious Ls even recently but I cant also pretend that their recent Ws dont exist either. Cant be this black and white, but I really like how the current dev team is being more open faced and communicative to the playerbase than FFXIV's devs have been with us.

Most of the time, we dont know what their thinking is with their decisions and its always a guess on their side.

It's almost as if the roles from about 3 years ago have been reversed.

[Atelier-Bagur]

It's almost as if the roles from about 3 years ago have been reversed.

lol pretty much this. But honestly Ive looked back on some LLs and I think this was just always the case. Its really that Blizzard's communication stepped up a lot better than FFXIV's which I feel had this same level of quality in terms of feedback

[strawberrycake]

It's almost as if the roles from about 3 years ago have been reversed.

Well the issue here is that Yoshida was never transparent, he was Opaque, an a lot of what he was giving us was honestly just tried and true things that worked. The game is now in a stage where the taste of the player base has changed and whats being offered is not what players want anymore.

Or look at it from this point a view, you eat one flavor of icecream for close to 11-12 years, and a new ones comes out, the old flavor being WoW, Guild Wars, Aion, EvE, Any major older MMO, you're gonna try XIV and really enjoy what you have now. But XIV is in the exact same position now, it's been the flavor for over 10 years. People want something new and exciting, and that is why a lot of people are calling XIV stagnant.

Ion and the team being transparent, or as transparent as they're willing to be is them realizing, "We can't just force feed them, we gotta work with them again".

Where as Yoshida wants a more controlled MMO experience thats for people who come home from JP Salary-person hours and wants to unwind for like 3-4 hours before getting up and repeating said horrid hours for work.

[Absurdity]

Or look at it from this point a view, you eat one flavor of icecream for close to 11-12 years, and a new ones comes out, the old flavor being WoW, Guild Wars, Aion, EvE, Any major older MMO, you're gonna try XIV and really enjoy what you have now. But XIV is in the exact same position now, it's been the flavor for over 10 years. People want something new and exciting, and that is why a lot of people are calling XIV stagnant.

I'd take that comparison even further, let's say XIV is good old vanilla in this case. You've been eating the good natural vanilla icecream for 6 years, but then they started slowly replacing the natural vanilla with artificial flavouring.
Now it's completely artificial vanilla so it's still "the same" but it tastes worse and the delivery takes 1.5x as long.

I havent played FFXI, but I have no faith in Trusts (ironic isnt it?) or FFXIV having AI good enough for anything other than "go here to avoid getting hit" more or less. I've heard its also why they've gone back to revamp older dungeon encounters such as Brayflox Longstop's final boss so that the AI is only tasked with dodging AoEs rather than something more unique like pulling the dragon out of its poison puddle.

I think a good example of the AI in FFXIV actually being kinda bad is trying to use the trust for Hydaelyn, where your 7 AI companions already know where they are going to stand for a AoE placed on them and it is up to YOU to find the spot they left for you, rather than just moving out of the way of where you are. The attack in a normal group is to spread from each other, while with the NPCs it is to run away from where ever they are going. I remember plenty of time Urianger "chasing" me and blowing me up during that trial. Also to mention, if for whatever reason the NPCs are in a bad spot, they will run through damaging AoEs like the light waves, rather than going around them.

Its a different topic, but I think FFXIV's Trust system contributes to the shallow mechanics in FFXIV, especially for dungeons.

Certainly feels like that. I'm convinced at this point that the trust ai can't do anything more complex than "go there" and "attack thing", and only ever one of them at a time. They can't interact with the environment, like picking up the powder in old Copperhell or pulling a lever, navigate terrain that isn't a flat path, etc.
So all of those "inconveniences" that would make dungeon design more interesting and varied had to go.

[Shougun]

Im not one to praise Blizzard because they have made a lot of serious Ls even recently but I cant also pretend that their recent Ws dont exist either. Cant be this black and white, but I really like how the current dev team is being more open faced and communicative to the playerbase than FFXIV's devs have been with us.

Most of the time, we dont know what their thinking is with their decisions and its always a guess on their side.

Definitely- they have talked to their playerbase more than ours, like in general / in the past, but it would usually be superficial and not too important if it happened or not (nice but like 'okay, you are confirming to my face I'm screaming into the void.. thanks I guess'), but now it was not only will we talk back but it's going to actually be important to us, and we want you to know that we want you to be able to play the game the way you want to play it, and not how we think you should, your time is valuable, and we want you to have fun.

This is like disenfranchised gamer cocaine. I'm not a regular of wow because I just prefer FFXIV but even I was hyped for WoW and it tempted me enough to play the trial.

Which are still just words but then you look at their road map and.. well it looks like actual actions too. Why WoW didn't do this until now, I don't know, but genuinely had my Warcraft 3 nostalgia days of blizzard perked up rather than my ' oh my God what did Activision Blizzard do now to the game, or to their employees...?'