Discuss : is ffxiv in trouble

[Fawkes]

I’d say the game has peaked (population and content quality wise) but it will be a long long time before the game is any real danger

I disagree on population, I think the game is going to grow more with Dawntrail at least.

[Gordita]

There is currently a lack of content to bridge the long break until the 7.0 expansion is released. Temporary events and collecting mogmog stones are not enough.

In the long term, a reboot of Final Fantasy 14 on a new engine is necessary. This is the only way to overcome the annoying hurdles with a meagre inventory, chaos instead of order in the menu structure, obstacles with prismatic projections and instanced houses by eliminating the spaghetti code.

At least the old engine will receive a graphics upgrade with the release of 7.0.

An upgrade of the boss mechanics also seems necessary to me. Currently, the attack and AOE mechanics are played stubbornly one after the other mechanically with variations. This is now exhausted.

In future, a weak artificial intelligence should take over the mechanics, whose intelligence is adjusted depending on the level of difficulty. Bosses could also consist of herds in FATEs. It would also be conceivable to set traps or have parts of the boss shot off, as in "Horizon Zero Dawn" or "Horizon forbidden West".

If the development team realises this, Final Fantasy will easily see the year 2040 as the best MMO.

In the current version, Final Fantasy has broken all records in terms of time spent playing in my free time. That alone counts in the end and is high praise for the developers.

Agree 100% , since stormblood this game has NEEDED a new game engine. They're just milking it for as long as they can before doing anything that costs a large amount of money.

[Gemina]

Uh, the game already has people of color, women in positions of power (excelling in combat and/or politics), people who are interested in the same sex romantically, and people who claim to have no gender. The game is already as '' woke '' as Japanese games come.

Other than the non-binary aspect you mentioned, which no one in the game claims to be, none of this is woke.

Current woke agendas would involve excluding white NPCs because they are over represented, claiming female avatars are too sexy and unrealistic, self-inserts from the development team, or race swapping Derplander along with the poor excuse for doing it that makes no sense. Even if you want to say the game is as woke as Japanese games comes, it most certainly is not as woke as western games come.

[Avoidy]

Do we really need another thread for people to bemoan the state of healers, body check obsession, destruction of summoner, general quality of reworked jobs, lack of player agency, dearth of content with legs, lack of interaction with other players etc?

This is what happens when players don't feel heard after stating their grievances once. If anyone in charge replied to any of those threads and said "we hear you," and then even stickied the thread and the dev response, I bet a lot of that kind of complaining would stop. Or at the very least, we could redirect them to the thread where a dev took note, and then just lock the new thread on the subject.
Instead, this place feels more akin to screaming into an abyss, so people just use the place to vent. Such is the absolute state of the official forums! If people truly hated this sort of thing, they'd stop bumping these threads.

On topic: First post nailed it. Game peaked but will take time to feel the ramifications.

[strawberrycake]

This is what happens when players don't feel heard after stating their grievances once. If anyone in charge replied to any of those threads and said "we hear you," and then even stickied the thread and the dev response, I bet a lot of that kind of complaining would stop. Or at the very least, we could redirect them to the thread where a dev took note, and then just lock the new thread on the subject.
Instead, this place feels more akin to screaming into an abyss, so people just use the place to vent. Such is the absolute state of the official forums! If people truly hated this sort of thing, they'd stop bumping these threads.

This. Most other MMOs have their CMs talk to us and give us feed back and let us know that feed back has been heard, we occasionally even have the director talk to us about things wanted changed. One of the things I LOVE about ESOs community live streams is that they'll have the devs who made new systems come on to the stream to talk about what they're working on.

I've been saying it for a while, but Yoshida being vague is a detriment to this game, the devs not speaking on the new stuff they implement is a detriment to this game. If they were just more forthcoming and direct with us, if they just straight explained the direction 14 was going in, in layman's terms, the people who want to be here would be here and those who didn't like it would leave, forums would go back to memes and such. But sadly that isn't the case.

And no this isn't unique to us, even JP feels ignored, and it's sad and disheartening.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I disagree on population, I think the game is going to grow more with Dawntrail at least.

It'll balloon for a while at the expansion's launch, as people whose subscriptions have lapsed come back to see what's going on. Then some of them will lapse again and it'll level off. Happens every expac.

[Shougun]

I think some people might be getting too familiar with the game, that might be trouble for that person. Of course the game can improve too but I think familiarity is one of the main issues some people are experiencing. Nothing feels new, even if it attempts to be.

That isn't to take away other concerns or desires, just that I think familiarity is also a major element. Like personally I see lack of quality gameplay roleplay wanning my interest in anything but the MSQ and PvP. And while I don't play healer I look at that and think "well that's a fire" lol.

[Jeeqbit]

Most other MMOs have their CMs talk to us and give us feed back and let us know that feed back has been heard

Well they could, but it's pointless because we know they aren't developers and that their word doesn't mean anything will change. It would be more useful to see a change that is clearly, and directly, influenced by a discussion here.

I think a great example of this was the change to Alliance Raid Roulette to require a certain Item Level to queue at each level range. It was brought up on these forums for years and then one day, MrHappy read it in a YouTube video and very quickly, Yoshi-P had it changed. This would probably not have happened if he hadn't seen that post on the forums and read it out.

Seeing it change after being brought up on the forums without a content creator having to read it would be nice to see. Seeing it change is more useful to me than seeing a reply from the community team of "we see you posted some feedback that may or may not be useful to us".

we occasionally even have the director talk to us about things wanted changed

Yoshi-P has made posts like that before, although quite rare. Although what is difficult about it is that there are multiple languages to consider and if he were to do it authentically it would probably just be a discussion with JP players.

One of the things I LOVE about ESOs community live streams is that they'll have the devs who made new systems come on to the stream to talk about what they're working on.

This is done via blogs on the lodestone, occasionally interviews on various websites, and at fanfests where entire presentations are done on how they have been developing the new expansion.

Yoshida being vague is a detriment to this game

If you're specific in his position, then it is taken as a guarantee it will happen, when that may not be the case. If it is guaranteed to happen, the announcement needs to happen properly with all of marketing at a strategic time, while some surprises can be good as well. These seem to be the reasons from what I've observed.

if they just straight explained the direction 14 was going in

They literally did. They said before Endwalker released that they heard the feedback about "3.0 DRK" and reverting class design, but are happy with where they got it in 5.0 and want to continue in that direction with Endwalker.

We began by going over our general guidelines for these job adjustments.

Our direction with these adjustments follows the base we established in 5.0 (Shadowbringers).

We understand that some of you would prefer jobs to be designed around more complex playstyles, similar to how they were in Heavensward, but that’s not what we’re going for. When both the jobs and content are challenging, it can become harder to play. We’ll maintain the current direction we’ve taken since 5.x, which seems to be the most accessible for the majority of players in the long run.

Many jobs will have the recast of their primary offensive abilities aligned to 60 or 120 seconds. This alignment will make it easier to coordinate timings for burst damage in high-end duties, as well as assist with trying a new job with a similar rotation cycle.

the people who want to be here would be here and those who didn't like it would leave

Well some did. But plenty remain so clearly this isn't true.

[caffe_macchiato]

Do you personally think the game is in trouble or in danger of failing/deing due to it.

No. Final Fantasy XIV has three main goals:
1) To be better than Shadowlands,
2) To let you install new outfits from third-party sources, and
3) To let you play other games

You failed to mention anything positive about FFXIV in your post, which is equal to complaining about it. And let me tell you something: FFXIV is nothing compared to Shadowlands. Remember the allegations? The Cosby suite? The grinding? The fact that it didn't let you play other games? Exactly. No matter how bad things get, at least we're not World of Warcraft.

Oh, and by the way? If you don't like it, you can just go play other games. That's right: for just $13 a month, you can play all the other games you want as long as they're free.

Isn't that the point of a discussion forum

No. The point of this forum is to discuss issues. And since FFXIV has no issues, there is no point to this discussion. All other posts should be praising this game for freeing us from being enslaved by Blizzard, and for letting us play other games.

Another troll defeated, the game is now safe from haters. Mods, please lock this thread.

[strawberrycake]

All of this

Yoshi-P has, actually, made posts like that before, although quite rare. Although what is sort of difficult about it is that there are multiple languages to consider and if he were to do it authentically it would probably just be a discussion with JP players.

Yeah and He needs to treat the game like it is, an International Game played across the world, making excuses doesn't change that reality.

This is done via blogs on the lodestone, occasionally interviews on various websites, and at fanfests where entire presentations and panels are done on how they have been developing the new expansion. We actually had these for Dawntrail as well.

And media Literacy is at an all time low and no offense this player base struggles with making SE accounts, and Most of them barely check the lodestone. Also why aren't his interviews translated for people outside JP and Why aren't ANY of these updates pushed to the official twitter or launcher?

If you're specific in his position, then it is taken as a guarantee it will happen, when that may not be the case. If it is guaranteed to happen, the announcement needs to happen properly with all of marketing at a strategic time, while some surprises can be good as well. These seem to be the reasons from what I've observed.

While this is very much the case for a lot of game Directors, theres also a time to be a lot less focused on timing and more so on just being honest, and many many other game directors, including Yoshida just need to at this point.

They literally did. They said before Endwalker released that they heard the feedback about "3.0 DRK" and reverting class design, but are happy with where they got it in 5.0 and want to continue in that direction with Endwalker.

I can rephrase this, SHOW US these systems in play over vaguely just talking about it, seeing these systems in play goes a long way in dealing with player perception and feed back to attune it to what it needs to be over just throwing content at us and it possibly being a sore on the overall expansion for 2 whole years, which has happened before.

Well some did. But plenty remain so clearly this isn't true.

If most people didn;t have to wait until each patch to know how each thing would exactly be implemented a lot of people would leave sooner. I feel like they're being vague and coy on how their systems and content will work as a means of player retention.