Game Design Concepts that the Devs and Playerbase has Forgotten

[SwadTheFrog]

Yes it does, I'd get a refund on your degree LMAO

Shit, you're right.

[Ririta]

Someone seems to have forgotten though that the Final Fantasy series is famed for story more than gameplay (and that this is a Final Fantasy game first and foremost.).

To be fair, FF games don't necessarily dump a lot of story on your before you get into the main gameplay. For example, Tactics drops you right into a high level battle. FFVII starts with you invading a reactor with Barret. FFIX starts with a battle against Baku.

However this might not be possible on FFXIV because we need to avoid congestion like in Stormblood where we couldn't do the Raubahn instance because there were too many players at once.

[ty_taurus]

What I see for Dawntrail is a lack of both engaging gameplay AND a story that is lackluster in its own genre of MMO. This is why we're throwing a lot of negative feedback and backlash at Square Enix on their official forums and social media platforms. I know for a fact they can make quality content, as shown in 91 Dungeon - but focusing on one thing at a time is not good if everything else suffers, even if it's slow.

For me at least, the job design is so unsatisfying that I haven't experienced whether or not I even like the story because I have no job to play through the story with. I don't care for tanks at all, I'm burnt out of DPS because I want more than just doing DPS, and the healers are in a horrible state especially for clearing the MSQ. Honestly if I could, I'd just buy a skip potion and faff around doing all the non PVE content. There's glams I want to grab that I can't because I'm stuck at 90.

[Jojoya]

Thinking in terms of game design, I've been seeing a lot of talk about things that the FFXIV Devs seems to have forgotten, or just dropped, and the playerbase growing so used to it that they're now pushing for that direction for this game's design.

1. Just Let Them Play - Link

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2. Let Them Skip - Link

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3. Echo Chambers - Link

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If anyone has more examples, pleased do share. I think it's important to talk and be reminded about good game design to better our games.

1. This isn't an arcade game. Not every game needs to be styled after arcade games to be enjoyable. If you want the immediate gratification that an arcade style game can provide, play one. There are thousand of free to play games available to choose from.

2. This game is built around the story. You can skip most of it if you want but that's going to leave a poor experience. Are you sure this is the game you want to be playing when there are plenty out there where the story is just an afterthought?

3. Every game with a large enough player base has multiple echo chambers. Ignore them if they're bothering you. That's what 90% of the player base is already doing. They just play the game and ignore the gossip.

4. Good game design will be different things to different players. Not everyone enjoys the same design. Find the game you want to be playing instead of picking a random game expecting it to change to conform to what you want. Change isn't going to occur when you keep throwing money at something you don't like.

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

Shit, you're right.

I'd really prefer if you got mad and yelled instead of playing along

[SwadTheFrog]

I'd really prefer if you got mad and yelled instead of playing along

It's too late. It's always been too late.

[Striker44]

There's actual discussion in this forum, and no attempt to silence others forcibly.

Oh, that's funny. Seriously, try saying something positive on here, or daring to raise a counterpoint in any of the avalanche of negative threads, and watch the echo chamber descend on you, attack you, belittle you, and high-five each other while they do it. This place is absolutely a negative echo chamber, and has been for long before DT. Wow.

[ShadowyZero]

this game can be both a final fantasy and a mmo it doesn't need to priortize one or the other. historically the brand of FF is a stable rpg series you are given adventures to go on with optional side content along the way and ways to boost power of your party members an usually alot of troupes are used for characters and settings.

as for what constitutes a massive multiplayer with online functionality the genre is not strictly tied to battles some games are just central to catter to different types of players wether it be an adventure with friends(allies) farming for loot/treasure, exploration, lore building, roleplaying, and much more
Final Fantasy XIV has tried to catter to all that and more which isn't a bad thing but it does make some areas or aspects of the game suffer and the outcry seems to mostly stem from people wanting more of a challenge in combat which is all well and good and is perfectly fine for stuff like raids, pvp, or trials but for story just leave it alone its fine as is its meant to be super casual from the get go its not there to punish you lol but rather to guide your hand and give you a literal movie to watch with which you have limited autonomy

[ViaDesperare]

I think it's important to remember that the first 30mins of your game is REALLY important in retaining a player's attention. When comparing FFXIV to other story heavy games, it can fail hard on that aspect if the story isn't engaging to the player.

1. Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed Intro
I think if they learn from the Xenoblade formula, where the intro introduces a strong [Hook] to grab a players interest and then proceed to introduce game mechanics earlier into the story. This is a win for players of want to enjoy gameplay and those for story.

2. When it comes to exploration, FFXIV uses it's MSQ to move players around the map and then the Aether currents are used to make us explore more, but not really. I think this is a waste on map design, because maps are one and done and forgotten outside of hunt trains and even then, we ignore everything except for the monster. It's true that we have a sigh seeing log, but I think the rewards from that is lackluster. What's discoverable on the map is also located in different sections of menus.

To be rewarded well and to make the map more presentable, I think if FFXIV does something similar to Future Redeemed's map then it would compel people to find those side objectives.


Notice how it has all those side objectives located in one area, telling you the maximum amount for each? I think something like this would be compelling for players to make them want to explore more, especially if they end up having something along the lines of 4/7 landmarks remaining.



You can also have small mini games around the map to facillate exploration as well, like in Genshin/Wuthering/TotK. I think just adding something small to do on each map, with a count to them would help a lot in livening up the MSQ experience a lot more. It could be very simple puzzles, or minigames, etc. Just something to do.

3. SQX's lack of Innovation

I think, if Square wants to make their game better than games like Genshin then they need to be more innovative. They can't go be angry and jealous over those games when they often neglect many of their games and then their gacha always just dies off due to horrible management and greed. FFXIV is REALLY darn greedy too, with the class locked gear being sold on the store and thus we'll never get to glamour heavy armor to all the healer robes UNLESS we pay money to buy the non locked version online. The unlocked version online are the Alphinaude Shadowbringer and Ysale set of the many.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Someone seems to have forgotten though that the Final Fantasy series is famed for story more than gameplay (and that this is a Final Fantasy game first and foremost.).

Yes but theres a big difference between single player FF games and 14 and that there's interesting stuff between each cutscene. In 14 the travel between each CS is just there for a time sink there's no risk from enemies, no forced encounters, very little reason to break off from the story apart from aether currents.
The cutscenes are all super long with very little fights, dungeons or trials breaking it up. I'm only at 95 and i'm so tempted to hit skip....