Is it time to Sunset FFXIV?

[Avoidy]

Imagine if you had a plant in your living room that crapped gold and all you had to do was barely water it three times a year. Would you throw it out, or would you keep giving it the bare minimum and enjoy your money printing machine?
Yeah, from a purely artistic and creative standpoint, the well's looking pretty dry. But the guys capable of sunsetting this game aren't paid to care about those lofty things. All they care about is moneyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[Valence]

I'm all for adding more content to the game that people can spend time on.

But is it going to solve anything if we get more bozja and eureka and whatnot? Those are just fate spamming fiestas, which rely on one of the most boring and insipid pieces of content in this game (fates), or chain killing mobs mindlessly to spawn NMs. Is this the quality of content we want to grind our asses out? Compare that to any game with a lot of replay value, like coop games, pvp games or especially rogue lite games.

Incorrect. My response is telling people to stop complaining ad nauseum now and instead vote with your wallets. Idk how you think continuing to spend money on a game you actively dislike and feel the devs aren't listening to you on is somehow the avenue to get your voices heard but I got news for you, that's a pretty idiotic move. If you want to see change, be the change they need to see and reflect on by leaving the game.

If more complainers did that, not only would the forums change for the better, but the game may genuinely improve.

Don't worry, if I truly hated the game I would have left long ago. Still puzzling to read that it has to be between "love the game unequivocally" or "leave with your wallet". There has to be no in between. It's a binary choice, you either like it, or leave it (somehow reminds me of very obnoxious, similar political arguments IRL...).

[Sotaris]

Snip

I have to agree. I mean what has really changed since like Stormblood, I think it was around here they dropped the 2 HM dungeons per patch (or was it during HW?).
Since then it been copying same formula more or less.

I'm not even burned out on 14 after playing it to 8-9 years. The gameplay just isnt fun anymore, housing isn't fun anymore, longterm grind isn't there anymore, I have to wait 1+ year for content I might be interested as a non-raider.
Story become stale post ARR ark.

I know what the defender will say so save your typing.

[Sotaris]

F11 only ran for 8 years before FF14 1.0 released. Why would it be surprising if another game was in development? I find it strange how Yoshi keeps saying we have 10 more years.

We have to remember that 11 was and still is, replying on aging hardware, the PS2 devkits and a very aged infrastructure with Playonline, which was made for FF9, long before 11 was a thing.
I understand why they wanted to make Rapture, or FF14 was we know it today.

FF14 is at least built with PC in mind and a moduler base, even if we have a ton of 1.0 relic in form of netcode, backend and spaghetti code. It's easier for them to move forward with 14 and continue to work on the legacy systems.
In an ideal world, they would done everything from scratch when they decided to make ARR, but it would taken maybe 5 years instead of the short period it took them to remake the game. They choose profits and a quick turn around over making something longterm and not having all this technical debt that holds back the game now.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm all for adding more content to the game that people can spend time on.

But is it going to solve anything if we get more bozja and eureka and whatnot? Those are just fate spamming fiestas

There was a lot more to it than that though. The CEs in Bozja were amazing and fun, with interesting mechanics that often left most people dead. You could make strategic use of Lost Actions to survive some of them but only the most smart players came prepared for that and used them well. Even some of the Skirmishes could be rough due to proximity markers or lack of players to support the tank.

And the large-scale raids CLL, Dalriada, BA and DR were some of the best midcore content they've done - it wasn't too hard (a few players would survive and clear it), but it was hard enough that most people there were dead and you sent a crack team to handle a different boss.

Both Eureka and Bozja had a lot of social interaction as well. You had cluster farms, reflect farms, dragon farms (for light), NM farms/spawn parties, coordination in the raids, asking for a rez when mobs/dragons killed you in Eureka, bunny farms.

Whatever you want to say about all that, it was very social (at least when it was current). It made the game feel very alive. Something that we lost in Endwalker where it felt very quiet due to soloing Island Sanctuary, soloing MSQ dungeons, soloing Variant dungeons, no Field Operation, etc.

FF14 is at least built with PC in mind and a moduler base, even if we have a ton of 1.0 relic in form of netcode, backend and spaghetti code.

To be fair, SE knows this best and they answered this directly (see signature).

[Valence]

There was a lot more to it than that though. The CEs in Bozja were amazing and fun, with interesting mechanics that often left most people dead. You could make strategic use of Lost Actions to survive some of them but only the most smart players came prepared for that and used them well. Even some of the Skirmishes could be rough due to proximity markers or lack of players to support the tank.

And the large-scale raids CLL, Dalriada, BA and DR were some of the best midcore content they've done - it wasn't too hard (a few players would survive and clear it), but it was hard enough that most people there were dead and you sent a crack team to handle a different boss.

Both Eureka and Bozja had a lot of social interaction as well. You had cluster farms, reflect farms, dragon farms (for light), NM farms/spawn parties, coordination in the raids, asking for a rez when mobs/dragons killed you in Eureka, bunny farms.

Whatever you want to say about all that, it was very social (at least when it was current). It made the game feel very alive. Something that we lost in Endwalker where it felt very quiet due to soloing Island Sanctuary, soloing MSQ dungeons, soloing Variant dungeons, no Field Operation, etc.

I can see where you're coming from with Bozja's CEs, and don't get me wrong they were okay in my book, but after having done them once or twice they quickly became old and on top of it, once more, they all followed the same "this is a circle area with a boss in the middle regurgitating the same mechanics". Even Red Choktober that was hilarious at first became just one among many unless you played healer I guess. And having to farm boring mobs just to make those CEs pop...? urg. That's the problem with this game, they have reduced everything down to 1) Fates on open maps or 2) trial bosses in a circle or square arena.

Any kind of farm parties in both eureka and bozja were dull and mind numbing. Go to a certain spot and farm boring mobs. Even if some had funky mechanics like they could evolve or mutate, in fine it was the same boredom so hard pass.

I'll mention that CLL and Dalriada were actually good. Different and new. Even some of the boss areas were creative, like the first boss on the wall. If we could get more of this kind of novel things without just relying on the occasional big instance, and actually replacing fates and boring bosses on the overworld with unique stuff? I feel like I'm asking for the moon somewhat.

I'm sure better quality content can prove equally if not more social. Social just requires one of two things:
1) The need to create parties because something cannot be solo-ed, and that you know you're gonna have to spend hours farming it, but you can also do that with hunt train and fate farms already, you don't need field operations for that.
2) RNG and tactics to be discussed between different pulls, or how to proceed next between different steps of whatever the content is. If it's not scripted, it's not predictable. If it can't be predicted, then people will have to talk.

[Sotaris]

To be fair, SE knows this best and they answered this directly (see signature).

Wonder why they keep complaining they can't do certain things due to 1.0 code if he wasnt talking out of his behind.

[Jeeqbit]

Wonder why they keep complaining they can't do certain things due to 1.0 code if he wasnt talking out of his behind.

Have genuinely not seen them using 1.0 as an excuse ever. If they did it was probably before Stormblood when I didn't pay attention to live letters as much due to lack of translation.

What they tend to blame is 2.0 spaghetti code (as in code freshly created with or after ARR), since the game is built upon 2.0 and the game has changed a lot since then, so altering 2.0 could knock the stack of cards down from below. For example, if they say they can't alter FATEs, that's blaming 2.0 code.

The thing I usually see them blame, though, is infrastructure, such as how there are separate physical servers for duties, worlds and zones and therefore you don't "carry" all your data with you. They also talk a lot of how adding features (such as more inventory) would overwhelm something - I assume they mean the overall network traffic on their end due to the collective increase in network traffic retrieving more items, or the overall database traffic to retrieve things after increasing inventory.

So you see, there are problems, but it's related more to hardware or code made since 2.0 and I feel like I would just work around those problems personally, but for whatever reason, they find them too complicated. I can only assume it's this complicated due to their workflow (how they distribute different tasks to different employees), whereas if just 1 person was doing it they'd be able to solve it - a common issue in companies that become too bloated with employees tbh. It can overcomplicate what are simple problems to solve for a solo dev.

[Sotaris]

A lot of the 2.0 code is based on 1.0 since they both share the same engine, sort of.
1.0 used the infamous Luminous engine and 2.0 uses a altered 2.0 version of it, shares a lot with it.
Wherever they replaced it without communicating it, I can't say. I don't work at SE. I suspect they still use components from it, other parts is replaced since they was able to do some form of graphical overhaul this expansion.

That they can't change things due to 2.0 code is proof to me, someone who been working as a developer for the past decade that they rushed, took an old codebase to get 2.0 out on the market as soon as possible instead of doing it right from the start. We see it at most companies so SE isn't unique in this. It was just a matter of time before their legacy spaghetti to bite them.

I'd call that technical debt, since they can't do massive changes without having to rewrite a lot of the legacy, even if Yoshida don't think it is. Might just be a difference of labels.

[Jeeqbit]

1.0 used the infamous Luminous engine

It used Crystal Tools.

2.0 uses a altered 2.0 version of it, shares a lot with it.

2.0 uses an altered version of the Luminous Engine. As far as I know and observed, FF16 appeared to use it too.

Whether it borrowed any code from Crystal Tools, I can't say because I haven't worked with any of these... but they are supposed to be completely separate engines and that was the supposed to be the entire point of switching.