Melbourne International games week Interview about content

[CuteBucket]

Yeah. People love to rag on WoW for reworking practically the entire game every couple of expansions, but that's how you keep things fresh, and why so many people still play it this many years later. In FFXIV it often feels like we're still just playing HW part-5, and for the long time veterans, that's super boring.

So here's the thing. I really, REALLY don't want FFXIV to try and reinvent the wheel every two years. Yes, some jobs are feeling stale and homogenized, it's true. But it also really sucks to play a class, get really good at it, get all that muscle memory built up, and then have the rugged yanked out from under you with "We reworked you job and now you have a totally different rotation and buttons!" Sometimes the change, as hard as it is, can be an improvement. But sometimes it's not, or it's actually a downgrade. I don't want change just for the sake of change. I don't want my jobs getting gutted and remade if the new version is just the old version rearranged to play differently with no actual improvement. That gets really frustrating and makes me want to quit. Sorry to those who have played for a decade and think "the job system is the same!" Isn't that...normal? I don't expect the way a game series plays to fundamentally shift with every new installment in the series (though Final Fantasy as a series seems to love to try and do this, and it's partially why I don't care for the newer games), so why would a game that came out in 2013 play all that radically different now? I'm actually kind of glad a lot of the jobs didn't change too much between Endwalker and Dawntrail, because even if they weren't all in a great state then, at least I don't have to relearn the whole thing from the ground up all over again and can jump right into the new content feeling like I know what I'm doing.

I'm not saying "everything is perfect, never touch it or change anything ever again." I expect some amount of updates as the game goes on. But man oh man, I don't want them "reworking practically the entire game every couple of expansions" just to "keep things fresh." That would seriously drive me up the wall and irritate me to no end.

[Supersnow845]

So here's the thing. I really, REALLY don't want FFXIV to try and reinvent the wheel every two years. Yes, some jobs are feeling stale and homogenized, it's true. But it also really sucks to play a class, get really good at it, get all that muscle memory built up, and then have the rugged yanked out from under you with "We reworked you job and now you have a totally different rotation and buttons!" Sometimes the change, as hard as it is, can be an improvement. But sometimes it's not, or it's actually a downgrade. I don't want change just for the sake of change. I don't want my jobs getting gutted and remade if the new version is just the old version rearranged to play differently with no actual improvement. That gets really frustrating and makes me want to quit. Sorry to those who have played for a decade and think "the job system is the same!" Isn't that...normal? I don't expect the way a game series plays to fundamentally shift with every new installment in the series (though Final Fantasy as a series seems to love to try and do this, and it's partially why I don't care for the newer games), so why would a game that came out in 2013 play all that radically different now? I'm actually kind of glad a lot of the jobs didn't change too much between Endwalker and Dawntrail, because even if they weren't all in a great state then, at least I don't have to relearn the whole thing from the ground up all over again and can jump right into the new content feeling like I know what I'm doing.

I'm not saying "everything is perfect, never touch it or change anything ever again." I expect some amount of updates as the game goes on. But man oh man, I don't want them "reworking practically the entire game every couple of expansions" just to "keep things fresh." That would seriously drive me up the wall and irritate me to no end.

That would imply the jobs don’t actually get reworked to make them worse versions of themselves every time

Does any DRG main think current DRG is better than EW DRG, same as BLM, EW SMN, AST’s 4th card system

If the jobs didn’t actually change at all that would be one thing but they do change them they just make them worse and more boring

[CuteBucket]

Yeah, I suppose that's what I'm trying to get at here -- I'd honestly rather they had not changed most of the jobs from when I first started than what we have now. I think some of the changes were improvements, or net-neutral, but there were a lot more changes that didn't seem necessary at all or were changes for the worse. So when I hear "I think they should change everything every expansion," I get wary. I already really don't like the changes I've had to endure since I started playing in ShB. Can't we just have job changes that are...y'know...good? and fun? I know it's subjective, but I genuinely don't know who asked for most of the changes (removing Kaiten from Samurai sure wasn't a thing I ever once encountered and everyone I encountered was upset by it). Frankly I don't think it has anything to do with player feedback anymore and is the devs trying to homogenize everything to make it easier on themselves (likely due to budget and employee number restrictions).

[Brightamethyst]

Does any DRG main think current DRG is better than EW DRG

Current DRG is absolutely better than EW DRG (Spineshatter/Winged Glide aesthetic change aside.)

[Avoidy]

He's only saying this because he sees the writing on the wall. 7.0 to 7.1 has been a stretch of people quitting. The midway content offered nothing but a savage raid tier, which... even if you do raid, this game is designed so that you're only incentivized to do it once a week. Crafting was another thing we got, but bots and undercutters ruined that real quick. God help you if you were casual or (for lack of a better word) "midcore" because what did you even have at that point? The same two extremes we've had since 7.0? Expert roulette? It was pretty dry, and a lot of people left as a result. Someone'll inevitably say "it's always been this way," and you're right, but I guess it's hitting a tipping point.

And now we're getting 7.1 and what's that gonna bring? More of the mediocre MSQ. A single alliance raid... and honestly, if it's made by the same people who did euphrosyne and thaleia, it'll be clearable hour 1 with no wipes and become a joke within a day. Furthermore, timegated loot means you'll probably run it once a week unless there's a glam you're after. It's not a lot. And then they're like, "oh, chaotic alliance raid!" but really it's looking like one alliance raid boss. And the boss they picked for .1 is a boss from the most overdone alliance raid series of all time. We heard you liked crystal tower, so here's some more crystal tower. And that's it, bro! That's it for 4 more months! Please don't retire! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't retire.

[Daralii]

He's only saying this because he sees the writing on the wall. 7.0 to 7.1 has been a stretch of people quitting. The midway content offered nothing but a savage raid tier, which... even if you do raid, this game is designed so that you're only incentivized to do it once a week. Crafting was another thing we got, but bots and undercutters ruined that real quick. God help you if you were casual or (for lack of a better word) "midcore" because what did you even have at that point? The same two extremes we've had since 7.0? Expert roulette? It was pretty dry, and a lot of people left as a result. Someone'll inevitably say "it's always been this way," and you're right, but I guess it's hitting a tipping point.

The counterpoint to "It's always been this way" is that we used to get more content more frequently. They started reducing the number of capstone dungeons per patch a long time ago(it used to be a completely new one and an incorrectly named hard mode), and then have been gradually stretching the patches out more and more.

[MAJRIS]

He's only saying this because he sees the writing on the wall.

Is it truly on the CBU's side or rather than SE itself that keeps holding CBU's budget on short leash?

[ovIm]

Is it truly on the CBU's side or rather than SE itself that keeps holding CBU's budget on short leash?

Possibly both. Seeing how CBU3 has to still ask for budget to use on FFXIV (which, in and out of itself is a travesty already), and Yoshi-P, who is literally on the board of directors apparently not changing that status quo for whatever reason.

This is of course just an assumption of mine based on observations, and should not be taken as a fact.

[Avoidy]

Is it truly on the CBU's side or rather than SE itself that keeps holding CBU's budget on short leash?

It's probably both. SE knows that XIV is their moneymaker, but they've always been loath to give it the funding it deserves because it prints money even when you give it the bare minimum... so they're gonna keep giving it the bare minimum. Meanwhile, Yoshida goes out there repping cbu3 and just says whatever he wants with no filter or handler to shush him, so you get these weird candid moments like Yoshida bluntly saying that ff16 sold lower than expected because "nobody owns a ps5" or weird remarks about a "scary lady" in charge of the cash shop who cracks the whip behind the scenes, or moments like these with "pleeeease don't leeeave" lol. In a way it's refreshing, but sometimes he also just says stuff that either isn't gonna happen, or isn't gonna happen even remotely soon, so you get players looking forward to stuff that won't happen until like .3 or .4 at best.

[Tint]

If they don't want us to retire they should do something to prevent that from happening. They should pump out an ARR / HW style relic quest for starters. Just slap a particle effect on the AF weapons and let us run existing content for it.

That would be an easy emergency solution which could be ready for 7.1 to get us something to do.