ffxivdiscussion: What do you think of the upcoming patch and trajectory of the game?

[Feina]

Don't know about anyone else but I'm really 50/50 on the new Chaotic Alliance Raid. On one hand I honestly hope it's good, but everything I've read about it, and seen from other players comments is that we'll be lucky if the content lasts even more than a month before it dies off.

It's a max of 24 players, but supposedly a party of 12 can complete the required checks. There's an incentive to get more first-time players through the content which is great, but announcing the difficulty will essentially be Savage-esque means there's already a ton of casual/non-raiding players who will be put off & again miss out on new content.

Then with how awkward it is for recruiting in PF for 8-player content, how on earth is it going to work for 12-24 players? Will people even want to wait around for a PF to fill up past 12, or just get straight into the content? Will it eventually die out, and then be relegated to an obscure Discord server to arrange groups?

It's odd as I originally thought they'd be re-releasing the old AR's but reworked to be as they were on release with our full toolkits available & mechanics, not just one boss fight :/

[Hallarem]

Its the main problem that really strikes any MMO gameplay feel out of this game. Everything is too uniform, safe, without any sharp exciting edges. Sure? Its an MMO socially but gameplay wise its a pretender.

For balancing? Its easy.
Stats? Dont matter
Gear? Just design how it looks and smack in the arbitrary stats.
Materia? Just add the same ones, everyones just gonna use the same ones.
Endgame fight design?
Class design? Flash, no substance. Goodness gracious you introduce some rng to classes or having tanks focus on tanking and healers on healing, kiting mechanics? Positioning the boss just right? instead of this DDR rotation limbo where everyones a dps.

Its designed for people who hate change, and want to eat the same hamburger for 20 years in a row. WEAK and FRIGHTENED game design.
Sweet Twelve if the story is gonna be a similar slop we are in big trouble.
1-2 emotes per every other patch. 2-3 housing items per patch or every other patch. They are really married to their formula and their only saving grace is that they dont have any competition aside from WoW which is a dumpsterfire for other reasons.

[Kaurhz]

Good QoL.

Content generally speaking is in a bad spot, IMO. Raids are great and all for people that thrive in that content, and it's great for people that enjoy that difficulty of content, but I am sorry this MMO takes over half of an expansion cycle to even get breadcrumbs of what MMO content actually should be. - I do want to iterate that I don't want to take anything from raiders, but an MMO should consist of more than just 4-man and 8-man instanced content and arguably 24-man instanced content, or at the very least the MMO style content should be at the forefront. Release the substantive content sooner, add a little teeth to how long it is, and then just allow players to drop in-and-out of that content. Rather than backloading it and making the substance suffer as a result.

I feel they are also having a very rigid outlook on the core systems of the game. We're over a decade in and the core open world content is still FATEs, Hunting, and Gathering. Oh, and Sightseeing logs if you're really pressing yourself. Why is it the only updates have effectively been along the lines of random SS-Ranks. Why is it that after all this time the achievement system has gone largely untouched. Sure, they've added a few Portraits to this, but frankly you get more certificates from unlocking the achievements related to that reward than what the actual cost is.

Achievement hunting has always been 1 of my main activities, but I am at a point where that's putting me in content, e.g., Frontlines which has been so awfully unbalanced because fundamental choices are just being skipped, e.g., AoE damage cap over a certain # of targets. I would go out on a limb and say that had I not had friends/company that are still progressing through the game, then this would likely have been my last expansion in honesty for a while. Probably would've finished my Fishing Log and then took an extended break. I wouldn't expect to stay fully entertained in everything I do, but at the very least I would expect something out of it.

It's not even that they are wasting resources, they are just outright not putting enough resources into what they do, so we end up with all these non-substantive systems that please very few people, despite the fact of them being a fairly well requested feature, or at least something that looks good on paper.

[Arrius]

A shame they didn't announce a shared subscription for XI and XIV for the Alliance release - It definitely would have filled a much-needed gap in the lulls of XIV while keeping the players engaged elsewhere.

Half of my FC would seriously consider trying XI out if this would be the case, just to enjoy it with the gang in times of slow content at XIV.
This would be a ideal marketing move for them.

[Valence]

Seeing this one McDonalds line reminds me of something I read on reddit:



The following words are written by reddit user u/Kaella (link to original post), and I claim no ownership of these words. That being said, personally, I see a lot of truth in here, and the post is too good not to share with the world.

Most depressing stuff I've ever read, it's very true, but I'm like, the core target audience of that post. I'm Mao's frog in a blender and I don't like it.

[Hyperia]

I agree with a lot of the comments op curated.

The need for the dev team to have more time between patches totally makes sense. But even if I understand the logic, the time feels sooo long. Those additional couple weeks really feel like a massive difference. I really think SE should prioritize giving the team whatever resources they need (whether that's people, space, technology, whatever) to bring back the shorter patch cycles.

We absolutely need more casual or grindy content earlier. Start relic weapons and DoH/DoL tools in X.1, have something Bozja-ish and/or something like the Firmament or Island Sanctuary start as soon as possible.

The lack of general content also makes it a challenge for casual FCs to organize group events. For 7.1 we'll be able to host group runs of the new alliance raid but that's basically the only new thing we'll get.

All of the content is developed by different teams internally. What they need is more devs so they can have more teams to make more content. It’s simple math, the higher ups are taking most of this games money and devs to work on other content.

Once they see things getting bad, they will scramble and try to fix it with a brief cash and dev infusion. I’m not certain that will help them at that point as most of the long term players will have moved on.

Long term players are the financial foundation of this game. We don’t move fast or easily but once we start moving, it’s going to be very hard to get us to move back.

I know of two close to me who said DT was going to be the breaking point… they snapped into the first or second zone. 11 years of playing and they just got up and went away.

I’m on a break myself playing other games but, in the past I always felt the twinge to come back. 3.5 months into the break and all I feel is sadness that I don’t have that twinge anymore.

[Khryseis_Astra]

A shame they didn't announce a shared subscription for XI and XIV for the Alliance release - It definitely would have filled a much-needed gap in the lulls of XIV while keeping the players engaged elsewhere.

Half of my FC would seriously consider trying XI out if this would be the case, just to enjoy it with the gang in times of slow content at XIV.
This would be an ideal marketing move for them.

Yes, I’d definitely try it out if I didn’t have to pay an extra sub fee. It would be so nice to have some context for the new Alliance raid coming out. I’ll probably just see if there’s any story stuff on YouTube I can watch.

As someone who’s actually enjoying this expansion (sure I have some nitpicks but who doesn’t? lol), the only suggestion I have is that if the length between patches needs to be longer, then maybe put the first parts of the more grindy activities in earlier? Maybe the first parts of Cosmic Exploration or Shades Triangle could have started with 7.1 instead of whenever they’re planning. But there could be story reasons why they don’t do things like that, idk.

I’m pretty much caught up on everything at this point except my crafting role quests, but I realize I’m probably online more than the average person, and I’m impatient, so it’s probably my own fault I rushed through everything! lol

[seolhyun]

remember this game ONLY got good because people told them how bad 1.0 was. making excuses for SE like "yoshi says play other games" or "this is how its always been" will never make the game better.

[Sheriyana]

remember this game ONLY got good because people told them how bad 1.0 was. making excuses for SE like "yoshi says play other games" or "this is how its always been" will never make the game better.

Preach Queen

[ForteNightshade]

I believe I already posted in that thread myself but I mostly echo the same sentiment many of the comments outlined. At this point, I'm only subbed because Ultimate is on the horizon, I have a house and a few friends from a FC I started hanging around invited me to their venue parties. Figured I'd poke around that scene and see what all the fuss is about. On the whole though, I've been playing BG3 since early October and hardly looked at XIV unless a friend asks to run roulettes. I just have very little drive to play because there's so little to do. I've leveled almost every job save the few I don't like (they're still nearly 100 by now), I've cleared Savage since week 1, farmed the EXs and have long finished any backlog except for side quests that I really don't care about. Not to say the stories are bad they kind of need motivation to feel engaging.

7.1 is dropping in a week and it's almost comical how little there is in the supposed "main" patch itself. If I bother, I'll have everything done on Tuesday then it's right back to waiting around. They desperately need to expediate the relic weapon or something. It's ridiculous DT, just like EW and Shadowbringers before it, will be nearly a year old before any actual grind is on offer.