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

[Raim]

They need to expedite either the foray, V&C, relics and/or DD into future .1 or launch patches. The content is too backloaded into expansions. There isn't enough for casual and midcore players near launch and its all just raiding focused. The content 'is' there but their pacing and schedule is atrocious. On top of being the most controversial MSQ yet its just resulting in a lot of people taking extended breaks.

[Zaniel]

I think fundamentally the content cycle is the same as Shadowbringers and Endwalker, changes here and there to be sure, but basically the same. HOWEVER, I enjoyed that in ShB and EW, I didn't mind the cycle, I made my own fun and I find grinding therapeutic. I played ShB and EW with no breaks all the way through, logged in almost every single day for those two whole expansions and never felt bored.

This time is different, the DT MSQ has poisoned the well (for me).

It's like seeing someone hack up all over your favourite pizza. It's still the same pizza but I ain't eating that. The incredulous annoyance (maybe even anger) I felt regarding the MSQ means I have lost that feeling of character and a lived-in-world I am interested in, I'm dislocated from my WoL. So it doesn't matter if the content delivery is the same, I just feel little to no enthusiasm to engage with it.

[ForteNightshade]

I think fundamentally the content cycle is the same as Shadowbringers and Endwalker, changes here and there to be sure, but basically the same. HOWEVER, I enjoyed that in ShB and EW, I didn't mind the cycle, I made my own fun and I find grinding therapeutic. I played ShB and EW with no breaks all the way through, logged in almost every single day for those two whole expansions and never felt bored.

This time is different, the DT MSQ has poisoned the well (for me).

It's like seeing someone hack up all over your favourite pizza. It's still the same pizza but I ain't eating that. The incredulous annoyance (maybe even anger) I felt regarding the MSQ means I have lost that feeling of character and a lived-in-world I am interested in, I'm dislocated from my WoL. So it doesn't matter if the content delivery is the same, I just feel little to no enthusiasm to engage with it.

I think another factor, at least for me, on top of this is people are simply getting tired of the same formula again and again with very little deviation. Ironically, the Chinese director literally warned about this, saying they needed another major shake up like how Shadowbringers changed job design from Stormblood. Instead, we got what amounts to 15$ DLC in the form of a job update and yet another retread of that same aforementioned formula. Now I do think they could have push through if the story had been good but that being such a underwhelming mess meant they no longer had anything to mask the growing stagnation and deficiencies of the game.

[Turtledeluxe]

I think fundamentally the content cycle is the same as Shadowbringers and Endwalker, changes here and there to be sure, but basically the same. HOWEVER, I enjoyed that in ShB and EW, I didn't mind the cycle, I made my own fun and I find grinding therapeutic. I played ShB and EW with no breaks all the way through, logged in almost every single day for those two whole expansions and never felt bored.

This time is different, the DT MSQ has poisoned the well (for me).

It's like seeing someone hack up all over your favourite pizza. It's still the same pizza but I ain't eating that. The incredulous annoyance (maybe even anger) I felt regarding the MSQ means I have lost that feeling of character and a lived-in-world I am interested in, I'm dislocated from my WoL. So it doesn't matter if the content delivery is the same, I just feel little to no enthusiasm to engage with it.

This is something I have commented on before and I think it's likely quite common. Given that XIV's reputation hinges so closely on its story, it's likely that a signiciant number of players tolerated the subscription/ content ratio for a long while simply based on how well the story execution was going. Now that it isn't, people aren't liking what they're seeing without the rose tinted glasses.

[Elissar]

Imagine if one day you wake up and Kate Beckinsale is making your breakfast dressed as Selene





Then you discover that you married her last night. Now imagine that you will eat the same breakfast for 100years without any change. Even her facial expressions will be the same like a clock.

Eventually you will reach a place where you will ask yourself if you really married a person or JOI from bladerunner 2049




Sorry, at least JOI evolved and changed more than the current FFXIV
------
Jokes aside, combat is very creative in DT, really, the combat team deserves every compliment. However, dungeon design is the same thing, the cycle of itemization is the same thing...there is no customization/personalization in any level. I leveled up a viper expecting something different..first patch they removed +10% dmg that you had to apply during your 1-2-3....now literally feels like a cheap Reaper.


it's like eating the same cake every day with some twist in here and there. Still the same cake, and you are still eating it.

[Shougun]

Awful.

FACT the only people I know (except 4) and that is out of a lot that are still playing are all ultimate raiders, and there are actually a lot of those. An entire CWLS aimed at sprouts, have unsubbed.
The Ultimate raiders they soon moved into savage straight after a shit MSQ now they will soon move onto, ultimate, then they are going to move onto Chaotic ("boo-hoo this is coming too soon after ultimate, we have too much content")
By the way I dont know anyone who did extremes this expansion who don't also do ultimates.
There will be some, but they aren't long time players so I haven't got to meeet them, and I suspect a lot of those will leave after finding the PF culture created by wipes Vs the need to farm... it's not for them.

My group of friends all players for three years or more did extremes and unreal for EW. We are gentle encouraging players. Not a word of judgment or blaming among us.
No one wanted to farm the extreme after being coached through it by very helpful players. I won't guess at the reasons why. (In my case I'm not doing that PF "YOU MUST KNOW XYZ!" with its silent rude 'poof' disbands. I have a solution but that's off topic)
And we cleared unreal and that almost broke us. It took 7 weeks. I was happy to farm with those friends. But I think they were exhausted. It broke us.
None of those players did the Extremes this game. They've been unsubbed ages now.

No one is talking about coming back. They are not interested in the discords. XIV is kind of just another game inn their past.

Yesterday I had a discussion about the Extremes in a discord yesterday. None of the casual gamers commented (they are not interested in XIV anymore), my suggestion was

• scrap enrage, or make it triggered by the boss HP not the clock. Allow fights to go on a long time if DPS is poor. But better guarantee that clear.
  (This might kill Extreemes, BUT this is the content "I" am missing.)

The casual gamers know exactly what's coming... "No don't make my game easier. We raiders also dont have enough hard content."
All of them ultimate raiders.

I'm honestly not interested in making friends in game again. Because if they are casual the game is going to F them off again.
The game is just not for players like us.
The game is unplayable for casual players that don't use lots of mods for the RP scene.
I don't find friends to run content with (those in most cases will just be acquaintances). I want content to run with the friends I have.


After the tone of that conversation I've got no interests in Chaotic. And if it has a time triggered Enrage I doubt im even going to try when I do resub. (I never imagined it but 'when' is sounding more like 'if')

Wont say there is no content, but I do have to chime in at the angle that I think they don't do a great job with casual content.

By that I mean, sure we have quests, but they're all very very cliche in design. Sure there is FATEs and stuff, but again, massively cliche. There are tribe quests, just an extension of cliche quests in general. We got an Island, which is super pretty, but the gameplay design? Accounting and stock broker wet dream, perhaps, but not very well gameplay'd. There's a Saucer but unless you're new the only content is going to be a massive grind, better to be done passively / make it rain.

Yet, if we talk high end. They will design drop dead gorgeous fights with unique and fairly innovative concepts. "ITS NOT INNOVAT--" shh.. shh.. this is my opinion lol. I respect that some people wish for more, but having tried the other two (imo) main competitors, FFXIV doesn't skimp on the boss fights. Great music, great visuals, good design, fairly intuitive vanilla feedback that doesn't HAVE TO HAVE mods unlike some other games (though we certainly do have a modding scene).

So I would say that FFXIV has skated by on some bare minimum casual content for quite a while. Using the same systems and concepts, and when bringing something new (like Island), will use the bare minimum on gameplay. In order to compare, you can say that WoW's Garrison is akin to our Island, which the guide to that content will fill at least 20 pages, many pages being UNIQUE tasks, ours is going to be two pages describing how to miff your pokeballs at animals and play the stock exchange. When WoW added a farm, for the hells of it, they made a planting game that turned into Plants Vs Zombies.

My dead horse drum *gameplay roleplay* is weak here, and that in my mind is what plays into casual content. When I go catch an animal in sanctuary, why wasn't it a mini-game? Heck you could have re-used some of your saucer mini-games and reskinned it-- instead it's just right click watch. I assume there are some people who actually like playing spreadsheets on the workshop, but does anyone honestly think that is a majority or even second majority ideal task?

The amount of people who sincerely got excited to play the workshop board is probably LESS than the amount of people who play and succeed at ultimate. Because I'm salting my drums anyways I guess, I will add Blue Mage here. People say 'but you cantz its TOO HARD' but I can point out a decent amount of abilities in WoW that are either better than or at least very similar to a classic blue mage spell, like "WE CANT DEATH A MONSTER" and WoW's monk is like "lol, yes we can", "WE CANT INGORE DAMAGE AS A NON-TANK" says FFXIV while Mage in WoW is like "I can, and I will do it better than you". "We can't have unique pet jobs in this game!!" (beastmaster) meanwhile WoW is sitting with two (three if you count Unholy DK) that summon 15 imps and some other (unique) demons (far more unique than our summons), or hunter where each archetype has a clear and powerful impact to your role and you can have two out at the same time (more depending on spec).

FFXIV says cant a lot, especially for casual stuff.

FFXIV will put its money, and with good result (imo), into hard content, but it would be nice to see them be able to do something like that to us plebs that don't make up the 20-30% (savage) and 0-10% (ultimate) of the population sometimes (those populations will also likely play the normal stuff too, as well). Anyway, does SE make casual content, sure, SE will also hand the end bits sometimes (like savage EPIC Echo), SE isn't doing nothing, and I am not claiming that, but it's obvious their talent or at least talent focus is set at the end specifically and when they do something for the mid to casual players they do an 'okay' job at it and then will probably use that 'okay' response from the audience as why its not worth it. "You asked for a cake!! I MADE YOU A CAKE, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT" I imagine they say, but its like "I asked for some good food.. you made me a vanilla cake without frosting and no decorations, I can get this from the dollar store". Even when you get something substantial in time investment, like let's say a relic- its still going to use the same ol systems as before that are very basic (say WoW did things like our open world relic quests before, but their open world has more varied gameplay than ours, not to mention also better navigation given their movement is more interactive).

End note, I'm a bit hyperbolic- I don't think the game is awful as you might end the idea with lol. But I do believe there is a clear asset bias, a strong rigidity to structure, a strong reticence to do anything too unique, and at least in this circumstance I can point that say WoW or GW2 don't bias their assets exclusively to the end like it 'feels' like FFXIV does.

I also want to say these things are complex, and one thing that might be possible is that they do assign a number of people to these contents but the toolset is not very good. They tell the world team to make a bunch of cool stuff, so they come up with the best they can with "go kill x and talk to y" tools they're provided. Just like the housing system /could/ be that they're doing the best they can and are constantly spending resources on it (the decorations are REALLY good), but the tools are not really good. Perhaps SE is having a huge /tool/ problem and they are not providing their team with the mechanics to actually provide depth. Or who knows.. Just saying I don't lol. But I do know that I feel they are neglecting basic systems and I do feel they spend a lot of time and brain power on end game stuff. I don't want them to take it away per say, but I'd love to feel they're doing that else where lol. I'm shocked our quest quality is still the same as quite a few years ago. I just played WoW recently to 80 and the variety of tasks was substantially higher, even though of course there are still kill x quests.

I think if they're serious with 8.0 jobs identity, they should start right now to gather feedback so they can actually work on it in the next expansion. If they don't, I'll know it's just PR talk (not that I'm not already convinced that it is).



This is spot on. There are fundamental issues in most of their content, from dungeons to gear, to glamour and housing, and overall there's too little of everything, the pace is a mess and the rewards aren't always exciting. It's unbelievable that the "new" things like Cosmic Exploration and Beastmaster are coming so late. Not to mention all the abandoned systems that make me less excited for what's to come, knowing how little they'll last.

Also strongly related feeling to the above for me. Identity, roleplay, these things are lacking, and each patch / expansion seem to lack even more rather than improve. Please do make feedback, new thread, whatever... here has been mine so far: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Other-MMOs%29

[Keumjo]

They could easily make old content flourish if they revisited loot tables. Some content people haven't done because there is no reward they want from it. You can easily get more out of current content between patches by jazzing up what we have now. Put in rotational exclusive rewards in Fates/Bozja/Eureka/Deep Dungeons/Treasure Dungeons much like they do Mog Tome stuff. It doesn't even have to be all huge items, it could be the good dyes that go for 100,000s or stuff like that. It's bonkers to me that they would rather LOSE PAYING PLAYERS by telling them to go play something else, instead of giving them a reason to stay subbed.

Value our time like you value our money, SE. You dillweeds.

[Derio]

I think they should have done job design first and encounter design second. They said they didnt want to do it this way because they wanted us to be used to the encounter design but people desperately wanted job design to be done first and that would give people a whole expansion to get used to the changes.

For many people the 7.1 patch will come down to the MSQ and how fun and repeatable the 24 man is. All the other content are very niche and appeal to the EX difficulty and higher crowd.

[Talael]

Terrible. They should just skip Tural and go back to Eorzea, at least theres fun to be had there. Tural is a extremely disappointing good for nothing place. I have zero interest in any characters there, everything is self contained, have not mystery, no sauce. I dont give a F about whats to be done about Solution 9 now that annoying AI dissipated.

Also i hate old content with a shade of new. Instead of Cloud of Darkness, we could had Emperor Matheus from FF 2, if really needed to make a new 24 man trial. CoD could easily stole Byakkos unreal place . FF 11 raid looks ugly with ugly rewards.

[Valence]

They have yet to do encounter design..