Finally Understanding SE's Decision Making (And Why It Won't Change)

[DPZ2]

And if it stops bringing the money, they won't change anything but just say that the game has outlived its profitability and start shutting things down. Most higher up SE suits don't care for FF14 as a product, only as source of revenue to fund other projects, so when the well dries up they won't rush to rejuvinate it.

This is the business model for almost every MMORPG of the last quarter century. LOTRO is still available after almost 18 years. RIFT is still available after 14 years. Star Trek Online is still available after 15 years. FFXI is still available after 23 years.

Loss of some revenue is not the determining factor for longevity. The four MMORPGs mentioned above are still providing income for their companies, althouth many have changed parent companies over the years.

[Jeeqbit]

And if it stops bringing the money, they won't change anything but just say that the game has outlived its profitability and start shutting things down.

You mean like they shut down FF11? (they didn't, you can still sub and play it)

Most higher up SE suits don't care for FF14 as a product

The new boss of Square Enix has a significant other that plays FF14 all the time. If they mess with FF14, the boss won't hear the end of it when they come home from work. As silly as that may sound, it's kinda a big factor if we ignore all the other factors.

when the well dries up they won't rush to rejuvinate it.

Like how they didn't rejuvenate it in 1.0? (they did) One of the important reasons to rejuvenate it was to restore trust in the Final Fantasy franchise, and they will do anything they have to in order to maintain that because it is one of the main franchises they have going for them.

[Collin_Sky]

Everything makes sense once you consider that Yoshi is, in fact, not a good developer.
His greatest success was copying WoW and making 2.0 a WoW clone with an FF skin. Since then, he has done absolutely nothing innovative, at all. Every patch since 2.1 has been the same two, alternating formulae. His great chance was FF16, to do something completely new with no technical debt or prior mistakes to work around, and it followed the FF14 formula to a frightening degree.
Player concerns and common sense things are largely ignored, and the devs make nonsensical decisions, like you mention, by releasing a piece of content on Xmas eve.

Job design has been getting worse and worse every expansion, and every expansion Yoshi dangles a carrot in front of us telling us "next time it will be better, a rework is coming this time for real", and it never does. No one expects the 8.0 rework to fix the issues people have with job design in the game.

All of the issues involving third party tools are of his own doing. By reneging on his promise prior to 2.0 launch of an addon API he has lost the ability to control what is okay, and what is not okay. By ignoring the overwhelming demand for some sort of parser, he has allowed feature creep to create tools such as triggernometry and cactbot. By making the login experience so basic, quicklauncher was created and everything that came along with it. Again, a failure on the lack of an official addon API.

Island sanctuary, the largest piece of casual content we got last expansion, was merely a chore that involved running around clicking single nodes hundreds of times and managing spreadsheets. Because heaven forbid we get something genuinely new instead of recycling the gathering node system.

Seasonal events are 1-2 quests long, mostly with just dialogue, instead of unique events and minigames like every other MMO on the market does.

I could go on, but the more I write, the more annoyed I get.

[Shurrikhan]

Everything makes sense once you consider that Yoshi is, in fact, not a good developer.

Risk reduction -- the man, the myth, the legend.

Start by scrapping customization. Continue by scrapping compositionally-varied strategy. Plot the course by following prior trend. Deviate minimally.
/shrug

All of the issues involving third party tools are of his own doing. By reneging on his promise prior to 2.0 launch of an addon API he has lost the ability to control what is okay, and what is not okay. By ignoring the overwhelming demand for some sort of parser, he has allowed feature creep to create tools such as triggernometry and cactbot. By making the login experience so basic, quicklauncher was created and everything that came along with it. Again, a failure on the lack of an official addon API.

This one, though, is what annoys me most. If one builds their value around just keeping the ship sailing, the least one could do is preempt improvements against obvious storms or wear. Instead, he's mostly defaulted to over-promises, half-promises, "It's just not doable from a technical standpoint", and a bunch of backpedaling.

[Shougun]

Everything makes sense once you consider that Yoshi is, in fact, not a good developer.
His greatest success was copying WoW and making 2.0 a WoW clone with an FF skin. Since then, he has done absolutely nothing innovative, at all. Every patch since 2.1 has been the same two, alternating formulae. His great chance was FF16, to do something completely new with no technical debt or prior mistakes to work around, and it followed the FF14 formula to a frightening degree.
Player concerns and common sense things are largely ignored, and the devs make nonsensical decisions, like you mention, by releasing a piece of content on Xmas eve.

Job design has been getting worse and worse every expansion, and every expansion Yoshi dangles a carrot in front of us telling us "next time it will be better, a rework is coming this time for real", and it never does. No one expects the 8.0 rework to fix the issues people have with job design in the game.

All of the issues involving third party tools are of his own doing. By reneging on his promise prior to 2.0 launch of an addon API he has lost the ability to control what is okay, and what is not okay. By ignoring the overwhelming demand for some sort of parser, he has allowed feature creep to create tools such as triggernometry and cactbot. By making the login experience so basic, quicklauncher was created and everything that came along with it. Again, a failure on the lack of an official addon API.

Island sanctuary, the largest piece of casual content we got last expansion, was merely a chore that involved running around clicking single nodes hundreds of times and managing spreadsheets. Because heaven forbid we get something genuinely new instead of recycling the gathering node system.

Seasonal events are 1-2 quests long, mostly with just dialogue, instead of unique events and minigames like every other MMO on the market does.

I could go on, but the more I write, the more annoyed I get.

For a while I've described what I imagine his style is, which is sitting down creating a timeline with achievable goals in a consistent manner, in a conservative format, and doing exactly that. When FFXIV was death spiraling with 1.0 I think that is probably great, and not a sign of a bad developer; however, when its time to shine and do something wild.. even the most audacious examples are severed from the main game.

I've described it as a tree where the core never strengthens and they just add branches here and there wildly and sometimes haphazardly, afraid to affect the core. It's definitely a personal issue for this example but I think BLU is one of many, where they are afraid to do something wild with the core so they just set it off to the side (and at launch it was so conservative with minor changes to very specific spells you'd have a worse performing job than a regular one lol, the spells are a bit better designed now at least). You already exampled Island Sanctuary too. We clap for exploratory content, but for the most part it's far more narrowed borrwed power (like at least for the most part WoW allows that borrowed power to affect the whole expansion, meanwhile ours is just a zone or so). Not that I am saying borrowed power is an amazing thing (they should at least have left it alone in that expansion content, instead of purging it.. kind of silly), but the scope of our power is much smaller.

I think ultimately it all feels almost always safer, smaller, and less consequential - like go ahead and ignore it because you could forget it exists (because it's purposefully built off to the side).

While I don't feel passionately about the first statement, and I think these things can sometimes be choose the lessor of two bad choices (so you'll always get hate), I dislike that I want to like this post and feel like the game has an issue with its creative forces...


I've gone from happily taking breaks here and there (to offset content amounts / burnout, sure I have concerns, but time allowing familiarity to rest helped) to just thinking "this game not only could be so much more, but honestly really should be, they're resting on laurels".

As long as people keep whiteknighting for them instead of demanding what they are owed for a monthly sub as MMO players. The game wont change.

I am sure some things I've thought of are just bad, but I do get bewildered when some of the responses I've seen have absolutely no point except to say no or to try and budget / be an apologist for SE. Not everyone that disagrees is that person, to be clear, some will articulate their thoughts (most excited when I get quote farm responded as it means someone is attempting to respond sincerely), but definitely some, especially in the past, when asked to articulate had nothing more than what boiled down to "don't ask SE to work, the idea actually doesn't impact me but I still want to say no".

I have noted there are far less defensive individuals here than there used to be.. That concerns me, I think that is an example of game health (I think it would be better sign if there were more). I don't blame bad choices on people who disagree though, even literal white knights, SE is in charge here.. so SE needs to use their noggins, it's not the white knight's job, gray, or black knight, to be that.

Unfortunately money is a large part of their considerations, so I think honestly we're all to blame if SE says "yo I make choices based on money and you seem to be happily giving me that". So if we had to blame the players, I'd blame us all lol. Though I really want to say that should be SE's responsibility. We're not being paid for it, so we're not responsible .

Risk reduction -- the man, the myth, the legend.

Start by scrapping customization. Continue by scrapping compositionally-varied strategy. Plot the course by following prior trend. Deviate minimally.
/shrug

This one, though, is what annoys me most. If one builds their value around just keeping the ship sailing, the least one could do is preempt improvements against obvious storms or wear. Instead, he's mostly defaulted to over-promises, half-promises, "It's just not doable from a technical standpoint", and a bunch of backpedaling.

I recall literally telling people they're going to lose in the end, though I am surprised it took this long. We're here though, the addon scene in FFXIV is substantially more powerful than WoW's because FFXIV chose not to control the fire.

[Shurrikhan]

We clap for exploratory content, but for the most part it's far more narrowed borrwed power (like at least for the most part WoW allows that borrowed power to affect the whole expansion, meanwhile ours is just a zone or so). Not that I am saying borrowed power is an amazing thing (they should at least have left it alone in that expansion content, instead of purging it.. kind of silly), but the scope of our power is much smaller.

I think ultimately it all feels almost always safer, smaller, and less consequential - like go ahead and ignore it because you could forget it exists (because it's purposefully built off to the side).

Tbf, the "borrowed powers" complaint is one I never quite understood about WoW... unless one would make the same complaint about any seasonal/expansion ups and downs to gameplay, degree of available customization, etc. At its simplest, the woes of "borrowed powers" were that, for purposes of experimentation, WoW would wipe the slate each expansion to ensure the base kits were working before again allowing further means of customization -- but for that exact reason they were able to go more wild and expansion-thematic with said customization each time. While it felt bad going from much more involved builds with further flavorful powers back to the basics each time, the results were some very fun and varied gameplay experiences expansion by expansion. The repeated changes largely just caught flak for the times in which one's / the largest camp's preferred playstyle wasn't also the most optimal playstyle, just as they would have if the optimal playstyle remained stagnant. Yes, in some cases they over-experimented or pulled an XIV-style infant-yeet in the course of clearing out the waste in ways that they didn't strictly need to, but I suspect many also overestimate the amount of time it took to (re)build different but fundamentally similar systems as compared to retuning whatever was deemed to be functional around whatever else could be added for expansion-tailored thematic effect.

/rant

Anywho, in XIV's case, though, we're largely just looking at forced commitment. The more a lane of content's requirements are progressible only through that particular lane of content, the more isolated it becomes and the more it forces you to play just that. Which is why I never really understood the goal of having Eureka be self-contained in its gearing atop whatever unique gameplay-affecting power-unlocks it may include instead of that gear simply being an alternative means of general progression. It's not as if players would necessarily feel compelled to skip out on early power unlocks just because, already equipped with raid gear, they could feasibly skip ahead to fight the second zone's mobs, etc. Or, one could have gear matter not at all -- only the power unlocks would -- but still at least allow players not going for week one clears to get around the need for crafted gear (or even just the former tier's BiS) before jumping into Savage.

I guess what bugs me most about that is that we end up with content that either feels so piecework that one doesn't feel like they have much per patch of whatever content they like (even if the actual sum of doable content would nonetheless be decently high -- even if inferior to what greater replayability might provide within, say, core content) or we end up sectionalizing things for which gating indirect progression (e.g., gear, rather than the actual clears) serves no real purpose.

If we're meant to be able to enjoy these things together, why is there so little effort put towards making content more accessible without reducing difficulty, say...

• via built in personal parsers with contextualizable analytics for personal performance information, progressive encounter journals, and tighter checks on progression a la an improved High-End Duty Finder to reduce chance of intentional or unintentional leeching, atop greater rewards for repeat weekly raid clears to decrease queue times, etc., by which to make PuGing raids more time-accessible and far less frustrating without changing the encounters themselves; and even
• for Exploratory Missions and the like be "real" zones and therefore allow players to queue for other content while within -- if they're not going to have zone-wide events that would actually require all players within the zone anyways -- alongside revamping UI and party-only skill limitations to better support party-less multiplayer play (e.g., automatically resized Party List-like bars, improved nameplate support/functionality, and AoE supportive/healing actions spliting their effectiveness after 4 affected allies, to a max of 8 nearest, prioritizing party members, rather than their effects being limited to only party members).

Like, we both fail to make the open-world or EMs that interesting in themselves, as if they were to be backdrop content, but we also don't go very far to make them (enjoyably) compatible with drop-in multiplayer gameplay. ...Why? You'd think at least one or the other would appeal as an avenue of further improvement.

[Shougun]

Tbf, the "borrowed powers" complaint is one I never quite understood about WoW... unless one would make the same complaint about any seasonal/expansion ups and downs to gameplay, degree of available customization, etc. At its simplest, the woes of "borrowed powers" were that, for purposes of experimentation, WoW would wipe the slate each expansion to ensure the base kits were working before again allowing further means of customization -- but for that exact reason they were able to go more wild and expansion-thematic with said customization each time. While it felt bad going from much more involved builds with further flavorful powers back to the basics each time, the results were some very fun and varied gameplay experiences expansion by expansion. The repeated changes largely just caught flak for the times in which one's / the largest camp's preferred playstyle wasn't also the most optimal playstyle, just as they would have if the optimal playstyle remained stagnant. Yes, in some cases they over-experimented or pulled an XIV-style infant-yeet in the course of clearing out the waste in ways that they didn't strictly need to, but I suspect many also overestimate the amount of time it took to (re)build different but fundamentally similar systems as compared to retuning whatever was deemed to be functional around whatever else could be added for expansion-tailored thematic effect.

/rant

Anywho, in XIV's case, though, we're largely just looking at forced commitment. The more a lane of content's requirements are progressible only through that particular lane of content, the more isolated it becomes and the more it forces you to play just that. Which is why I never really understood the goal of having Eureka be self-contained in its gearing atop whatever unique gameplay-affecting power-unlocks it may include instead of that gear simply being an alternative means of general progression. It's not as if players would necessarily feel compelled to skip out on early power unlocks just because, already equipped with raid gear, they could feasibly skip ahead to fight the second zone's mobs, etc. Or, one could have gear matter not at all -- only the power unlocks would -- but still at least allow players not going for week one clears to get around the need for crafted gear (or even just the former tier's BiS) before jumping into Savage.

I guess what bugs me most about that is that we end up with content that either feels so piecework that one doesn't feel like they have much per patch of whatever content they like (even if the actual sum of doable content would nonetheless be decently high -- even if inferior to what greater replayability might provide within, say, core content) or we end up sectionalizing things for which gating indirect progression (e.g., gear, rather than the actual clears) serves no real purpose.

If we're meant to be able to enjoy these things together, why is there so little effort put towards making content more accessible without reducing difficulty, say...

• via built in personal parsers with contextualizable analytics for personal performance information, progressive encounter journals, and tighter checks on progression a la an improved High-End Duty Finder to reduce chance of intentional or unintentional leeching, atop greater rewards for repeat weekly raid clears to decrease queue times, etc., by which to make PuGing raids more time-accessible and far less frustrating without changing the encounters themselves; and even
• for Exploratory Missions and the like be "real" zones and therefore allow players to queue for other content while within -- if they're not going to have zone-wide events that would actually require all players within the zone anyways -- alongside revamping UI and party-only skill limitations to better support party-less multiplayer play (e.g., automatically resized Party List-like bars, improved nameplate support/functionality, and AoE supportive/healing actions spliting their effectiveness after 4 affected allies, to a max of 8 nearest, prioritizing party members, rather than their effects being limited to only party members).

Like, we both fail to make the open-world or EMs that interesting in themselves, as if they were to be backdrop content, but we also don't go very far to make them (enjoyably) compatible with drop-in multiplayer gameplay. ...Why? You'd think at least one or the other would appeal as an avenue of further improvement.

Sometimes I have nothing to disagree with, or haven't an idea enough to respond, but I do enjoy that I know if you respond to me that it'll be an entire thought lol.

I agree on the borrowed power, the only thing I'd suggest is to leave it alone for that expansion content. Give it some time warp excuse and call it a day. This way people can enjoy the progression mechanics later and weird ideas that were present. Yes you'll still have a drop in power at the next expansion, but as you said this is one of the ways they can change the meta and keep people on their toes (burnout protection).
-
Man back when we were talking parsers I was like "what if SE added a personal parser" and people were like NOOOO WE CANT LET THE GAME HAVE IT.. we have to beat it. Now we have whole websites you get parsed whether you like it or not lol, and still no tool in game. Just ignorant players vs those who see everything. I suggested that the game would also catalog people of similar ilvl / job / group / content, and then aggregate that (anonymized) and show it to you. That way SE and you can see how you're doing in the scope of other jobs, your job, and in general. For MSQ content eh, but for savage and such, it would have been nice if the game attempted to gate people to increase success and reduce frustration (like I was all for having a hall of experts that you had to pass to join hard content, yes some people would try hard once and then not afterwards, but it would filter those who 'cannot', PF ignoring this of course).

100% on the exploratory thing, though I think we were clearly in alignment just from the general thought on borrowed power lol. How cool if instead of a funnel set off to the side that locks up other choices, FFXIV added new progression mechanics to the whole expansion, that then also entailed entirely new zones to take those things to? :/

[Kaurhz]

There is no redemption arc to be had.

This would require the developers to at least acknowledge the issues that people are having instead of wondering where everyone is going this late into the games development.

Now, I don't really want to single out Yoshida or any single person for that matter, as I do think it's a wider problem, but they're more concerned with filling a gameplay quota than they are in actually making that gameplay interesting or interactive, and even of those that were once interactive and engaging have been reduced to their most basic form, it's quite extensive in this game as well.

For a long while I have not really viewed this game as an MMO, it has tried going the avenue of single-player friendly, but it has ultimately come to be that it has all the downsides of a single-player experience and none of the upsides. RuneScape is probably an example of where this is utilized well since the large single-player experience of that game allows for longer-form experiences, rather than short form.

Now obviously MMOs have their own target audience but for a game that is aiming to go another 8-10 years at this point according to their plan, then I actually do dread it in many respects. We have very serial-like cutscenes, with generally poor animation and story-telling, everything and everyone largely just feels like a prop when it comes to the next person talking or the next segment of the cutscene starting. The sad part here is that they have demonstrated they can do it with Hildibrand, but they're more concerned with running what effectively feels like a minimum viable product versus something that actually aims to improve and innovate.

[NaoSen]

What's going to be a big show on just how little innovation, improvement or care has been put into the Console/PC versions of FF is the mobile version, it looks like the studio who made that looked at what the players frustrations over the last 11 years and went "Is this possible to implement/avoid on mobile" and if they could, did.

I'm going to stick around to see what comes with 7.2, probably complete it (I don't expect it to be lasting content) and then unsubscribe.
A big reason for me staying in FF was my house and my friends, however the content that can be done with friends is either so old or so boring that we just logout and play something else to do things together.
The house? I don't care anymore, what's the point.

[Exmo]

What's going to be a big show on just how little innovation, improvement or care has been put into the Console/PC versions of FF is the mobile version, it looks like the studio who made that looked at what the players frustrations over the last 11 years and went "Is this possible to implement/avoid on mobile" and if they could, did.

This doesn't make sense. The mobile version has a "design doc" compiled across ten years worth of evolution and feedback. The PC version which is its point of reference had no idea what it needed to look like ten years from its original (difficult) development, so obviously could not plan for it. It's totally unreasonable to put their differences down to the attitude of the devs.