The content should be enjoyed by all players?

[Valence]

In light of the recent events, I naturally got to revisit this interesting post, and the fact that the devs have the memory of a goldfish on certain things put aside, I'm inevitably being called to consider the specific bit about "making content that should be enjoyed by all players".

Casual players being denied significant content until the two recent releases (CE and OC)? I'm sure that Forked Tower is being enjoyed by all players as well. Do we plan to also remove the storymodes of raids in the future to stay in line with the new direction? As we all know, challenging XIV content is enjoyed by all the players.

Everything being streamlined so much that everything always boils down to the same bosses with the same mechanics in the middle of the same nonsensical arenas? We can't have fun with our jobs this expansion either, so I'm sure every type of player will feel represented in this game because the current pve model is universally enjoyed by all the players.

Introducing new pve content like Variant dungeons, yet not even bothering trying something else with said pve? Hell, even Orthos has was already being streamlined to bog standard XIV pve, because again, the current pve model is enjoyed by all the players.

What are we complaining about? Casuals strive when it's about fates. Fates are enjoyed by all the players, after all, as well.

If FFXIV's content is very important to the devs so that as many players do enjoy themselves, what even are you doing? Why are you doubling down on the exact same formula for literally everything that you design?

[AvoSturmfaust]

Content cant be enjoyed by all players ever, so sooner or later someone has to take the L, take EW as example, the whole Expansion was so easy that even Yoshi P said, they were going to easy and increse now the difficulity, so how would you balance that every player is happy?

And i dont know what your issue with Variant was, yea the Rewards were garbage but i enjoyed it, it was for me when it comes down to dungeons a step in the right direction, if they now improve on the rewards so thats worth it to grind, i would be more then happy

[Jeeqbit]

Yoshi-P recently said that after trying to get the balance right and get the game to a perfect state, he had finally accepted that it's not possible because no matter what he does, a section of the playerbase will be upset about it, so all he can do is keep trying.

Interestingly, the WoW director recently did a presentation where they had concluded the same thing. There are subjects where the playerbase is diametrically opposed to eachother and it's impossible to satisfy all of them.

[Vazdan]

Speaking as someone who has lived with family who is full Japanese and being part Japanese myself, burying one's head in the sand and pretending everything is alright seems very much on point for a Japanese game company.

"...But before the launch there was this sort of broad feeling that maybe it will resolve itself. Maybe once its launched maybe. Sort of like a glimpse of hope. We had nothing to back up this feeling, but we were hoping that it would all work out well once we launched the title." - Hideyuki Kasuga, in the Noclip FFXIV documentary pertaining to 1.0

Sins of the past repeated in the now.

[Nero-Voidstails]

And i dont know what your issue with Variant was, yea the Rewards were garbage but i enjoyed it, it was for me when it comes down to dungeons a step in the right direction, if they now improve on the rewards so thats worth it to grind, i would be more then happy

well to be honest I wish variant would have become the basic dungeon design would make it less well boring that's what I am sad about with variant.

[AvoSturmfaust]

well to be honest I wish variant would have become the basic dungeon design would make it less well boring that's what I am sad about with variant.

Sadly that wouldnt workt, without blaming someone, but just take the story dungeon as example, how many people complained because they are to hard and how they now are stuck and cant prgress the story, if you know go with variant as base dungeon design you really want imagine how much complains and copium and doomium would happen

[Nero-Voidstails]

Sadly that wouldnt workt, without blaming someone, but just take the story dungeon as example, how many people complained because they are to hard and how they now are stuck and cant prgress the story, if you know go with variant as base dungeon design you really want imagine how much complains and copium and doomium would happen

let's agree there that it's the game fault making it to easy on people in how many rpg and MMO you see people complaining that the highest lv is hard?


Not many because your skill set goes up with the content in itself but in 14 people were given many thing making the game over all easier and alots of player doesn't learn they're skills nor care to do. So people who said that the new dungeon are hard well obviously need to do two thing and sorry if it is rude but it is what it is.

1. get better at the game
2.if they can't just play a solo game

[AvoSturmfaust]

let's agree there that it's the game fault making it to easy on people in how many rpg and MMO you see people complaining that the highest lv is hard?


Not many because your skill set goes up with the content in itself but in 14 people were given many thing making the game over all easier and alots of player doesn't learn they're skills nor care to do. So people who said that the new dungeon are hard well obviously need to do two thing and sorry if it is rude but it is what it is.

1. get better at the game
2.if they can't just play a solo game

I see it the same and stated it always, the game cant evolve with people for them even story dungeons are to hard, sadly ffxiv has this bubble as story driven mmo which everyone is part of the my little pony mentality for many many years now, and before the game can really evolve they need to get rid of that imagine and sort the horde out, it sounds maybe hard and harsh but thats the only way the game can improve in class design, combat design and in many other aspects

[brinn12]

FFXIV’s base gameplay is very important to us, and in order to have as many players as possible enjoy themselves, we take care not to introduce unnecessary stress to content.

This explains a lot about the current state of FFXIV, and it's also why I don't have high hopes for the 8.0 job revamp. The game is designed for 2 types of players: those who sub for just 2 months a year to do normal content, and hardcore players focused on high-end content.

There's no need to grind for anything outside of raids. One can just buy the latest crafted gear and forget about their equipment. They can even go a full tier behind (20 to 30 item levels) and still be fine for normal content.

There are no builds, materia/food/tinctures aren't necessary, and jobs practically play themselves. They don't even bother putting extra packs in dungeons to change things up. It's so stress free that it becomes stressful for most people looking for minimal challenge outside of content where static groups are highly recommended.

At the same time, I cannot comprehend Forked Tower in its current state, or OC FATEs getting deleted in 10 seconds and respawning in just 20, if the goal truly was to avoid stressing out players.

[Amarande]

As I've opined before, I'm starting to wonder what SE's notion of what "the community" actually is is: there seems to be a massive disconnect between what "the community wants" and what the vast majority of players I interact with are actually experiencing.

There's really only three things I can think of at this point that could consistently hold water -

a) that SE really isn't aware of the situation (and is only just now waking up to it because Japanese players are getting fed up much more vocally now)

b) that SE doesn't consider the casual endgame player to be a priority demographic anymore because of the gameplay cadence - in other words, in a game like WoW, it is much more important that the game let you bring along a newly recruited friend to endgame content, because you are brought to endgame content so quickly that most would quit after one month's sub for want of meaningful stuff to do otherwise. In a game like XIV, endgame activity is much more confined to existing experienced players because of the MSQ (barring boosts or cutscene skipping (NUUU DON'T), a new player a month in is probably still making their way through Heavensward, maybe moving on into Stormblood ... in any case, nowhere near even unlocking endgame content.

c) that SE is tacitly but deliberately catering the game to Discord communities and streamers (motivation unclear, perhaps to reduce customer service load by forcing people to fit in with specific player communities in order to play, and hoping the misfits will just quit? Reminds me of the Guild Leveling system Blizzard added in Cataclysm and eventually scrapped)