Do you think cost is an acceptable excuse regarding not getting FFXIV content?

[MuraBoy]

It depends on the context. It's impossible to develop everything imaginable due to costs, of course.

But in the context of the Occult Crescent Zone and the Forked Tower Blood Raid? No, I can't accept that as an excuse. I can't accept their decision to create a Casual Zone just to focus on creating a Hardcore-only Raid.

And to this day, I also can't agree with them releasing Glamours, Emotes, and Mounts exclusively for the Cash Shop, especially since many of them could easily be in-game rewards. But I also understand that the Cash Shop isn't completely under Yoshi-P's control (cough cough Yoichi Wada).

Still, it's a shame that I feel like my subscription money isn't being put to good use and that I might stop playing in the future.

[Brandr]

Who is to blame is not our problem to solve, it's theirs.

Our problem is to make them listen how we are unsatisfied with the game they're delivering to us.

It's unacceptable this kind of amateurism.

Occult Crescent feels like it was made by people who never played a single MMO in their lives.

Forked Tower feels like something copied from an anime like Sword Art Online Season 2.

FFXIV devs, don't you guys have PCs?

[Hallarem]

Who is to blame is not our problem to solve, it's theirs.

Our problem is to make them listen how we are unsatisfied with the game they're delivering to us.

It's unacceptable this kind of amateurism.

Occult Crescent feels like it was made by people who never played a single MMO in their lives.

Forked Tower feels like something copied from an anime like Sword Art Online Season 2.

FFXIV devs, don't you guys have PCs?

It's Japan, of course they don't

[Fawkes]

He prefaced the cost excuse saying he knew it wasn't a good excuse to give to customers.

I don't quite buy it myself. I think they never even considered doing a Forked Tower Normal, or specifically chose not to given the "DRS support was too good" comment. They could have made a normal instead of the one we got for presumably similar cost. So the real issue is just design. Whoever was making those decisions is at fault, not a lack of money/manpower/whatever costs.

[SalamanderIX]

It's an acceptable answer, it's just not usually an answer we'd hear. It's almost certain there has always been content cut due to budget! lots of content doesn't have normal or savage modes.
There was too many quality issues around Forked Tower that had to be addressed, so it was.

[Memento]

I've been here since 1.0 - the worst of the worst. I'll never understand how people can defend the game being in the state it is while also raking in more money than it ever has. Its clear SE isn't investing in this game like it should and deserves to be.

[Supersnow845]

Progging forked more makes me feel like there is an element of designing boredom to their decisions

Anyone who has done forked up to magitaur will tell you that the puzzles are really well designed and you can feel the devs had fun flexing the phantom job utility as far as possible. Something like bridges wouldn’t be possible without it being a high end field content duty and the map room is arguably the most beautiful area of the game in its entirety

But if you made forked normal you’d be cutting out the three puzzle sections and replacing them with DRN “here’s 2 pointless traps that may kill a random or a vet who stopped caring”. It just feels (at least to me) they wanted to make what became current forked and not be limited by what could conceivably fit in a normal mode

It’s not really a valid reason from the wider customer perspective but I can at least imagine it must get boring to create normal instances that are designed to be destroyed with little thought

[Khryseis_Astra]

Progging forked more makes me feel like there is an element of designing boredom to their decisions

Anyone who has done forked up to magitaur will tell you that the puzzles are really well designed and you can feel the devs had fun flexing the phantom job utility as far as possible. Something like bridges wouldn’t be possible without it being a high end field content duty and the map room is arguably the most beautiful area of the game in its entirety

But if you made forked normal you’d be cutting out the three puzzle sections and replacing them with DRN “here’s 2 pointless traps that may kill a random or a vet who stopped caring”. It just feels (at least to me) they wanted to make what became current forked and not be limited by what could conceivably fit in a normal mode

It’s not really a valid reason from the wider customer perspective but I can at least imagine it must get boring to create normal instances that are designed to be destroyed with little thought

Would a Normal mode necessarily have to be boring though? What is it about the puzzles that have to be high-end difficulty? You wouldn’t think a good puzzle would need a rez limit or wipe mech to make it more interesting… If the puzzles require certain phantom jobs to complete, just have Normal mode allow you to switch phantom jobs as long as you’re out of combat.

[Supersnow845]

Would a Normal mode necessarily have to be boring though? What is it about the puzzles that have to be high-end difficulty? You wouldn’t think a good puzzle would need a rez limit or wipe mech to make it more interesting… If the puzzles require certain phantom jobs to complete, just have Normal mode allow you to switch phantom jobs as long as you’re out of combat.

Something like bridges really wouldn’t work without it being high end simply because of how the mechanic works, if you removed everything that made bridges high end (coordinating both sides, high damage from wildcharges, specific necessary jobs, inter tank coordination as examples) then bridges wouldn’t be bridges

You could probably get away on hallways just removing super traps and only having one hallway rather than splitting and having two mirrored hallways

Lockwards the rooms would probably be doable but the dance with the lockwards probably not, the map room is fine though

So it might work, but I wouldn’t definitively say it would work

[0blivion]

You can't have hypercasual content that is fun and engaging because, as Snow said, it's designed to be destroyed with little thought. All content becomes trivial if you remove the parts that makes it what it is. If you removed DPS checks, mandatory mitigation and coordination from Savage, you'd get boring slop. The same goes for Forked Tower. I think the devs designed it exactly the way they intended, but I wouldn't mind them giving hypercasuals a normal version.

But you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either you enjoy the challenges of the video game and put in the required effort to overcome them, or you can grind mindless content without access barriers, or non-combat content. Or PvP.