Thread: Thoughts and observations from a 1.0 player about the current state of FFXIV

Originally Posted by Valence

Well I sure as hell wish they'd listen to some of the problems I have then. Considering the follow up every time I brought some of those up, why is SE never acting upon it then?

Yeah, that's kinda what I mean. It's not that they don't listen. But a lot of people feel like they don't because they are trying to listen to every single person at the same time. So it creates a problem of always having frustrated players no matter what decision they make, That's why I'm saying they should just own a vision for the game and keep that their goal focus. So there is no confusion or anger with the game. It will be expected.

The OP is literally a 1.0 veteran that clearly misses the 1.0 experience they had.

Then you have the raiders who want more innovative mechanics and better rewards to show off.

Then you got those people kinda in between casual and hardcore raiders who will clear extremes and might dabble in savage raiding a bit.

Then you got the sole casual players who are just here for the MSQ, daily and weekly chores. They want that to be easier to do.

Then you have the pvpers, rpers and other types of players that don't really fit into any niche.

But the problem isn't that these players exist. It's what makes up the community in this game. The problem is that the dev team is trying to make every single one of these people happy and they literally can't do that without making someone else pissed off and wanting to quit the game.

I've thought about this for awhile and I realized that every person wants something different out of the game. Some want it to be easy, and others want more challenging content. There will be complaints no matter what kind of feedback gets addressed because not everyone agrees with the same thing.

Almost everything we currently have is rehashing of existing mechanics that were developed long ago. While they do try to innovate and develop new content, their entire system for development is backwards. They develop content for the 1% (hardcore raiders) and then try to scale it down to casuals. It should be done in reverse, make casual content and then ramp it up. That is what Quantum should do and we will see. Also, enough with the body checks that result in wipes or dozens of one hit mechanics in fights. Let the vuln stacks do their thing, if you want them to hurt more, do that instead of endless insta death or wipe mechanics.

The other major problem, and I consider this the largest problem, Is reward itemization. They come out either some really good content but we have little or no reason to do it after we have done it once or at all. A music roll, house item, materia? We honestly need more than that. They could even add very old items that are discontinued. The moogle event does a decent job at this. Rewards should have 50% of the art budget. I’ll grind till my fingers hurt to get a cute glam, remember, fashion is the true endgame. Make it achievable too, hardcore get the items faster than casuals but let it be achievable.

Originally Posted by Dastan

Then you got the sole casual players who are just here for the MSQ, daily and weekly chores. They want that to be easier to do.

I don't know about you, but casual players have been served quite poorly this expansion compared to others. There are multiple threads that discussed that and were mocked relentlessly.

There's only so much "oops it's savage lol" that I can tolerate before saying "screw this". And it's becoming clear to me that the pitiful allowance that the dev team gets mostly goes to harder battle content, if the Forked Tower debacle is anything to go by.

I want to do interesting content. I was excited for Forked. So far I'll admit the novelty of the new PotD is nice.

Heck most slower-paced content actively feel punishing. Achievements having a ludicrous completion requirement for some mounts (no wonder those get botted), currently there's the Accursed Hoard's 30k debacle, the Yan mount's stupid low odds within Maps (and Maps still have that 1-per-inventory limit).

Perhaps I'm just very jaded, but I wish Square actually put money and care into this game.

@Dastan
I really wish it was as simple as people make it sound. It’s not. A lot of us genuinely got duped, and that’s why there’s so much frustration now.

What was the point of that survey I mentioned if they were never going to follow through with it anyway? That’s why I keep saying an entire playerbase was used at their expense just to reshape FFXIV into what I call (sarcastically) “Fashion Fantasy XIV: A WoW Clone Reborn.” People who decided to trust the director and get the short end of the stick so people who have no desire to do anything on ffxiv but go to venues playing dating simulator using mods and god knows what. People doing exactly everything but playing final fantasy pretty much. I kinda understand why they call our community a community filled with forced positive toxicity. I understand it more and more with the years.

Instead of trying to appeal to everyone and everything like you mentioned, why not create a game that shapes its players?
FFXI shaped us.
For many of us, FFXI was our first MMORPG it taught us lessons, patience, community, responsibility things FFXIV simply does not foster anymore. We had to be considerate of our party members because we all depended and needed each other.

And let’s be clear about something: people love to claim that FFXIV invented the culture of helping others for no reward giving gil, helping clear content, crafting gear just because. No. That mindset comes directly from FFXI. FFXI forced us to socialize, make friends, know our server, and be part of an actual community. That culture wasn’t optional it was essential.

Thankfully, that spirit still survives on many NA and JP servers (not so much EU), but make no mistake: it originated from the FFXI upbringing, no matter how much some want to deny it.

In FFXIV today, you can afford to be a jerk. Why? Because Duty Finder lets you float anonymously from group to group, never accountable to anyone, never tied to a community. You’ll probably never see those players again. There are no server reputations. No lasting relationships required. Just queue, clear, leave.

That’s the core of the problem FFXIV stopped trying to build a world, and instead focused on building a lobby.

Originally Posted by Valence

Reverting to the usual "they're trying to please everyone so they make nobody happy" is crazy. That's simply not true, else they'd be listening to everyone, and yet they don't.

There is a difference between "listening to someone" and "doing as someone says."

Like, I have a boss who credibly goes, "Yes, I understand what you're saying," and then in the very next remark goes, "Nevertheless, I disagree with you, {this} is what I want, and so {this} is my decision."

That's literally (part of) what it means to have a vision and to be willing to stick to it.

Originally Posted by SkizzleAbernath

Most of us 1.0 players also came from FFXI. None of us wanted FFXI 2.0, but we definitely didn’t sign up for Final Fantasy: A WoW Clone Reborn either.

Honestly the big things I wish they would import from FFXI are stand alone expansions. Having hundreds of hours worth of forced msq is not good, esp when it got so bloated they had to cut out massive story arcs by scrapping 2-3 expansions and having writers that just default to the same boring anime tropes over and over and over because they are either just not really good writers or because the person guiding their pen is completely lacking in creativity and just too scared to do something some afk LL rando would find even slightly controversial. And every expansion in XI also brought its own unique endgame. Dynamis. Limbus, Assault. Sky. Campaign. All fantastic endgame, all unique.

As it stands FFXI feels like a love letter from devs who enjoyed their world and wanted to create new and fantastic experiences for their players, where as FFXIV feels like a spread sheet check list given to the devs by someone who should not be anywhere near the actual game. I am kinda glad XI is off the radar for the most part since xiv launched so they can do their thing, cause it got dicey there for a moment during the abyssea era.