[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Ghost of Cow]

Which is fine once it slows down in between patches. But lets not pretend that Blizzard don't do things like open up Mythic raiding on the same week they make Conduits, Legendaries, Azerite Powers etc available too. It's obvious they've tuned the content with these things in mind. If you're not on that curve already, you're behind before you even get off the start line.

Also bare in mind that, in Shadowlands at least, you've got to fill up your vault each week to give yourself the best chance of being on the right track in terms of gear - Even more so with set pieces, domination sockets etc.

Even if you're not going to an extreme like the World First guilds are, it leads to a situation where raiding at a high level forces you into a cycle of binging WoW for a few months at a time while content is current, followed by being burnt out for a few months while you're waiting on the next patch to repeat it all over again. That's not a healthy model for either Blizzard or the players.

FF14 on the other hand avoids these kinds of problems by simply having minimal barriers to entry and those barriers stay static between resets. Where WoW has an ever rising average player power, FF14 just has one line you need to cross to be ready for the content. For all it's flaws, it's at least more respectful of the players time. And old content stays relevent too, so there's no chance of missing out on savage or ultimates even if you don't take 4 weeks off work every new patch just to keep up with everyone else.

This is all true - and WoW's gearing curve is much steeper than XIV's - but it's not THAT bad.

You could literally have never played WoW before, sub today, and be doing heroic raids and +15 without anyone's help and without binging hardcore. (Well, it's a LOT easier as a tank or healer.) And they missed what...like 800 weeks of farming? So no, you're not going to die by missing one week.

[MsSideEye]

This is all true - and WoW's gearing curve is much steeper than XIV's - but it's not THAT bad.

You could literally have never played WoW before, sub today, and be doing heroic raids and +15 without anyone's help and without binging hardcore. (Well, it's a LOT easier as a tank or healer.) And they missed what...like 800 weeks of farming? So no, you're not going to die by missing one week.

If it didn't mean paying Blizzard, whom had lost my trust years ago, and potentially falling back into that cycle that I've felt so trapped in, I'd honestly take you up on that and see just how easy it is to do just that. I've always been a 'proof is in the pudding' kind of gal, so if it wasn't for those two situations, I'd gladly go and see just how accurate this is.

[Yarathir]

I never wanted to state that they deliberately do this. I'm sure they dislike having the Demo timer as much as we do, but as you pointed out: currently it's a necessary evil.

Let's hope they can one day get rid of it

I feel you on the sprinkled items. to this day I don't understand why they don't make a proper housing item catalogue in the crafting menu with integrated previews and data on how to obtain the recipe. I really hate having to go through 3 UI/s or external websites for it.

Agreed! Though I guess WoW having WoWhead helps in this regard.

But yes, the UI could be much improved, I'll be the first to admit to that. And also in terms of housing items, the distribution itself. Just make housing interior collections for any major style, just as Glade stuff currently represents Gridanian aesthetic. A whole damn catalogue of Amaurotine stuff, objects ripped from Amaurot, Elpis, Akadaemia Anyder, Anamnesis Anyder, Ktisis Hyperboreia, etc. Pillars, chairs, tables, fences, the whole lot. Then do the same for other styles.

Right now, it's literally just "Oh, it's patch x.15. They added 3 new furnishings. Ah, it's a Tonberry Couch, a Marlboro Lamp and a Kobold Fireplace. Hmh.. maybe that'll be useful in five years when we have more than 3 Tonberry items, 2 Marlboro items and 1 Kobold item."

In general I feel that Blizzard is lightyears ahead of SE when it comes to UI design. Why the heck do we still have text based menus on our retainers?!

For sure. My biggest gripe is bags and itemsearch right now, but it goes for the entire game.

[Cthulhu 2020]

You have to keep improving and adapting to the modern world if you want to be an actively growing game. For current standards, XIV customization is dreadful. Aion may have botched it, but we know MMOs can have a pretty broad customization system nowadays and run just fine.

I can think of very few MMOs that have extremely comprehensive character customization (near limitless potential, I made several celebrities and friends in the Aion character creator) since every slider you have, has to load each individual value for said slider when it loads a character. More faces would be nice, and overall doubling the number of faces would go a LONG WAY towards character customization.

The one problem I think SE faces is that most races have one face that 80% of people use, another face that is 15%, and the other two range from 0-5%. There's generally one super popular face. I can only imagine as to why this is, but I think it's due to people's perceived concepts of beauty and how similar they've become.

But following the story of FFXIV's continue growth, FFXIV grows 21% while the rest of SE is losing sales.



You can bet that SE is being heavily carried by FFXIV right now, and will continue to give Yoshi P what he wants to make it continue.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Maybe SE could give Yoshi-P the money to hire an artist to sit down for a couple weeks fitting headgear on to Hrothgar and Viera heads, or implementing hairstyles for them.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Which is, what? Two expert roulettes a day?

I mean if you do literally nothing else, it's 5 days of expert roulettes once a day. If you're doing other content, capping tomestones can be much faster, and if you're playing crystaline conflict then capping your weekly tomes just becomes something that happens passively while doing the content you enjoy. It's incredibly easy and fast to cap tomes.

On top of it all, most classes only need 4-6 weeks of capping tomes to get their BiS, assuming you're raiding. If you're not, it will take you longer to get an entire set of gear, but if you're a non-raider then getting bleeding edge highest ilvl is... incredibly optional.

[Ghost of Cow]

If it didn't mean paying Blizzard, whom had lost my trust years ago, and potentially falling back into that cycle that I've felt so trapped in, I'd honestly take you up on that and see just how easy it is to do just that. I've always been a 'proof is in the pudding' kind of gal, so if it wasn't for those two situations, I'd gladly go and see just how accurate this is.

Granted, some of the ease at the moment is due to the end-of-expansion easing of certain things (You don't even need to touch Torghast anymore) but overall WoW has always been pretty okay about catch-up mechanisms.

Not as easy about it as XIV of course - no full sets of entry level gear just sitting on the auction house - but it's honestly not that bad. I resubbed not too long ago, leveled a Priest to 60, got to Zereth Mortis (You can basically skip the Maw and Korthia right now) grabbed some catch up gear and both legendaries and started doing M+. Got my own key to +14 just pugging (with no failed runs) before I got bored and my month of sub ran out.

Of course, being a healer when pugging is MUCH different than anything else. It's basically instant invites or filled groups on demand. I understand it's far more frustrating for DPS players when there are 25 DPS classes applying to every single listed key. Literally this comic: https://www.darklegacycomics.com/819

If I was a more determined or better player (basically, myself from the old days) it would have been +20 easily. I probably did one run a night on average, because honestly I was a little anxious about healing a bunch of dungeons I'd never seen before. Actually turned out fine, though.

Do you need to max out your vault every week? Of course not. Max out every currency? Nah. Farm all day? That'd just be an inefficient waste.

Now if you wanted to get into a mythic progression guild, then of course the story is a bit different. But it'd be different if you wanted to do DSR Ultimate in XIV too, so eh. Although I guess Limit had one guy on their roster who was almost totally new to the game in the last RWF? Kinda nuts, but I'm sure he had help, too. Then again, there's nothing wrong with making friends and getting help.

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You can bet that SE is being heavily carried by FFXIV right now, and will continue to give Yoshi P what he wants to make it continue.

Yeah, that's been the trend for some time if I remember right?

I mean, it's arguable that the guy (and his team of course, nothing is a one-man job) saved the company from itself. They'd do well to trust his judgment going forward, which it seems like they've been doing.

[hzjf]

Maybe SE could give Yoshi-P the money to hire an artist to sit down for a couple weeks fitting headgear on to Hrothgar and Viera heads, or implementing hairstyles for them.

or someone who fixes this 12year old UI and make it modern

[Cthulhu 2020]

Yeah, that's been the trend for some time if I remember right?

I mean, it's arguable that the guy (and his team of course, nothing is a one-man job) saved the company from itself. They'd do well to trust his judgment going forward, which it seems like they've been doing.

FFXIV saw its lowest point in Heavensward, oddly enough, but there was a lot of hype around the relaunch of the game as well. But ever since Heavensward, the game has seen consistent growth in player numbers and increasing revenue across the board pretty much every quarter, with a couple of exceptions. But the video I linked covers the most recent fiscal quarter, thus does not include the Endwalker launch. Between 6.1 and 6.2 launch, FFXIV revenue has increased 21%. This also does not include the most recent street wear on the mog station either.

So we're continuing to see a rising trend in the game, and numbers continue to increase. No big sub drops as Endwalker settles into its patch cycle.

[Ghost of Cow]

FFXIV saw its lowest point in Heavensward, oddly enough, but there was a lot of hype around the relaunch of the game as well. But ever since Heavensward, the game has seen consistent growth in player numbers and increasing revenue across the board pretty much every quarter, with a couple of exceptions. But the video I linked covers the most recent fiscal quarter, thus does not include the Endwalker launch. Between 6.1 and 6.2 launch, FFXIV revenue has increased 21%. This also does not include the most recent street wear on the mog station either.

So we're continuing to see a rising trend in the game, and numbers continue to increase. No big sub drops as Endwalker settles into its patch cycle.

Which - when comparing to the rest of the genre - is really weird. You just don't typically see this, especially for a game of this age.

(Continuing my trend of thumbnail commentary: That Yoshi-P Atlas is hilarious.)

[Yarathir]

Wasn't Heavensward a low point for a bit because of raiding and how they catered to the poopsockers and destroyed a bunch of statics? Which they then learned to not do.

[KrayZ33]

What I don't understand when I hear and read about how FFXIV keeps the company going (which I agree on), is why the company doesn't invest more into that game.
Just a little, they don't need to add 200 people, that would probably be counterproductive... but I remember reading that they did the opposite....

Just why...we even got to hear about how they had to cancel stuff because it wouldn't have made it in time.
It's not like the ideas aren't there.

Or maybe they actually DON'T have that many ideas and need to spread them out through the patches after all. But that would be silly, because existing features can pretty much always be expanded on.
They could easily revitalize HotD and stuff with a new game mode.
A true rogue-like HotD or something for example... there is always stuff to do.
Especially FFXIV doesn't have to be always about enemies or new 10 minute choreographed boss fights...

but who knows, maybe the spaghetti code makes it so that it's too difficult to make the team bigger as it would be relatively ineffective to bring more into the team.

[Cthulhu 2020]

(Continuing my trend of thumbnail commentary: That Yoshi-P Atlas is hilarious.)

It's just really difficult to find informative videos that don't have clickbait thumbnails. Youtubers have all basically realized that if they want to make a willing on youtube, they have to do it, as clickbait thumbnails even on very information videos is the way to go.

Yes, the Yoshi P atlas was hilarious. His face has been put on numerous characters, statues, etc. by the community, just as a general symbol of their admiration.




The Yoshi P drinking wine images will never get old.

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Wasn't Heavensward a low point for a bit because of raiding and how they catered to the poopsockers and destroyed a bunch of statics? Which they then learned to not do.

Living Liquid was a big increase in difficulty for a third boss as compared to coils. People who played back in ARR viewed Nael, Twin and Bahamut as the pinnacle of difficulty, but those fights are incredibly mechanically simple and easy to execute even at min ilvl synced.

The raids have gotten harder with time, but yes, the first tier of Alex was a bit overtuned and they eventually toned it down a bit, only to bring back the difficulty of LL in TEA. I couldn't see this affecting sub numbers that much (the savage raiding population was relatively small back then) and think it was more due to the fact that there wasn't nearly as much to do in the game as there is now. The number of side systems and horizontal progression has become huge compared to back then. It was very easy to be "done" with the game in HW, which is one big contributing factor, at least as a theory.

[The Casualty]

Living Liquid was a big increase in difficulty for a third boss as compared to coils. People who played back in ARR viewed Nael, Twin and Bahamut as the pinnacle of difficulty, but those fights are incredibly mechanically simple and easy to execute even at min ilvl synced.

The raids have gotten harder with time, but yes, the first tier of Alex was a bit overtuned and they eventually toned it down a bit, only to bring back the difficulty of LL in TEA. I couldn't see this affecting sub numbers that much (the savage raiding population was relatively small back then) and think it was more due to the fact that there wasn't nearly as much to do in the game as there is now. The number of side systems and horizontal progression has become huge compared to back then. It was very easy to be "done" with the game in HW, which is one big contributing factor, at least as a theory.

Agreed. The raiding scene was still evolving in Heavensward. I was just capping out my first job, Warrior, in 2.5, and although I barely got my feet wet with raiding at that time, I don't recall the absolute need to have tanks/healers putting in as much work on DPS optimization just to help meet the DPS threshold to secure a clear. That definitely was emphasized with Gordias and Midas however, to the point that tanks dropped as much HP as they could to trade with DPS stats, and gearing for vit/staying in tank stance was a trap for new tanks.

Back then the raiding populations were way smaller and there wasn't cross server play yet, so sometimes getting enough people to actually fill out a static at higher levels of play was difficult. iirc, when we did Midas, there were only 3-4 groups that cleared A8S on content on our server. A few more did A12S, but the raiding scene from Gordias/Midas had a fair amount of raiders either quitting or consolidating on specific servers. It also didn't help that Ex fights outside of Thordan were so hilariously undertuned for damage and mechanics that it didn't prepare anyone for savage raiding. You could yolo your way through Sophia, Sephirot, and Zurvan and still end up with minutes left on the clock before enrage.

Crafting/gathering had a higher barrier to entry with the odd choice to implement specialist only recipes, crafter delineations, and some very unfun rotations. Some nodes like Mythrite or Titanium were also random, but you also needed a ton of them, which made gathering frustrating. That also meant though that there were less people at the top - I know a few people who made their vast fortunes back in HW because the marketboard prices were able to be more easily controlled if you were one of the few people who had the time, the resources, or the inclination to craft end game stuff.

Some classes had confusing design choices, like turning the bard that people have been playing all through ARR into a bow mage with the old version of Wanderer's Minuet giving most of their abilities cast times.

Heavensward was a well designed story, and thematically it was my favorite expansion, but there was a lot wrong with the game as far as approachability back then, which I think kept people away.

[Saradain]

So, I have this friend who tries to join me on Spriggan EU. Which seems to be congested, but I cannot find information whether that situation might change any time soon? Out of luck, or does spamming this 3 minute CD refresh button actually still work?

Since I see other servers popping in and out of congestion upon refreshing but Spriggan stays congested, my friend seems convinced that the server is fully locked down, akin to Balmung at times in the past history.

[MsSideEye]

What I don't understand when I hear and read about how FFXIV keeps the company going (which I agree on), is why the company doesn't invest more into that game.
Just a little, they don't need to add 200 people, that would probably be counterproductive... but I remember reading that they did the opposite....

Just why...we even got to hear about how they had to cancel stuff because it wouldn't have made it in time.
It's not like the ideas aren't there.

Or maybe they actually DON'T have that many ideas and need to spread them out through the patches after all. But that would be silly, because existing features can pretty much always be expanded on.
They could easily revitalize HotD and stuff with a new game mode.
A true rogue-like HotD or something for example... there is always stuff to do.
Especially FFXIV doesn't have to be always about enemies or new 10 minute choreographed boss fights...

but who knows, maybe the spaghetti code makes it so that it's too difficult to make the team bigger as it would be relatively ineffective to bring more into the team.

As someone with some knowledge about coding, development, and what not when it comes to that, this isn't a numbers thing that can be fixed easily. Especially if the code is older (Even by a few years), changing a single thing within it to try and get a desired effect could change a million other little things that relied on that same code. A good example for something I saw once in a game was that the values for colors on armor for an item were tied to a particular enemy, because that enemy was the only one who was ever intended to drop it. Once dyes got introduced into the game at a later patch, dying your gear into a color actually changed the enemy it was attached to, because of how it was coded. And that's just a small, simple example. For something like an MMO, it's a LOT bigger and something like the Glamor dresser and Hrothgar/Veira hair I 100% guarantee you are slow in development specifically because of THIS reason and it's not something that throwing more developers at will work.

Also, FFXIV is very specifically more about just fights, even when they're having cut content. The upcoming Island Sancturaries aren't going to be fights, at least not in the '10 minute Choreographed bosses' that we've had and there are other things that have been put in (Like Building the housing in Isgaurd) that is content there for other people. And one of the reasons why FFXIV is also slow in rolling out some content is the fact that the Devs themselves play through it to make sure it's completeable, with Yoshi P himself making sure he's part of the team that kills it so he knows it's solid. Quality control matters a LOT to them, which is why it's rare for them to walk back/nerf things.

So, I have this friend who tries to join me on Spriggan EU. Which seems to be congested, but I cannot find information whether that situation might change any time soon? Out of luck, or does spamming this 3 minute CD refresh button actually still work?

Since I see other servers popping in and out of congestion upon refreshing but Spriggan stays congested, my friend seems convinced that the server is fully locked down, akin to Balmung at times in the past history.

It's rare for a server to be 100% completely blocked off from Joining, though it does happen from time to time. Off hours are the best time to actually make characters on populated servers, with a friend I have being able to get into Balmung by making a character at 3 in the morning his time. There's also a website section on the Lodestone that tells you when the servers are available for character creation, so it's better to be on that page and refresh it every few minutes to see if it's ok to make a character than do that 3 minute refresh button.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Crafting/gathering had a higher barrier to entry with the odd choice to implement specialist only recipes, crafter delineations, and some very unfun rotations. Some nodes like Mythrite or Titanium were also random, but you also needed a ton of them, which made gathering frustrating. That also meant though that there were less people at the top - I know a few people who made their vast fortunes back in HW because the marketboard prices were able to be more easily controlled if you were one of the few people who had the time, the resources, or the inclination to craft end game stuff.

Crafting and money making is most certainly my bread and butter. It is the one thing in this game I always enjoy. Yes, you are mostly right from a perspective of someone looking in from the outside. Crafting also had limited amount of special resources they could gather every week. There were those notes that gave you a buff that allowed you to see certain nodes for 5 minutes, and they were limited by your weekly scrip limit, so crafted battle gear and crafted crafting gear were not only more easily able to be controlled by few people who made them, that barrier to entry into end game crafting turned a lot of people off. We were effectively able to keep an iron grip on the market.

That's all changed now, of course, but I do miss the days when crafting was a mountain, and being at the top felt amazing. But now that it is a hill, it is not nearly so satisfying. But fewer people are locked out of it. It brings up the question of what is more fun, harder and more daunting content that a few can achieve greatness in, or the ability for everyone to experience it?

I think there's a good balance in having most content be very accessible, with a few very high end challenges like ultimates providing trophies that people can show off. Though frankly speaking, there were far less people per capita that got max crafting in Heavensward than there are people who have Ultimate weapons. But such is the nature of ultimates having been out for what, 6 years now?

[Wrecktangle]

It's just really difficult to find informative videos that don't have clickbait thumbnails. Youtubers have all basically realized that if they want to make a willing on youtube, they have to do it, as clickbait thumbnails even on very information videos is the way to go.

Completely kinda OT - but I absolutely abhor the world we live in where we monetize our opinion and farm clicks/views/outrage. I absolutely hate it.

Living Liquid was a big increase in difficulty for a third boss as compared to coils. People who played back in ARR viewed Nael, Twin and Bahamut as the pinnacle of difficulty, but those fights are incredibly mechanically simple and easy to execute even at min ilvl synced.

Not sure how many of you here actually did progression raiding back then (I did). The game was younger back then, much smaller population, less tools and information. Trying to solve these mechanics with very little underlying information was a legitimate challenge. Not only that, but the servers were shit and fights back then were designed for the JP players ping, not anyone else's so any mechanic based on position updating across multiple players literally didn't work consistently pull to pull, and depending on your location in relation to the servers didn't work at all without a VPN.

You mention that Nael, Twin and Bahamut as the pinnacle of difficulty, and it's because they were at that time. Encounter design back then was much more akin to WoW back then with extremely tight rapidly failing situation type DPS checks and many more open ended solutions rather than the final DPS check/dance mechanics.

The raiding community was growing, and they threw a raid with garbage difficulty curve, obscure practically pixel perfect timing mechanics in there and watched the world burn. Nowadays you can find players from anywhere to come in and fill, but it's easy to forget that you used to have to recruit, from an incredibly small pool of players, via very few effective methods, and then they had to pay to come to your server, just to hope everyone got a long and they weren't a weak link.

I genuinely don't know why the sub numbers took a big hit during HW. It's possible the server location finally annoyed enough people to quit (there was a HUGE population of people who couldn't play the game effectively with the servers in Canada) and Comcast had an absolute shit peering agreement with NTT up that way (like, post 9pm, the game was not playable for anyone on that service).

As someone with some knowledge about coding, development, and what not when it comes to that, this isn't a numbers thing that can be fixed easily. Especially if the code is older (Even by a few years), changing a single thing within it to try and get a desired effect could change a million other little things that relied on that same code. For something like an MMO, it's a LOT bigger and something like the Glamor dresser and Hrothgar/Veira hair I 100% guarantee you are slow in development specifically because of THIS reason and it's not something that throwing more developers at will work.

Yoshi's gone on record stating that he has the budget and desire to hire more people, but that the pool for talented MMO developers in JP or that speak fluent JP is not very large. It's very true that throwing bodies at a problem isn't always a viable solution, but there's definitely room for it to work in some capacity for sure.

And one of the reasons why FFXIV is also slow in rolling out some content is the fact that the Devs themselves play through it to make sure it's completeable, with Yoshi P himself making sure he's part of the team that kills it so he knows it's solid. Quality control matters a LOT to them, which is why it's rare for them to walk back/nerf things.

They aren't slow rolling out content because the Dev's playtest it. No idea where you got that from. It's standard practice in the industry. Not only that, but they've botched raid balance before because when they do this, they have god mode on and didn't realize something wasn't tuned well. I can't remember which tier it was if anyone does remember.

They've nerfed and walked back tons of things over the years lol. Raids, casual content, job design decisions, etc.

[Granyala]

Even if you're not going to an extreme like the World First guilds are, it leads to a situation where raiding at a high level forces you into a cycle of binging WoW for a few months at a time while content is current, followed by being burnt out for a few months while you're waiting on the next patch to repeat it all over again. That's not a healthy model for either Blizzard or the players.

And this is what people were clamoring for: meaningful (let's not kid ourselves, that means player power only to most folks) content to do with your raiding main instead of logging off when it isn't raid night.

Yeah, there is always a crunch period for the bleeding edge when new content releases.
No, the average joe does not need to do that and he does not "fall behind". Mythic is there to stay for 6 months.

Is it possible that Blizzard overdid it in Shadowlands? I guess so.
The Blizzard I remember always tended to gravitate towards the extremes rather than find a sensible middle ground.

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Agreed! Though I guess WoW having WoWhead helps in this regard.

Garland data is pretty awesome. Not as extensive as the community driven WoWhead but it answers a lot of questions.

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Wasn't Heavensward a low point for a bit because of raiding and how they catered to the poopsockers and destroyed a bunch of statics? Which they then learned to not do.

Only negativity I read about the first Tier in HW was that it was incredibly hard in terms of enrage and rather light on mechanics, which proved to be an unpopular design choice. Later on, SE backed off the DPS requirements a bit and made them mechanically more intricate to compensate.

The first tier in HW being super hard also made the relic step ridiculous by proxy because their item level was similar and SE wanted a similar effort needed. Needless to say, that didn't go over very well.

[Ghost of Cow]

And this is what people were clamoring for: meaningful (let's not kid ourselves, that means player power only to most folks) content to do with your raiding main instead of logging off when it isn't raid night.

Yeah, there is always a crunch period for the bleeding edge when new content releases.
No, the average joe does not need to do that and he does not "fall behind". Mythic is there to stay for 6 months.

Yeah, most of the, "I need to do this forever and ever" is a burden placed on players by players.

I assume it's a product of being exposed to a lot of crappy community elements. The ones that say things like, "If you're not maxed out, you're not dedicated, not pulling your weight, whatever." while their guild is 7/12 Heroic.

This whole mindset has been created in some corners of the community that logging more playtime makes you a better person, and it's entirely player-driven. The game absolutely does not ask that of you.