FFXIV Criticisms

[Swnem]

Full disclosure, I think games that lead towards "raid logging" are terrible and it encourages an unhealthy gameplay mentality. While no raid environment (not even WoW, which tend to have far more bosses and things going on than XIV's) can keep players engaged for the long interim period between raid pushes (8+ months), I think making it a lot easier for players to help other players without penalizing them, and to quickly gear up off-specs, will maximize the amount of time that they stay engaged in it.

If you make a game only for full time players, you aren't gonna get enough players to populate it or make enough money to support it.
Mmo's cater to different kinds of players. Not forcing them to engage with specific content is why ffxiv is successful.
Players play more if they can/want and there is plenty to do if you want to do it. That makes for a positive experience.

I mean... surely we haven't forgotten how AP grinding in WoW went. All it does is make players hate the game and leave it.

[MsSideEye]

You *need* alts if you want to gear characters quickly. You run A/B alt-groups to get 2 chest clears multiple times per week and funnel the drops to specific players. You can do it up to A/B/C/D if you really want to. It's very easy to gear one class or role quickly in XIV, it's very slow to gear multiple.

I'm sorry, but that split-run bullshit that WoW Players put up with not only 1) just affects the top 1% of the players in the game but also 2) Can't happen in XIV. Savage by it's very nature is designed to once you get a piece of loot from that fight, you're done for the week. PERIOD. Now you can still funnel gear to players and get them up there, but not only does it matter less in this game than it ever did in WoW, you're still hit with that restriction in that fight. Once you're done with Proto-Carbuncle? Guess what... no matter what shit you do, you ain't getting more loot from him until reset.

Additionally, if you want to play with friends that progress at different rates from you or who simply raid on different nights than you, you *MUST* use an alt or you will take loot away from them. I've never, ever seen a multiplayer game adopt such an absurd mentality - gotta remove loot from the pool if people get help, such as by playing with the friends they made in a game where socializing and teamwork is a core focus. Allegedly, the point was to prevent people from gearing too quickly, but as I explained above, it literally fails to accomplish this goal, so there is no rational basis to maintain it.

The point of a 'raiding team' is to raid with it. If you're going to go off and do stuff without them, that's on you for screwing over the loot drops. The system in game is designed to encourage statics to get together as one to complete the content and to encourage people who've not done the fight that week to join in to help teach newbies. And frankly, their system for loot is still superior to WoWs where, after that content isn't the end game of end games anymore, I could get ALL the loot in there without issue.

You can say the same for XIV. Cruise Chaser was a cash shop mount, when there's a ton of activities it could have been earned from in-game. You could have earned the Megashiba in-game, but instead it's a cash shop mount. And so on. I'll agree that XIV generally has more variety with earned mounts than does WoW (except for Ex mounts, the achievement mounts are usually not "it's a dragon but slightly different color oooh!")

Cruise Chase is about the only one I'd, and other XIV players, could agree on as something that could probably be earned in game, but even then we're faced with the fact that it was probably never intended to be a mount in the first place. And when they were adding it into the game, it was LONG after anything related became relevant. It would be like WoW adding the giant metal scorpion boss from Siege of Orrgrimar as a mount now. It's kinda out of place for the content that they want players to be doing (Dragonlands) to offer a Pandaria mount all the sudden.

And as far as the EX mounts... that's kinda been a thing since the game STARTED. Get up a bunch of different colored variation of mounts to earn a big specail one at the end. Oh, and get to enjoy the music of those fights every time you ride them.

I genuinely cannot care less. I'm paying a monthly fee - in fact, I'm paying *additional* monthly fees to be able to expand my storage by buying extra retainers, meanwhile I can upgrade my bag space in WoW by buying/crafting better bags (it's also a LOT easier to maintain and manage mules in WoW than in XIV.) If that ain't enough money for them, too bad. Maybe they should control their idiot CEO chasing NFTs and wasting expensive IP licenses with the money XIV is earning them.

If you're that overflowing on inventory that you felt like paying more for more retainers, that's on you. I'm a notorious item hog and I have yet to fill up the two default retainers I've got right now. The only reason I'd even buy another myself would be so I could have access to the retainer specific missions that drop minions without having to relevel my gatherer retainer over and over again.

You can't also can't get mad at the FFXIV team for the shit that Square is doing. Same reason why, when most of us talk shit about Blizzard, we mean the higher ups like Bobby, not any of the lower workers. Just because some asshole above you decideds to make a bad call doesn't mean that you yourself are an asshole. The fact that Yoshi-P is on the Board of Directors because of how freaking good he is at making his game is probably why Square hasn't dug themselves even deeper at this point, like some companies have.

That's nonsense. Fat Cat and Mameshiba are literally minions you get from exploration ventures, and they first appeared in Heaven on High, literally in-game content. You can have a Chocobo house or a Carbuncle house or an Odder Otter house, you can have tons of silly and immersion-breaking things in-game. You're trying to create reasons to justify them selling us something they could, if they actually wanted to, just have us earn by doing things in-game instead.

Yes, and how much of those are going to actually be things other players are going to have to deal with?

If I wanted to, I could never deal with/know of a player having a Fat Cat minion, mount, or even house because once I'm done with the dungeon I'm in, chances are I'm never going to see that player again. The clothing, on the other hand, which was my whole point on the 'silly and immersion breaking things'? THAT directly effects me. Going through the Dead Ends can lose some of it's impact if I see someone come in dressed in a outfit.

Now, considering your responses you've done before, you'll probably whine about 'But there are other silly clothing in game', but my point still stands. Those actually have a LORE reason for existing. The fat cat outfit, on the other hand, was something that was created because players got such a kick out of the Minion/Mount. Because realistically... how the fuck do you work the idea of making an outfit mimicking a creature whose described in game as a bloated CORPSE into something people would want to wear?

You cannot justify MTX in a game that also charges a monthly fee. It's absurd. But that ship has long since sailed. Square-Enix is marginally less worse than Blizzard about it, but neither of them have any justification to have it at all, not while they're still charging a monthly fee to play.

I don't have to justify micro-transactions in a game that also charges a sub fee. It's a thing now. You either get used to it or you stop playing the game that does it. Using it as your criticism point means nothing. And even then, compared to all the other stores in games like what XIV has, it's still one of the most fairest priced shops that avoids pay-to-win bullcrap that we see everywhere else.

[KrayZ33]

You *need* alts if you want to gear characters quickly. You run A/B alt-groups to get 2 chest clears multiple times per week and funnel the drops to specific players. You can do it up to A/B/C/D if you really want to. It's very easy to gear one class or role quickly in XIV, it's very slow to gear multiple.

Additionally, if you want to play with friends that progress at different rates from you or who simply raid on different nights than you, you *MUST* use an alt or you will take loot away from them. I've never, ever seen a multiplayer game adopt such an absurd mentality - gotta remove loot from the pool if people get help, such as by playing with the friends they made in a game where socializing and teamwork is a core focus. Allegedly, the point was to prevent people from gearing too quickly, but as I explained above, it literally fails to accomplish this goal, so there is no rational basis to maintain it.

Uhm... WoW does it too, doesn't it? I'd say that's rather normal.
Or are you telling me that if 19 players cleared the first boss, and one didn't. One guy gets all ~4 items that drop?
No... there is a chance that the 1 player will actually 4 out of 5 times not get anything and will be locked out of getting something.

And I'm sorry, but you can help your other friends alright. They are better off just killing the boss for one chest and the page than not clearing it at all. In WoW? You might not get anything by helping that one player.

[Grinning Serpent]

I'm sorry, but that split-run bullshit that WoW Players put up with not only 1) just affects the top 1% of the players in the game but also 2) Can't happen in XIV. Savage by it's very nature is designed to once you get a piece of loot from that fight, you're done for the week. PERIOD. Now you can still funnel gear to players and get them up there, but not only does it matter less in this game than it ever did in WoW, you're still hit with that restriction in that fight. Once you're done with Proto-Carbuncle? Guess what... no matter what shit you do, you ain't getting more loot from him until reset.

What? I literally explained how you game the system using split-raids. It's possible to funnel multiple lockouts' worth of gear to specific characters. World first teams don't do this because it's too slow, it's just something parsebrains might do, particularly if they want to compete on multiple classes simultaneously since, as I already said, it is *incredibly* slow to gear a secondary class in XIV.

The point of a 'raiding team' is to raid with it. If you're going to go off and do stuff without them, that's on you for screwing over the loot drops. The system in game is designed to encourage statics to get together as one to complete the content and to encourage people who've not done the fight that week to join in to help teach newbies. And frankly, their system for loot is still superior to WoWs where, after that content isn't the end game of end games anymore, I could get ALL the loot in there without issue.

I'm not defending WoW's system, so I don't understand why you're bringing it up. I've already said both systems are crap and should both be straight up personal loot, though in WoW's case you would probably have "bag of emblems" in addition to tokens, since WoW's raid gearing also includes non-set items. You'd stick all of those non-set items on a vendor, and players pick the emblems or a token depending on what they're after.

XIV is very obviously *not* designed around raiding statics, though. It's designed around Party Finder (and Raid Finder on JP servers, which is apparently not a bad joke in that region.) They could make fights and mechanics more complicated/require more coordination if they were purely building around the assumption of 8-player static groups... which is what we see with Ultimates. A *lot* of the things like role bucketing etc which reduce RNG in mechanics are in there because it makes things more manageable for disorganized PF groups.

If you're that overflowing on inventory that you felt like paying more for more retainers, that's on you. I'm a notorious item hog and I have yet to fill up the two default retainers I've got right now. The only reason I'd even buy another myself would be so I could have access to the retainer specific missions that drop minions without having to relevel my gatherer retainer over and over again.

Crafter main. You need to stockpile a *lot* of stuff, particularly timed nodes that you can't necessarily just go out and scoop up more of, to say nothing of Diadem materials etc if you're working on *that* grind in stages.

It doesn't matter, though. I can effortlessly increase my storage in WoW for *free*, but I have to pay Square-Enix more real-world money to do so in XIV? Fuck that.

You can't also can't get mad at the FFXIV team for the shit that Square is doing. Same reason why, when most of us talk shit about Blizzard, we mean the higher ups like Bobby, not any of the lower workers. Just because some asshole above you decideds to make a bad call doesn't mean that you yourself are an asshole. The fact that Yoshi-P is on the Board of Directors because of how freaking good he is at making his game is probably why Square hasn't dug themselves even deeper at this point, like some companies have.

If people are going to attack Blizzard for things that are ultimately rolling downhill from Activision HQ (though at this point it's hard to say where the delineation even is, if it exists at all), then it is perfectly acceptable to attack XIV for participating in Square-Enix's idiocy in general. It's transparently clear that XIV is under-funded (with the caveat that unlimited funds doesn't necessarily mean unlimited labor), and it's hard to argue that Square-Enix is siphoning off a lot of the profits XIV earns to go waste them on idiot projects that kind of explain why Square-Enix was in such dire straits around XIV 1.0 in the first place... but at least they have *two* successful titles right now, right? FF7R still sells pretty decently and I'm sure the next game in that line will sell gangbusters.

Yes, and how much of those are going to actually be things other players are going to have to deal with?

Literally every single day. Every time I teleport to my apartment, I see all the goofy houses in the housing ward from that vantage point. Let alone if I warp to the FC house or a friend's house, etc.

For a game that places such emphasis on socializing and things like hanging out with friends (in game), that's an incredibly odd question for you to ask.

I don't have to justify micro-transactions in a game that also charges a sub fee. It's a thing now. You either get used to it or you stop playing the game that does it. Using it as your criticism point means nothing. And even then, compared to all the other stores in games like what XIV has, it's still one of the most fairest priced shops that avoids pay-to-win bullcrap that we see everywhere else.

WoW's shop also avoids pay-to-win, yet people castigate Blizzard for it constantly. Do you seriously not see the double standard? Does Blizzard just need to create a cult of personality around one of the developers like Square-Enix has done with Yoshida? Yoshida is a PR man and lies (typically by omission or misdirection, never directly) to players frequently, yet people treat him like he's the second coming of Jesus and any criticism of XIV is a grave sin.

You're doing it in this very thread, right now. You don't seem to be aware of the double standards you're arguing. Do you think that criticism of XIV means I'm automatically in favor of WoW, or otherwise not against WoW's many flaws? Both games have serious flaws. Both games do things that are bullshit and are disrespectful of the player's time or effort, and both games are likely to never seriously change either of them because... well, it's profitable for things to stay as they are. They're a business, after all.

Understanding that doesn't mean I like it, or approve of it.

[Ghost of Cow]

Yes, and how much of those are going to actually be things other players are going to have to deal with?

If I wanted to, I could never deal with/know of a player having a Fat Cat minion, mount, or even house because once I'm done with the dungeon I'm in, chances are I'm never going to see that player again. The clothing, on the other hand, which was my whole point on the 'silly and immersion breaking things'? THAT directly effects me. Going through the Dead Ends can lose some of it's impact if I see someone come in dressed in a outfit.

I'm sorry, but I have to just kinda laugh at this one.

XIV is FULL of silly, so-called-immersion-breaking outfits. They're all over the place, left and right. Naked Roe with a chocobo head? Sure, why not.

That's supposedly one of the nice things about the game, all the silly fun things you can wear.

[Wrecktangle]

Except... you don't need alts. Most of the hardcore raiders I know of in FFXIV, which include world first Raiders, do NOT have multiple characters and I even struggle to understand what they'd get out of having an additional character would benefit them in.

I didn't really want to get involved in the overarching discussion because frankly I'm exhausted, but 6/8 of my static has more than 1 character they actively raid on. Some have even 3. This isn't even uncommon. Not sure who you know or who these players you're referencing are, but a ton of savage players have multiple statics and characters to support it. I'm one of the two who doesn't cause that shit is crazy, but crazy is normal these days.

[Ludek]

WoW's shop also avoids pay-to-win, yet people castigate Blizzard for it constantly. Do you seriously not see the double standard? Does Blizzard just need to create a cult of personality around one of the developers like Square-Enix has done with Yoshida? Yoshida is a PR man and lies (typically by omission or misdirection, never directly) to players frequently, yet people treat him like he's the second coming of Jesus and any criticism of XIV is a grave sin.

Well technically Token is in the WoW Shop, and we all know it can lead to pay2win via boosting (I know that’s nitpicking on my side, don’t worry)

I don’t think cash shop is that bad idea in a sub game, if it’s moderate - WoW and XIV shops are moderate, just in a different way. While XIV tends to provide similar quality items available in game (most of the time at least) so you are not that special if you buy a cash shop mount, in WoW you have alternative path of getting the paid items via farming gold (and I know it’s still a cash purchase, just that someone else pays for you with blizz even getting extra margin, but still)

What would work best to mitigate the shop for „non-whales” would be some kind of loyality program - for each month you pay, you get some kind of „loyality currency” which you can then exchange for a cash shop item of your choice - ESO does that with their crown points, but the problem is, ESO cash shop is the shittiest of them all.

—-

As for the „PR man”, we had them in WoW - one was Chris Metzen, Ghostcrawler also tried to be the „rockstar” type.

[Grinning Serpent]

I mean, both games sell boosts for cash and they're both pretty terrible deals (I'd have to check pricing but it's $25 combined for XP and story skip for a single character in XIV.) But boosting isn't giving you power, it's just removing some of the busywork involved in getting a new character raid-ready. And it's undeniable that it's a *LOT* faster to level to cap in WoW (whether WotLK or retail, though obviously it's rather slow for Classic or TBC), so boosting is generally less valuable. WoW puts its grind at the level cap, rather than a long grind *to* level cap. Getting a character raid ready in XIV is literally as simple as buying them a set of crafted gear and unlocking savage, it's just getting *to* the cap that's such a huge slog.

Ghostcrawler was generally popular during his time and Metzen was always very well liked. I wonder if we wouldn't have seen someone become a Yoshida copy if they'd stuck around. Then again, we've discovered that Blizzard's internal work culture was starkly different from Square-Enix's, so it may never have happened. Part of what makes Yoshida likeable is that he seems like a genuinely nice guy, meanwhile we're (depressingly) finding that almost all of our heroes from Blizzard were a bunch of sexist dudebro assholes behind the scenes.

[Auxis]

Out of curiosity; do we have any proof that either game's profits from their respective ingame stores go back into the game or into the higher-ups pockets?

Because it seems like devs can sit there all day preaching that the money supports the game without a lick of proof and people accept it as gospel.
Like, of course they are gonna say it's going back into the game. But have they proven it? Is it listed in financial report somewhere?

----------
Some more criticisms:

People like to rag on Blizzard being a "small indie company", but FFXIV seems to suffer from Indie Company-itis sometimes as well. A huge one to me recently is Viera not being able to wear pretty much ANY hats or helms, and being relegated to non-ear interfering headwares. They couldn't at least make Job specific headware compatible? Can't dress up your viera like an iconic FFTA Red Mage, Sniper, or Assassin.

Like, they let Elezen and Miqo'te wear hats and just stretch the texture around their ears. They are quite capable of doing it.

And then there is/was the Hrothgar hair/ear situation. It's just funny that a game lauded for it's attention to detail in it's world and storytelling (which I completely agree with, I love this game don't get me wrong - I also love WoW) has such unpolished character model issues.

[KrayZ33]

I didn't really want to get involved in the overarching discussion because frankly I'm exhausted, but 6/8 of my static has more than 1 character they actively raid on. Some have even 3. This isn't even uncommon. Not sure who you know or who these players you're referencing are, but a ton of savage players have multiple statics and characters to support it. I'm one of the two who doesn't cause that shit is crazy, but crazy is normal these days.

I don't know bro, out of my static, no one has a secondary character.
How do we measure this if it's common or uncommon.
I'd say it's uncommon simply because it aint necessary nor does it actually provide you with anything signficantly useful? Even if you are like.. top 1%?
Depending on how fast you are clearing, you can start equipping a secondary job after mere weeks.
After all, you have both currencies and actual drops to go by.
We gave away a bracelet by accident to a secondary job on our first p5s kill, and no one cared. Like... seriously, no one cared, everyone was like "Meh... whatever".

[Grinning Serpent]

Out of curiosity; do we have any proof that either game's profits from their respective ingame stores go back into the game or into the higher-ups pockets?

Because it seems like devs can sit there all day preaching that the money supports the game without a lick of proof and people accept it as gospel.
Like, of course they are gonna say it's going back into the game. But have they proven it? Is it listed in financial report somewhere?

Square-Enix doesn't even provide subscriber numbers or anything like that. It's all entirely believing that Yoshida is telling people the truth. Like I said, I've never heard of the guy being caught telling a *direct* lie, but he's lied by omission or misdirection multiple times - pretty standard fare for a business, really. But I think it would be very foolish to take him completely at his word.

[Ghost of Cow]

Out of curiosity; do we have any proof that either game's profits from their respective ingame stores go back into the game or into the higher-ups pockets?

Because it seems like devs can sit there all day preaching that the money supports the game without a lick of proof and people accept it as gospel.
Like, of course they are gonna say it's going back into the game. But have they proven it? Is it listed in financial report somewhere?

I don't think so. It's just one of those things where - even when the two games do something similar - people want to find ways to reserve the right to say, "But my game is better than yours."

I've even heard people say, "WoW and XIV both have cash shops, but XIV hides theirs so it's not predatory and unfair like WoW's" as if making the interface less intuitive is a plus.

[SuperKarateDeathCar]

Then you've also got to look at the things in the store that ARE those higher prices and realize something about them, especially in terms of glam. The higher priced ones are stuff that are normally wouldn't fit the world of FFXIV itself and are something that they put in for players to have fun with. Stuff like the recent Fat Cat Attire or the Street Attire are there to give the players an option to have clothing that's completely separate from the normal reality of the game, thus they charge a bit more. Notice that things that are already in game models, like anything that is NPC specific like the Scion's clothing is cheaper, because they already had the assets.

Mounts and Minions are also drastically different compared to WoW. In fact, NO MINION in the FFXIV store is something that was just put into the store. ALL of them are from past events with only the Fan Festival minions being a little bit more expensive because... well, those were set up to be from special events and ALL of them are characters from other games. Mounts fall into different catagories depending on what they are, but even then, most are fairly priced. You've got the previous holiday mounts, which considering FFXIV doesn't repeat it's holiday events and changes it every year, I think it's fair to offer older rewards on the store for a cheaper price, which they do. Any of the mounts that are a higher price, like the Shiba Mount or the Kingly Peacock, are ones that are fairly unique and wouldn't really work as in game rewards from a faction or reward. And the rest are special in many ways, with something like the Lunar Whale being not only an 8 Person mount but also something that was a Fan festivial specific reward.

Finally, there's just the simple fact that it's overall cheaper to get these things in FFXIV than it is in WoW. Did you know that for 3 dollars more, I can race change in XIV 3 times for what WoW charges for their race change? AND that's with the added benefit of being able to just carry an item around that does that and letting me choose to change when I want. And most things that I could really want that aren't mounts (Minions, Orchestration Rolls, Emotes, Armor and more) fall into the price range to where I could not go to Starbucks for a day and be able to get them for the one character I play.

Sooo, yeah... kinda a big difference there.

You're doing some olympic level gymnastics there buddy. The only difference between WoW's shop and XIV's shop is you've lied enough to yourself to think XIV's is better... XIV has so much weird shit in-game that not a single thing in the store couldn't just be part of the world, and to be honest a lot of fits into it just fine. The prices on a lot of the stuff is ridiculous too. They very easily could have just made past holiday items on a vendor in-game the next season, but instead it goes to the shop. It's also 5 dollars a pop for one or two items. The music rolls are 5 dollars each, they have posters for 10 dollars, It's even 15 dollars for some of the housing items such as the orchestrion players. And best part of all, if you happen to lose your housing items there's no way to get them back. You literally have to buy anything you lost from the store again. It's honestly hilarious that you actually say SE putting past holiday events on the store, instead of in the game, is a WIN. The game also adds weird and modern clothing items all the time. Trying to say the fatcat set had to be a store item is ridiculous. You also used the Lunar Whale as an example of how XIVs store is good when it's more the opposite. Want an 8 person mount? ONLY on the store! Want max ground speed before you earn it? ONLY on the store! Not to mention trying to say the peacock couldn't just be on a vendor somewhere is more of you lying to yourself. You could buy a gorilla mount from Ishgard Restoration, right that totally fit the theme. Come on, stop lying to yourself.

Somewhat related and unrelated though... Ignoring the price, You do realize that Fantasia is actually like 2 additional steps vs WoW's right? You're trying to make it sound as if it's just far more convenient than a race change but it's not. When you buy a race change in WoW an icon appears next to your character on the char screen. You don't have to do it then and there, you can log in and out as much as you'd like. With Fantasia you have to use the item in-game, and then unequip all of your gear, and then logout to the char screen anyway. It's kind of a good example of the mental hoops you'll jump through to see XIV in a good light against WoW despite it not being true.

[Grinning Serpent]

Fantasia vs WoW Race Change is more an example of how janky and poorly designed XIV is under the hood. Maybe it has to do with how the game had to be designed from the foundation up to be compatible with the PS3's extremely limited memory, but there are a LOT of tasks in XIV that require far more inputs and command prompts than equivalent tasks take in WoW. We could probably come up with a list of dozens of examples, especially if we could take a step back and recognize "we have normalized this weird behavior" for several things we've learned to just accept.

I think it's one of the most valid lines of criticism towards the game, but it's also a bit like playing retro games - you just have to either learn to accept and work around the jank, or decide it's not worth putting up with. It would be wonderful if Square-Enix could address and remedy the problem, but I expect a lot of it has to do with core server architecture and design (same reason as why the servers have that horrible ~0.5s delay on everything) and so fixing it would probably be hundreds or thousands of work-hours and probably tens of thousands of dollars or more in hardware costs.

[SuperKarateDeathCar]

Fantasia vs WoW Race Change is more an example of how janky and poorly designed XIV is under the hood. Maybe it has to do with how the game had to be designed from the foundation up to be compatible with the PS3's extremely limited memory, but there are a LOT of tasks in XIV that require far more inputs and command prompts than equivalent tasks take in WoW. We could probably come up with a list of dozens of examples, especially if we could take a step back and recognize "we have normalized this weird behavior" for several things we've learned to just accept.

I think it's one of the most valid lines of criticism towards the game, but it's also a bit like playing retro games - you just have to either learn to accept and work around the jank, or decide it's not worth putting up with. It would be wonderful if Square-Enix could address and remedy the problem, but I expect a lot of it has to do with core server architecture and design (same reason as why the servers have that horrible ~0.5s delay on everything) and so fixing it would probably be hundreds or thousands of work-hours and probably tens of thousands of dollars or more in hardware costs.

XIV definitely has a TON of technical and QoL issues, and like I get it, the foundation for the game is pure garbage. I'm actually quite impressed with what they've managed to do. I think when you first get into the game it's easy to kinda overlook a lot of it, but as you become more familiar with all the systems and what not it starts to get more and more grating and apparent. Atleast that's how it was for me.

[Wrecktangle]

I don't know bro, out of my static, no one has a secondary character.
How do we measure this if it's common or uncommon.
I'd say it's uncommon simply because it aint necessary nor does it actually provide you with anything signficantly useful? Even if you are like.. top 1%?
Depending on how fast you are clearing, you can start equipping a secondary job after mere weeks.
After all, you have both currencies and actual drops to go by.
We gave away a bracelet by accident to a secondary job on our first p5s kill, and no one cared. Like... seriously, no one cared, everyone was like "Meh... whatever".

A lot of people raid in multiple groups because they have a lot of friends in game at various skill levels so they need multiple characters to fuel that gameplay loop. It's definitely not common overall, and probably not super common at the lowest levels of savage progression, but IME it's considerably more common at the higher levels where friends have wildly different skill levels, but they still like playing with them so they progress on a main with equivalent players, and raid on an alt (sometimes multiple) which usually is just to help them clear.

[Biomega]

Out of curiosity; do we have any proof that either game's profits from their respective ingame stores go back into the game or into the higher-ups pockets?

Only empirical proof.

I.e., we see that new stuff is being made, which costs money; that money has to come from somewhere.

Whether or not profits get reinvested is not in question, really. HOW MUCH gets reinvested, that is the real crux of the matter. And they are never ever ever going to reveal that. Even if they told us, it'd be their word on it only.

No company is ever going to make their books publicly available. That's an unreasonable expectation.

All you can do, really, is look at what content they put out, and weigh that against the money you put in. If that equation holds for you, keep giving them money. If it does not, don't give them money.

[BraveNewWorld]

Finally, there's just the simple fact that it's overall cheaper to get these things in FFXIV than it is in WoW.

I can change my whole character appearance in WoW (even gender) for a couple of in-game gold. It costs IRL money to do it in XIV.

[Grinning Serpent]

A lot of people raid in multiple groups because they have a lot of friends in game at various skill levels so they need multiple characters to fuel that gameplay loop. It's definitely not common overall, and probably not super common at the lowest levels of savage progression, but IME it's considerably more common at the higher levels where friends have wildly different skill levels, but they still like playing with them so they progress on a main with equivalent players, and raid on an alt (sometimes multiple) which usually is just to help them clear.

This was literally me when I was raiding "seriously," only I couldn't justify the time expense to make alts and refused to give Square-Enix even more money than what I was already paying them.

I was in a raiding static that progged faster than my friends with full statics did, and we generally recleared the entire zone Tuesday nights after we completed prog. I wanted to help my friends, who did not have full statics (or who had full statics but needed a sub) prog and clear and... you know... just have fun spending time with my friends. But the way loot is structured, it's vastly better to not take your friend unless you don't think a clear is possible without them - if you think you can get the clear by getting the last people through PF, it's better to *play without your friends* so that you can get 2 chests instead of 1 or 0.

It's just an incredibly bad system that works against the founding principles of MMORPGs in general - meeting people, making friends, and going off to do stuff with those friends. It's something that has persisted because JP players specifically haven't complained about it frequently enough, and because Square-Enix's development style is "do not make any changes unless it's completely broken or you need a selling point for the next expansion."

In every meaningful way, just moving savage to be literally the exact same as normal for loot purposes is an improvement. You will get gear faster on average (because you only need 4 tokens for the biggest pieces, and most are either 1 token or 2 tokens), which means you can gear up secondary classes faster and have more fun playing more roles. I don't know if it would be a positive impact on world first races or not, but I frankly don't give a single tin shit about world first races and any developer that designs around *that* instead of what the majority of players experience are a bunch of morons anyway. It also removes RNG from loot, which is a net benefit in my book (it's fucking annoying getting a bunch of coffers that no one has any need for when there are other coffers that boss can drop that *are* needed, given that there's no use or value for unneeded loot, unlike in WoW where you can at least disenchant it for shards.)

It's not an exaggeration to say that Square-Enix have lost me as a customer, probably for good this time (unless the Blue Mage patch this expansion is *really* good), over their idiotic Savage loot rules. I'd probably maintain my subscription to be able to occasionally raid with my friends if I didn't have to worry about someone losing loot because they wanted to play with a friend that had already cleared that week.

Or if they just reduced all book costs to be equal to the token costs for pieces in normal - 1 book for accessories, 2 books for stuff like gloves, 4 books for chest, etc. That would also work, since it's effectively the same end result.

[KrayZ33]

I doubt gear is that much of an issue for most players, so they will probably never change that because not enough players care and thus it's not even on the radar.