FFXIV Criticisms

[Grinning Serpent]

Source? Pretty sure Yoshi P is on record as recently as Shadowbringers saying that SE loves the work he does and gave him more funding than ever before?

It's pretty obvious that XIV as a project is way bigger than the team can handle. It's why there seem to be many cut corners or why they'll release a "side content" system and then it seems to go largely untouched for months or even years at a time, while they're busy focusing on something else.

Of course, infinite payroll funding doesn't necessarily mean infinite work-hours. I know Square-Enix has gotten better over the years at outsourcing various bits and pieces of the project, but as far as I'm aware they still require members of the core teams to be fluent in Japanese and to live in Japan, which is obviously going to significantly limit their workforce pool.

Did you ever consider playing a different job then?
A BLM for example? Mapping out the fight properly is something they have to do and you can do for yourself.

And what are you exactly criticising here.
Cooldowns line up for a reason. In WoW as well.
0:30, 1, 1:30, 2, 3, 5.

etc.
What did endwalker even change in that regard.
And I don't know about that hitbox thing. That too didn't really change.
It's about mechanics were you lose uptime, honestly though, it's not even something I want to have because it's actually bad to have forced downtimes.
something like Hunger in P5S isn't exactly something I like. If you are 1 GCD late or early it's always awkward, especially since you are reliant on other people's buffs, like a dancer might still dance and you are already sitting on the 1000+potency finishers. I can fix all of that alright, but it is still something I have to think about if I care about DPS (which I don't, in most cases because it's not like enrage is whats holding my people back)
But still, compared to what I did in classic or actually even do in retail for example it's hardly different.
Popping CDs as they come up or as a dps window allows it. It's a cooldown, there is not much about it.

I still feel priority lists are easier to "maintain" than proper rotations, especially when they are quirky like SAMs or BLMs due to movement and server ticks or slidecasts, or simply due to how the "combat-point" system is designed etc.. Sure, we can blame the game for the latency, but I actually think it's kinda cool to be able to slidecast - although I'm aware that I'm a minority here, feels good though.

Cooldowns in WoW Classic don't necessarily line up because they are designed to be used personally. It's common to hold cooldowns for Bloodlust, but when will Bloodlust be used? You can alter your timings based on the fight and a variety of other circumstances, this is particularly common when you're talking about hardmodes (since several of them require you to do something in the actual fight to start the hardmode itself, which may "reset" the fight, like XT.) And I'd argue only hardmodes are challenging enough where optimal use of cooldowns even matters, similar to how no one really cares about optimal ability usage in XIV normals or even Extremes due to very generous or nonexistent enrage timers.

Incidentally, not only do I dislike the EW changes for over-simplifying DPS rotations, but the changes also create a lot of issues for PF groups. Dying when *literally everything* is lined up inside a single window, for the entire raid, is a *colossal* DPS loss if you die at the wrong time. If someone dies within about 10 sec of the next 2 minute window, you have to make a hard decision on whether or not the entire raid can just delay everything for 60 sec (to allow weakness to wear off), else that person will be *permanently outside of the DPS window*. I think this is fine for organized statics (although very boring), but it's a major issue for PF. Abyssos also implemented a lot more "body check mechanics" than previous tiers did, and those mechanics are also "okay but boring" for statics and often very frustrating for PF groups.

While I don't think Abyssos is a *bad* raid tier, I do think that it has shown a lot of the major issues that XIV's core raid design is suffering from, or offering a preview of where that design is going to lead the game.

I think that XIV needs to shift away from every class being a rather boring builder-spender design with mostly static rotations and "vomit everything every 60 or 120 sec" design. I want to see them make more classes heavily focused on priority systems (which means proc-based gameplay) and I want to see them abandon the "everyone blow their wad together every 120 sec," because I think "use your buttons when it makes the most sense for you to do so" makes for more interesting gameplay - in particular, it allows for a lot more player/skill expression as it means fight optimization is now heavily reliant on your class and what it can do (we saw this in ShB and previous expansions but it's largely eliminated from EW in any meaningful sense... even BLM now has so many movement-friendly options that they don't actually lose much from movement anymore.)

BTW, the gigantic boss hitboxes and diminished importance of melee positionals/needing melee to lose GCDs avoiding damage is worse in EW than ever before. ShB had some bosses with giant hitboxes, but we never had an *entire tier* full of them like we do in Abyssos, and positionals matter less than ever - DRG could lose Raiden Thrust in ShB if you fucked up your positionals, whereas now it's just guaranteed even if you just facetank the boss. While savage is still fun and is arguably still challenging (though P8 was overtuned even by Square-Enix's standards), I do think they've gone a long way towards removing meaningful player expression/skill expression from the equation with Endwalker.

It's why I honestly think that maybe they should just stop bothering with hardcore content altogether. A comparatively tiny portion of players engage with it (a large portion of savage clear rates come from people doing them for mounts and outfits *after* they outgear them and outfits like Lucky Bancho cannot meaningfully differentiate the two when looking at long-term statistics), yet we know that it costs a considerable amount of work-hours to produce (particularly ultimates.) I can only assume that metrics still indicate that savage is still profitable for them to be investing in. But with the direction EW design is heading, how long will that remain true?

[Arlette]

It's pretty obvious that XIV as a project is way bigger than the team can handle. It's why there seem to be many cut corners or why they'll release a "side content" system and then it seems to go largely untouched for months or even years at a time, while they're busy focusing on something else.

This is just like some alternate reality here where you're making stuff up that is so abundantly untrue.

As for the rest of the post, it's funny to see someone trying to pretend to breakdown why something that seems pretty universally loved is "so bad" as if just desperately TRYING to find some reasons to hate on it.

Especially when talking about the other game, it's so obvious what you're doing.

[Grinning Serpent]

This is just like some alternate reality here where you're making stuff up that is so abundantly untrue.

As for the rest of the post, it's funny to see someone trying to pretend to breakdown why something that seems pretty universally loved is "so bad" as if just desperately TRYING to find some reasons to hate on it.

Especially when talking about the other game, it's so obvious what you're doing.

I mean, I don't know of any other rational explanation for why development of XIV seems to be so random and intermittent when referring to anything that isn't critical path content (which I'd define as: MSQ, Extreme Trials, Alliance Raids, and Normal/Savage Raids.) Like, Blue Mage - introduced in 4.5, where it went over like a wet fart (Blue Mage is one of the most enjoyed classic FF class archetypes and it was *really bad* on release in XIV.) Then it got a largely unheralded update in 5.15 to level 60, where it started to be actually decent, and another largely unannounced update in 5.45 to level 70, where it actually started to become pretty great. We currently have no idea if or when Blue Mage will be updated in Endwalker.

We know there's supposed to be a Gold Saucer update sometime in Endwalker. How long has it been since any of the Gold Saucer attractions or features (which basically define "side content") have received meaningful updates? I guess Triple Triad got the flying card mount for collecting cards - that's something, right? What about Verminion, Chocobo Racing, etc? When's the last time we got a new GATE or GATEs received substantial updates or changes?

What about Deep Dungeons? When's the last time Palace of the Dead or Heaven-on-High received meaningful adjustments or updates? We didn't get a Deep Dungeon at all in Shadowbringers (I believe they blamed it on COVID delays coupled with the need to focus on Bozja development, which is fair), and while they've said we're getting one in Endwalker, when will that be? How long, after its launch, will it be before that new Deep Dungeon receives meaningful adjustments or improvements? What about the Deep Dungeon concept as a whole?

If you actually look at the patch timelines and remove your bias from the equation, it's pretty clear that XIV is not very good at being *consistent* with side content production, much less ongoing support for that side content. The general pattern is that they push out a huge expansion/adjustment to side content (and I'm going to consider crafting and gathering side content here; others may not), and you might see some support for it over the next full patch cycle in addition to the cycle it was released in, but after that, it's rare to see substantial work done on that content until the next major content push... which is often years later (typically as part of the next expansion.) And, of course, there's the very well-known story of Chocobo Racing - it was managed by *one person* on the entire team. That guy later got promoted, and as a result the entire batch of side content has been left untouched for *several years* (I believe the last update was either at the beginning of Stormblood or end of Heavensward, I would need to check), despite it presumably not costing *that* many work-hours to maybe increase level caps, add one or two new maps, make balance adjustments, etc.

"We can't spare the work hours" seems to be the most rational explanation, to me, especially since we know that Yoshidia maintains a healthy work environment and does not crunch his teams. What potential explanation would you consider to be more likely? "They're disorganized and incompetent" doesn't strike me as being a very likely one.

[Wrecktangle]

It's pretty obvious that XIV as a project is way bigger than the team can handle. It's why there seem to be many cut corners or why they'll release a "side content" system and then it seems to go largely untouched for months or even years at a time, while they're busy focusing on something else.

Of course, infinite payroll funding doesn't necessarily mean infinite work-hours. I know Square-Enix has gotten better over the years at outsourcing various bits and pieces of the project, but as far as I'm aware they still require members of the core teams to be fluent in Japanese and to live in Japan, which is obviously going to significantly limit their workforce pool.

None of this has anything to do with my statement though regardless of my agreement with some of what you said, I don't want to debate that. The person I responded to stated that they cut funding. I asked for a source to back that up, because I'm fairly confident I've heard the exact opposite fairly recently. I just don't like agendas and misinformation, because your average clown can't tell them apart from facts these days even if it punched them repeatedly in the face.

Now - I will say that You are correct about their workforce pool, he's gone on record numerous times stating those exact reasons.

[Grinning Serpent]

None of this has anything to do with my statement though regardless of my agreement with some of what you said, I don't want to debate that. The person I responded to stated that they cut funding. I asked for a source to back that up, because I'm fairly confident I've heard the exact opposite fairly recently. I just don't like agendas and misinformation, because your average clown can't tell them apart from facts these days even if it punched them repeatedly in the face.

Now - I will say that You are correct about their workforce pool, he's gone on record numerous times stating those exact reasons.

I mean, if you're going to demand verifiable empiric data in the line of profits, project funding, etc... that's literally never going to happen. No business is ever going to disclose that information because it would be utterly insane to do so.

And PR men like Yoshida *are* going to lie to people about it, when they do talk about it.

You need to adjust your expectations to suit the information that's actually available.

[Necromantic]

Lots of talk about the shops. I personally hate the shops. That is one of my biggest gripes about FFXIV. Though other MMOs have them too, others doing it affects me worse in FFXIV. I (once in a great while) see someone with a store mount, etc in "the other" MMO but I see it so much in FFXIV. Since they've become so big, towns on my server are flooded with people just showing off their glamour, causing lag and my frame rate to nose dive when really, nobody cares other than that particular player.

Similarly, I played FFXI for a very long time and there are people who spent hundreds into the thousands on in-game currency so they could buy all the "buyable" bling gear, sit around town hoping people will stop and "ooohhh! aaahhh!" them. I mean, I get it... a fool and his money are soon parted but create some kind of public hub specifically for people who like to do this and show it off so my poor GPU can breathe.

This thread is about criticisms of FFXIV, it's not about WoW nor is it about comparing WoW to FFXIV explicitly. I'm aware some comparisons will need to be made for the purposes of argument, but let's pivot away from pure "Game vs. Game" debate and refocus the discussion on FFXIV itself.

Regardless of what type of thread this is, these kinds of side discussions are inevitable because they are relevant to make points. Sometimes, when you think the grass isn't green enough, it's nice to know the grass is no greener on the other side. It's a great way to discuss the subject, not an unruly one.

Except, comparisons between two similar things are one of the most effective ways to discuss anything. There's some XIV fanboys in here that are trying to do the GRR WOW SADBOYS bullshit but you can just ignore or ban them, they aren't saying anything intelligent or useful. I think it's just that a small number of people here are incapable of understanding that criticism of one thing is not praise of another.

Case in point.

I'm a veteran of both games and a ton of other games. Criticism is not a bad thing as some seem to think. You can have them for anything yet still thoroughly enjoy or love it.

Though I don't recommend encouraging more frivilous banning, ignoring someone is a fine option if you honestly feel they are instigating or serving no value.

[Maljinwo]

Lots of talk about the shops. I personally hate the shops. That is one of my biggest gripes about FFXIV. Though other MMOs have them too, others doing it affects me worse in FFXIV. I (once in a great while) see someone with a store mount, etc in "the other" MMO but I see it so much in FFXIV. Since they've become so big, towns on my server are flooded with people just showing off their glamour, causing lag and my frame rate to nose dive when really, nobody cares other than that particular player.

Similarly, I played FFXI for a very long time and there are people who spent hundreds into the thousands on in-game currency so they could buy all the "buyable" bling gear, sit around town hoping people will stop and "ooohhh! aaahhh!" them. I mean, I get it... a fool and his money are soon parted but create some kind of public hub specifically for people who like to do this and show it off so my poor GPU can breathe.

Sounds like a problem with your GPU then. FFXIV limits the player count on screen

[Ghost of Cow]

Though other MMOs have them too, others doing it affects me worse in FFXIV. I (once in a great while) see someone with a store mount, etc in "the other" MMO but I see it so much in FFXIV.

Yeah, I remember doing fate trains at one point and seeing like 50 people pop up in their cruise chasers was pretty darn funny at least.

[Necromantic]

Sounds like a problem with your GPU then. FFXIV limits the player count on screen

PS5. Lots of videos that even show people's FPS tanking in areas where people heavily congregate. I avoid Limsa if possible.

[KrayZ33]

Cooldowns in WoW Classic don't necessarily line up because they are designed to be used personally. It's common to hold cooldowns for Bloodlust, but when will Bloodlust be used? You can alter your timings based on the fight and a variety of other circumstances, this is particularly common when you're talking about hardmodes (since several of them require you to do something in the actual fight to start the hardmode itself, which may "reset" the fight, like XT.) And I'd argue only hardmodes are challenging enough where optimal use of cooldowns even matters, similar to how no one really cares about optimal ability usage in XIV normals or even Extremes due to very generous or nonexistent enrage timers.

Incidentally, not only do I dislike the EW changes for over-simplifying DPS rotations, but the changes also create a lot of issues for PF groups. Dying when *literally everything* is lined up inside a single window, for the entire raid, is a *colossal* DPS loss if you die at the wrong time. If someone dies within about 10 sec of the next 2 minute window, you have to make a hard decision on whether or not the entire raid can just delay everything for 60 sec (to allow weakness to wear off), else that person will be *permanently outside of the DPS window*. I think this is fine for organized statics (although very boring), but it's a major issue for PF. Abyssos also implemented a lot more "body check mechanics" than previous tiers did, and those mechanics are also "okay but boring" for statics and often very frustrating for PF groups.

While I don't think Abyssos is a *bad* raid tier, I do think that it has shown a lot of the major issues that XIV's core raid design is suffering from, or offering a preview of where that design is going to lead the game.

I mean... you can just do the same in FFXIV.
Delay cooldowns all you want if you think that can help. It's not like this can't be a thing just because you feed from other's buffs and abilities?
I want my PI lining up with my high output CDs as well in WoW. If there is a mechanic where you need to delay your 2m window, delay it. What's the difference?
The rotation doesn't break just because you delay shit?
We do it all the time, albeit just slightly to line up with boss mechanics and ease of use, but it can, theoretically, be done indefenitely - at least the classes I played so far can but I certainly don't have all the jobs at max level and probably never will.

BTW, the gigantic boss hitboxes and diminished importance of melee positionals/needing melee to lose GCDs avoiding damage is worse in EW than ever before. ShB had some bosses with giant hitboxes, but we never had an *entire tier* full of them like we do in Abyssos, and positionals matter less than ever - DRG could lose Raiden Thrust in ShB if you fucked up your positionals, whereas now it's just guaranteed even if you just facetank the boss. While savage is still fun and is arguably still challenging (though P8 was overtuned even by Square-Enix's standards), I do think they've gone a long way towards removing meaningful player expression/skill expression from the equation with Endwalker.

That's what the community in FFXIV wants. People don't like to be dependent on positionals, them being less important but still important enough to deal extra potency is an acceptable sweetspot and not something that got "worse". I'm quite sure the majority of the playerbase will agree with that.

I'm a SAM who likes the Kaiten removal for example. You might argue that messing something up is my own fault (but then, so is dying before a DPS window, which would make the first paragraph moot), but not having enough Kenki for a Kaiten-Higabana is unfixable. So instead of paying attention to that I now pay attention to getting third eye whenever I can. *shrug*
Changing the class to a "Dancer Design" would be a bad choice as well, because it's not like I want to have procs/priorities (as I find those quite boring) and I could.. you know, just play the dancer instead which is designed for players who want procs/priorities. (+ ressource pooling)

in particular, it allows for a lot more player/skill expression as it means fight optimization is now heavily reliant on your class and what it can do (we saw this in ShB and previous expansions but it's largely eliminated from EW in any meaningful sense... even BLM now has so many movement-friendly options that they don't actually lose much from movement anymore.)

I don't think we will ever agree here, I never cared for what classes I raid together with (as long as the setup works) which is a plus for me and not a detriment, and I feel like you are dismissing QoL changes for what they are and without them, things are just going to be more miserable. The jobs played in FFXIV are, or at least should be, for how you want to play your rotations and what "role" you want to do. And fight optimization is still 100% there even without "personal"-cooldowns because you map every single fight to your job. So how is that gone?
I wouldn't want to be reliant on the extra sprint button or having a horrible time because my class is just not mobile enough or whatever.

[Wrecktangle]

I mean, if you're going to demand verifiable empiric data in the line of profits, project funding, etc... that's literally never going to happen. No business is ever going to disclose that information because it would be utterly insane to do so.

And PR men like Yoshida *are* going to lie to people about it, when they do talk about it.

You need to adjust your expectations to suit the information that's actually available.

Your entire argument is irrelevant to my point again. The person I quoted stated "funding was cut 2/3 years ago". This is misinformation based on actual information provided by Yoshi P. If they have any kind of information to support their statement I would have liked to have seen it. Could be a LL where Yoshi made a comment, could be leaked documents, could be a snippet from one of their public reports, anything etc.

Do I believe every word out of YoshiP's mouth? Absolutely not, but do I believe him over the word of some random poster with no source and misinformation? Yes.

If you want to argue that the content they produced since then has deteriorated in quality, etc. to support the idea that funding was cut we can certainly debate that, but that's a very subjective discussion with gobs of nuance.

And just so we're clear - feel free to browse my post history. I'm an avid critic of FF14 with hundreds of posts criticizing it, I'm not some rabid zealot like some of the other posters on here (just in case this is just a blood feud for you). I just don't care for misinformation or people who push agendas. I'm always down to discuss actual criticism.

[Grinning Serpent]

I mean... you can just do the same in FFXIV.
Delay cooldowns all you want if you think that can help. It's not like this can't be a thing just because you feed from other's buffs and abilities?
I want my PI lining up with my high output CDs as well in WoW. If there is a mechanic where you need to delay your 2m window, delay it. What's the difference?
The rotation doesn't break just because you delay shit?
We do it all the time, albeit just slightly to line up with boss mechanics and ease of use, but it can, theoretically, be done indefenitely - at least the classes I played so far can but I certainly don't have all the jobs at max level and probably never will.

You really *can't* delay in XIV on a personal level, not in EW, because DPS checks and the entire game is designed around all 8 players popping off at the same time. You might have *the entire raid group* delay because someone died or because it would make more sense to delay 20 seconds for a better burst window, but you won't see people doing this on a personal, individual level because that will just mean their DPS is tanked for the rest of the pull due to being desynced from the raid buffs.

And if Abyssos is anything to go by, "delaying to wait for a better window" isn't really a thing since they've also apparently begun designing the fights themselves around these 2 minute windows. It's not a coincidence that "boss needs to take a breather" sections tend to closely align with a 120 second counter.

That's what the community in FFXIV wants. People don't like to be dependent on positionals, them being less important but still important enough to deal extra potency is an acceptable sweetspot and not something that got "worse". I'm quite sure the majority of the playerbase will agree with that.

The majority of the playerbase doesn't even maintain 90% GCD uptime in dungeons and normals and certainly doesn't perform a proper rotation. So who the fuck cares what the "majority of the playerbase" cares about? These players weren't doing proper rotations or positionals previously, so who is the change even for?

I don't think we will ever agree here, I never cared for what classes I raid together with (as long as the setup works) which is a plus for me and not a detriment, and I feel like you are dismissing QoL changes for what they are and without them, things are just going to be more miserable. The jobs played in FFXIV are, or at least should be, for how you want to play your rotations and what "role" you want to do. And fight optimization is still 100% there even without "personal"-cooldowns because you map every single fight to your job. So how is that gone?
I wouldn't want to be reliant on the extra sprint button or having a horrible time because my class is just not mobile enough or whatever.

Put bluntly, it sounds like you are not playing at anywhere near the level where this kind of stuff has ever been relevant for you. You aren't going to notice removed opportunities for "skill expression" or whatever, if you weren't already performing at that level previously - you will literally not know what you're missing.

I played a lot of Warrior in ShB, for example, and I fucking *despise* what they did to the class in EW. It was already the simplest tank, but they removed literally all of the class-specific things that allowed for optimization (or, rather, they removed the things that weaker players would fuck up and therefore lose DPS on), and as a result it feels fucking *awful* to play in EW. But for players who weren't playing at that optimized level, they don't notice the missing components and as a result they fucking *LOVE* "new" Warrior.

Incidentally, this is why I really think Square-Enix need to get their shit together and decide if they actually want "hardcore" content or not. Because if we're going to be designing the game for players that don't exist and sacrificing work-hours that could be going towards more casual theme park content (which I really enjoy, don't take this as me hating on it), then I need them to understand that they can make classes a lot more complex and with room for failure without meaningfully impacting the casual experience. Dungeons and normals are so incredibly easy that you can play like complete crap and still clear without issues - this is a *good* thing, but the problem is they're acting like they need to dumb everything down so that these casual players (who are not and never have been doing proper rotations, proper gearing, etc to begin with) won't get upset.

But if we're going to base the game around the "casual experience," I want them to stop wasting work-hours on hardcore content and focus purely on the casual experience. Bring back our class fantasy, and let raid balance be damned. Where's our Haste and Slow and Stop spells? Why aren't White Mages obliterating undead? Why can't we have elemental weaknesses and strengths? All of these things were sacrificed on the altar of "hardcore gameplay balance," yet they're doing a half-assed job of creating a game that provides for "hardcore" players.

[KrayZ33]

You really *can't* delay in XIV on a personal level, not in EW, because DPS checks and the entire game is designed around all 8 players popping off at the same time. You might have *the entire raid group* delay because someone died or because it would make more sense to delay 20 seconds for a better burst window, but you won't see people doing this on a personal, individual level because that will just mean their DPS is tanked for the rest of the pull due to being desynced from the raid buffs.

And if Abyssos is anything to go by, "delaying to wait for a better window" isn't really a thing since they've also apparently begun designing the fights themselves around these 2 minute windows. It's not a coincidence that "boss needs to take a breather" sections tend to closely align with a 120 second counter.#

Oh, I was just saying hypothetical, you wouldn't be the only one delaying your cooldowns since they are synched to leech of from each other.
Just like how PI is.
As for the time window for cooldowns, that has been a thing since SHB at the very least, I just can't remember the stuff before it.
At most you delay like 5 seconds or whatever to get into the "breather". It's not something they did start in EW...

The majority of the playerbase doesn't even maintain 90% GCD uptime in dungeons and normals and certainly doesn't perform a proper rotation. So who the fuck cares what the "majority of the playerbase" cares about? These players weren't doing proper rotations or positionals previously, so who is the change even for?

For exactly those players? How the heck did you not realize that.

Put bluntly, it sounds like you are not playing at anywhere near the level where this kind of stuff has ever been relevant for you. You aren't going to notice removed opportunities for "skill expression" or whatever, if you weren't already performing at that level previously - you will literally not know what you're missing.

Dunno, I clear savage every tier, my parses are acceptable as well, even orange sometimes, in FFXIV that hardly means anything though due to itemlevel.
In WoW I was in a top 15 guild in my country and top 100 Worldwide (give or take a few places)... long has it been, I have pretty much all the server first titles you can think off and I'm still playing that exact toon, content certainly changed and got more intense in that game. But it's silly to assume I'm a worse player just because I don't agree with your takes.
It's not worth anything this season or maybe not even the last, but I do M+20+ as well, people do know what to use and what a class brings at that level, even if I'm not doing the insane shit at +++25s. But +20 still was like.... I don't know.. top 3% last season? So Basically 97% of the players had a worse rating?

I played a lot of Warrior in ShB, for example, and I fucking *despise* what they did to the class in EW. It was already the simplest tank, but they removed literally all of the class-specific things that allowed for optimization (or, rather, they removed the things that weaker players would fuck up and therefore lose DPS on), and as a result it feels fucking *awful* to play in EW. But for players who weren't playing at that optimized level, they don't notice the missing components and as a result they fucking *LOVE* "new" Warrior.

Yes, exactly my point, they made the stuff that could massivley fuck up the play less potent. Most things are still intact though.
I don't think I enjoyed buffs dependent on positionals for even a second, for example.
I don't think I enjoyed losing 70% of my potency when attacking from the wrong side either.
Having 2 stacks of my finisher and combo builder as SAM is enjoyable.
In fact it's actually enhancing your min-max potential because you can actually adjust shit better now and aren't forever punished by losing out a finisher once. So it goes both ways as well.

Incidentally, this is why I really think Square-Enix need to get their shit together and decide if they actually want "hardcore" content or not. Because if we're going to be designing the game for players that don't exist and sacrificing work-hours that could be going towards more casual theme park content (which I really enjoy, don't take this as me hating on it), then I need them to understand that they can make classes a lot more complex and with room for failure without meaningfully impacting the casual experience. Dungeons and normals are so incredibly easy that you can play like complete crap and still clear without issues - this is a *good* thing, but the problem is they're acting like they need to dumb everything down so that these casual players (who are not and never have been doing proper rotations, proper gearing, etc to begin with) won't get upset.

No such thing as a "hardcore game" in FFXIV, once again that's my point. Doing rotations properly hardly falls into that category though.
Savage is clearable by literal clickers.
I did E12S with *clickers* that parsed purple and orange (not the type that clicks cooldowns btw, the type that clicks their rotations), what the heck do you think is the hardcore crowd doing in this game? It's not hardcore. The game is over in less than 2 weeks for the "Hardcore crowd."

But if we're going to base the game around the "casual experience," I want them to stop wasting work-hours on hardcore content and focus purely on the casual experience. Bring back our class fantasy, and let raid balance be damned. Where's our Haste and Slow and Stop spells? Why aren't White Mages obliterating undead? Why can't we have elemental weaknesses and strengths? All of these things were sacrificed on the altar of "hardcore gameplay balance," yet they're doing a half-assed job of creating a game that provides for "hardcore" players.

Once again, Savage is hardly something worth calling hardcore content. Most people doing it outgear it and that is that.
It's still fun though and every class should be allowed to do this content. Elemental weaknesses and strength. Come on.... if you want to play WoW Classic, you should play WoW classic. It's simply not good design for the majority of stuff you are doing. Dealing less damage just because is not fun. That's about it.

[Arlette]

"You're not a skill level where this is relevant for you" just for disagreeing about a subjective hot take by somebody already stating untrue and unsourced things is a certainly a way to go about convincing people.

[Byleth]

Best part of this Final Fantasy 14 subforum is now how you just have burner accounts dishonestly shitting on the game while propping up Warcraft.

Quoted for truth... While also noting the high probability of this poster being a burner account.

[Ghost of Cow]

Quoted for truth... While also noting the high probability of this poster being a burner account.

I dunno, seems like people who have legitimate criticisms are also pretty long-term and consistent.

Just always seems like there are a handful of people that are eager to stifle any discussion with the usual "sad wow bois" and "just a hater" and "burner account" and whatever else stuff.

[eschatological]

-snip-.

I feel like they've already picked their focus: casual. This doesn't mean you put no hard content in the game. Wildstar had that problem, where they chose "hardcore" and had literally no casual content. Game fell flat on its face.

Unfortunately, for an MMO to be sustainable, you're going to need both audiences. Walking that line is the central conflict in MMO design.

[Aucald]

I feel like they've already picked their focus: casual. This doesn't mean you put no hard content in the game. Wildstar had that problem, where they chose "hardcore" and had literally no casual content. Game fell flat on its face.

Unfortunately, for an MMO to be sustainable, you're going to need both audiences. Walking that line is the central conflict in MMO design.

I would disagree - the casual crowd tends to dwarf the more hardcore set, and that's pretty much down to barriers to entry and the staggered existence of what it means to be hardcore (where the "edge" is ever upward and onward). Wildstar's failure is pretty much down to courting a tiny subset of its possible audience - catering to the casual crowd will usually net you more perennial subscribers as long as the content itself is good and remains good.

[Grinning Serpent]

For exactly those players? How the heck did you not realize that.

But it's not for those players. Like I said, the majority of players and most all players that would fall under the "casual" banner aren't even keeping their GCD rolling - they're literally not pushing *any* buttons, whether those are the right buttons or not, at all. We're not even to the point of "they aren't performing a proper rotation," we're at "they aren't even pushing a button every 2.5 seconds." To these people, changes in proper rotation *do not matter*, because they aren't even at that level. These players are the ones that primarily just want new and exciting buttons to push that have flashy spell effects, maybe they're automatic crits so you get those big pop-in numbers, etc. They're the equivalent of, say, a true and pure button-masher in a fighting game - no attempt at making combos or doing anything other than flailing at the controller because it's exciting and maybe using a specific attack or two repeatedly because they think it looks really cool and it's worked just fine for beating the base-level AI opponents (and/or players of similar skill) just fine.

These players are, in the most basic sense, not interacting with the gameplay mechanics at all beyond the barest, simplest sense. They're not stringing together basic combos or learning the basics of a simple build order or whatever other foundational concepts you want to use from another game or genre, and they're certainly not learning more advanced concepts.

These players never noticed they were losing Raiden Thrust because they weren't doing positionals. Or, when they did get a Raiden Thrust, they didn't really understand why they did, or may even not have noticed that they got Raiden Thrust instead of the standard opener for DRG. I think it's important to understand, the average player in almost any video game is *fucking awful*. To paraphrase Carlin, think of the worst player you've encountered, and then understand that half of all players are worse than they are.

So they aren't making changes for these players. Who, then, are these changes for? The more advanced novice players that are actually learning and trying to perform rotations? Maybe - but the fact that these players are actually seeking out information to learn how to properly play *at all* (which must be obtained outside of the game, through third-party websites and sources, because Square-Enix are a bunch of utter fucking morons) means that they will continue to learn and improve and eventually master the fundamentals of play regardless of relative complexity. The state in between "ignorant casual player" and "advanced sweaty boi" is inherently transitory. Few to no players hit this stage and then just stop, unless they stop playing in general. So while I can understand *some* amount of streamlining things, Shadowbringers had generally already done that quite a lot, and I don't see much need for Endwalker to have continued doing so.

And as for the upper end of players, a common complaint is that classes *are* too simplified now. It doesn't take *that* long to memorize and optimize fight mechanics, so after that the only thing left is to optimize personal performance - but if your rotation is so simple that a caveman could do it, and they've changed fights such that bosses don't need to be moved and positioned frequently (tank skill expression) and have enormous hitboxes so you rarely have to worry about being in range/stepping out of range to avoid damage (melee skill expression)... what's left? Not much.

This is also why I asked about your skill, because a lower level player literally will not be aware of these things, and as you've said, savage isn't exactly "hardcore" - you can clear it with fairly "average" results, especially if you're not talking about week 1 or week 2 clearing. I don't think this is a subjective measurement, either - Square-Enix is objectively simplifying the game, but I can't figure out who they think they're simplifying it *for.* Normal mode content is already so easy that even just button mashing is more than sufficient to clear it with ease, so I don't understand why they think they should try and make the game easier for people that are highly unlikely to investigate tougher content anyway.

Once again, Savage is hardly something worth calling hardcore content. Most people doing it outgear it and that is that.
It's still fun though and every class should be allowed to do this content. Elemental weaknesses and strength. Come on.... if you want to play WoW Classic, you should play WoW classic. It's simply not good design for the majority of stuff you are doing. Dealing less damage just because is not fun. That's about it.

Elemental resistances and weaknesses were in ARR, and Eureka showed how enjoyable they can be. If you weren't worried about perfect raid balance for sweaty parsing, it wouldn't really matter if some classes were better than others at some fights. Especially since, presumably, if they weren't devoting so much effort to savage and ultimate development, they could probably afford to produce normal content faster or in higher volume.

- - - Updated - - -

I feel like they've already picked their focus: casual. This doesn't mean you put no hard content in the game. Wildstar had that problem, where they chose "hardcore" and had literally no casual content. Game fell flat on its face.

Unfortunately, for an MMO to be sustainable, you're going to need both audiences. Walking that line is the central conflict in MMO design.

I'm not sure I agree. I think that catering to the casual crowd is the only way to be profitable and successful as a pay-to-play MMO. It's well known that Yoshida will put things into the game because he and/or some of the team personally enjoy it/desire it (the PvP rework has been cited as basically "because I want to" once or twice, though I think only unofficially), so that might explain why savage and especially ultimate are still being made. It's also clear that each savage tier brings some amount of players back for 2 or 3 months, which may be enough revenue to justify the investment ("8 normal fights instead of 4!" may not have that same effect.) Ultimates are almost certainly a pet project.

It's been a long time since I played it and I never did have the chance to get invested into it (work took away my free time shortly after launch), but from what I've read, WildStar's issues were more that attunements kind of fucking suck and the method of qualifying for raids was too onerous. It still might have been okay if it was a free to play game from the start, but since they were going for a subscription model... yeah, doomed to fail. Which is unfortunate, because WildStar was pretty neat and I think it had some real potential.

I think that it's probably a bad idea to go for a subscription based model anymore unless you have fuck you money backing it. A subscription based game basically means you are mutually exclusive with other subscription based games, and your new game is then at least indirectly competing with two juggernauts with several years to almost two decades worth of content available. Meanwhile, if your game is free to play and is primarily funded by cosmetic purchases and maybe "freemium" things like XP boosters or whatever, a person could conceivably play your game at the same time without having to drop the subscription to their "primary" game. I would assume that puts less pressure on the new game to be a blockbuster success.

Or you could just do the gacha thing, since that has proven to be embarrassingly profitable and games like Genshin have shown us that it's possible to have an actual decent game supporting the pay to win slot machines (although it's not an MMO, of course.)

[Lord Kragan]

Quoted for truth... While also noting the high probability of this poster being a burner account.

Yeah. I honestly stopped checking these forums on a regular basis (still come from time to time) because I frankly have better things to do than deal with such bile and misery.