The Problem with Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker | A Devs Perspective
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#finalfantasyxiv #mmorpg #finalfantasy14 #theproblem #discussion #essay
Outline
0:00 Introduction
0:55 Zach Jackson
2:25 Zane Lionhart Slicer of souls
2:34 SilveRonin
2:39 Phantom Vox
2:53 Coming up Comments
9:38 Kaiyoko
10:39 Fusionx
11:22 Mazzy_Star_Zalera
11:56 Javier Mendoza
13:52 Everette Lee Juarez
14:05 Fusionx
14:29 Outro
source
Ultima Thule part of the story damaged 6.0 massively. Overall narrative was safe yet rushed.
Post 6.0 the new arc feels like a dull filler arc, I love FF4 but I expected something more original than a poor man's FF4. I can't wait for 7.0
Raiding has been dry for me cause of the 2 min burst window, no room for individual job expression. Also pandaemonium is the weakest of the 8 man raids since ARR
PVP is ok, housing lottery was a mess and I will wait to see how alliance raid turns out.
We need more Eureka type ot content, I wanna do things outside of city states and instances.
Personally, my issues I've had with Endwalker have been with job homogenization, I do not like the 2 minute burst system, I don't like that they're so determined to make all the jobs in each role so similar, if you have the ability to change jobs to fit the comp and content, then it makes no sense to me to make them all basically the same instead of giving them distinct strengths and weaknesses, design content that favors different things and encourage players to main a role and switch jobs as needed.
I also think the content drought feels bad because of the relics. Not having a new zone like Eureka would be fine if they still made us go out of our way to do something specific to earn the relics. Having no goal just makes you log in and feel like you have no motivation to do anything.
Also not a fan of the way the raid story ended, the last boss felt like it did not match anything leading up and the conclusion felt off to me, I can't quite explain it.
I'm not burned out personally but I 100% understand the people that are or just aren't happy with the decisions they've been making.
One of the best things about SWTOR and how they do "expansions" is you sub for one month and you get all the content forever. Expansions aren't a box price, you don't need to always have a sub.
ESO also has a payment model kind of like that. Everything prior to the current chapter (expansion) can be played with a monthly sub and the current chapter has a box price. So you can wait a year and pay $10 (if I remember) for a month and play through the whole chapter instead of paying $60 right when it comes out
I quit the game and sold my account after playing since 1.0.
I should have known during storm blood this same pattern wouldnât stop
The value is not there for me. You have to pay a subscription every month just to play and only get new content every four months.
For example in Destiny 2 you don't need a subscription if you play it on PC (PSN and Xbox Gold is needed for matchmake content) and you get a season every 3 months that cost 12 dollar which brings story, new activities, weapons and armors and usually have a gimick for that season to keep things fresh. If you are up to date on destiny 2 it cost you around 110 dollars for the year.
Like the video says, gamepass and ps plus premium give you way more than Destiny 2 and FFXIV for it value.
I didn't mind subscription games while there were no cash shop in them, that was like the unspoken rule, but now, and I cannot believe I'm saying this, seasonal base model are a way better, sure there is a cash shop, but you can play wherever you feels like it with out being tied down to a subscription.
At this moment I'm just treating FFXIV as a seasonal game every forth to five month I sub for one month, do everything the patch offer in like a week and move on.
The good thing about FFXIV Sub model in particular vs Destiny 2 or other Seasonal model games, is that FFXIV doesn't remove it content when the next patch come around.
EDIT: FFXIV still use Fomo to keep you sub, like seasonal events with mount, minions and armors and if you own a house you are pretty tied down.
Story and content-wise, find myself asking if Endwalker is mid, or if Shadowbringers was just that good. From a narrative perspective, nothing in Endwalker landed like it did with Shadowbringers.
When I do log in (which isnât often anymore), I rarely do anything in Endwalker (Iâm 3 patches behind with MSQ and new content.) I pretty much just craft and do Bozja, with the occasional daily thrown in.
Maybe this just isnât for me anymore?
The story of this expansion ended way too soon. It should've ended at 6.3 or 6.4
for me my biggest issue with the game is that if not a hardcore raider or do endgame raiding in general i basicly got nothing else to do besides msq and normal version of everything, they did criterion dungeons wich is a well done content but really without good enough rewards as an incentive it becomes the "why even do it ?" not to mention that it feels they dumped every amount of budget into the story and forgot about the rest, then the biggest problem is that theres other games competing for your attention some of them Free2Play mmo's that do stuff almost as good as 14 (personally been playing Honkai Impact 3rd's story wich i think the story is even above 14's highly advised to try it) and the job homoginazation, feels like this expantion was just miss after miss after miss liek for example the new housing system that supposidely was being tested around 5.3/5.2 and it somehow came out broken
Im just logging in and reseting my retainer missions at the point until the next msq patch. I'll play more when blue updates but im doing other stuff anyway. Which will chang once we have fan fest and a new expansion is annouced mabye even a job ti get excited about.
Personally I only like to do savage raiding at the moment. The rest of the content is way too easy and boring. Which is why I miss not getting a zone like eureka.
I only stopped playing because I was having a bad time learning and making gil via Market Board, while watching others just make huge amounts of gil and know so much that it kinda hurts my head. Also messing up on making friends in my FC, so its not like anyone tells me to get on the game because they miss me or something.
I could care less about everything else I approach whatever available content as is. But its not like the concerns don't matter at all, this game should strive to be bigger and better for all playstyles.
Tbh, I feel like you defend these games too much.
"I'm not gonna make any more ffxiv content"
I feel that EW story mostly didn't land for people who didn't like the Ascians or things revolving around them. Personally, they're BY FAR my favorite & most emotional part of the story. In my opinion, story was as good as ShB & my favorite in all of gaming. When it comes to other things, I don't know why people feel the need to force themselves to play. Take a break. I do all the time, between patches.
I haven't watched the video yet but I am already angry. Didn't you quit this game? How dare you.
I donât find anything wrong with Endwalker. The story was amazing and I could totally relate to the end of 6.0 with the themes of love and loss, because a few years ago I lost my ex to suicide and I felt that I could have prevented it. I just had no way of getting halfway around the world to help her (she lived in Japan and I live in the US). She took her life due to depression. The themes of Endwalker had hit me hard because of her.
Great video and shoutout to your editor!
6.0 story was perfect from my point of view. now that they finished the raid story, i can say that i they have defiantly a lot more to cool stuff to tell. i believe, that people are impatient with the new story arc and are making a big fuss over nothing. just quit and come back, there are other games out there. youre not supposed to play only one game, that is ridiculous, why would anyone want that?
Lack of a trial series side-story is disappointing. Lack of a relic weapon side-story is disappointing, and even though I love Hildebrand, it's a one-and-done experience that takes only a few hours.
The 6.x MSQ is noticeably disconnected from everything the 2.0-6.0 MSQ has been building, but that's kind of unavoidable. The story is finished. It's time for a new story. 6.1-6.5 feels like it's going to be its own disconnected story arc that concludes next patch so that 7.0 gets its chance to breathe new life into the game. I just REALLY hope that the 6.5 (or 6.55) conclusion blows our socks off because aside from fun character moments with Zero and the Scions (which I always cherish) the story is not terribly interesting. I don't give a shit about Golbez personally, he's probably the most generic villain we've had since ARR Gaius.
All that said I think base-game EW was absolutely incredible, and it's the longest base-patch MSQ we've ever gotten. Makes sense that some of that would have to come at the sacrifice of the patches. Even still, the raid series is awesome, the alliance raids are the best we've ever gotten (depending on how you feel about Nier in general; personally I find that the story is so extremely disconnected from the rest off FF14 that it amounts to nothing but cool set-pieces and Yoko Taro lore) and the zones are great.
It's fine to not be interested right now because we're in a bit of a content drought. As for EW story dissatisfaction, I've yet to hear any real arguments besides "more characters should have died for real" which I feel is a bit antithetical to the thesis of Endwalker, but that's just my opinion.
Personally, I loved every expansion. I think they're all great. Though I will admit after 3k hours, my interest in the game started to wane.
Thats okay, I've run hundreds of maps, fishing ventures, dungeons, raids, trials, dipped my toes in ultimate a few times. Not to mention atleast 1k hours was spent crafting, I feel satisfied as a 14 player. I feel I can take it easy and just login on patch day. Then make millions off of fleecing people on Crystal for crystals đ. Suckers. 25m gil in two weeks of logging in once a day….gotta love it.
I think people start to get burnt out. They don't notice. They have some minor argument with their fc or a friend or they come up to a quit moment.
I personally think that 14 puts out an amazing amount of content for its budget but I think it needs to be reorganized. For instance, why did we get crafting relics so late. They could have been relevant every .1.5, .3.5,.5.5. Instead of only being relevant in the last half of it.
Also the rewards and gearing need more tuning. I'm going to be super sadge if they forget meaningful rewards for the next Criterion dungeon. Though, just means ill play another game instead.
I think the best thing I've learned over the years Brian is to take it soooooo much less seriously. If the game isn't firing on all cylinders, come back later. Have a great one Brian, hope Chris is doing well.
Sorry for the second comment but something you said had me kinda laughing.
Who could have seen a multi million dollar company not fully funding their biggest ip? You don't say.. Insert creepy Nic Cage meme face here.đ
Also, I will admit 6.4's story felt shorter than 5.4, 4.4, and 3.4. I assumed we would get more of an idea where we might be headed next. Outside of where I already thought it was going. Its either two things, we go to 13th and the first and fix 13th, or we screw off to where the cat people not miqos but hrothgar. One sounds interesting, the other much much less so as a full fledged expansion.
remember kids: painis weaknessleavingthebody
Great video Brian and great editing Jack! Keep up the great work you two.
Endwalker in general was underwhelming to me, but what I really disliked was the build up in the end and all this goodbye forever talk, guys a whole new game will start blabla. And then literally the next quest you have the same old npcs again, even tho it should have ended!
And I also totally agree with you that the focus of the game has been moved towards the hardcore community. What we needed was something to do for everybody!
Not a second ultimate that nobody really asked for.
My issue is more so after EW's story it fell off a bit, and in addition that I abhore the combat changes. If something dosen't fit into the devs 2 minute burst design, it's borderline unviable for higher end content (AKA: PLD, my main job). I honestly feel like what made combat enjoyable in ffxiv has been truly lost and the devs have to go back. balance is in it's worst state in years from what I understand and I honestly feel like the fights aren't interesting enough because they're designed with 100% uptime in mind witch just isn't fun to me. the story should've had more time and truthfully I left dissatisified with the ending in a good part even though I cried at the end. The issue is it feels like the reason 14 was special, that being it's story and pretty unquie spin on MMO combat, has been stripped bare and we're left with a very bare bones version of things. The story feels like they picked a random direction and went with it post EW, the combat honestly feels like they just decided that the things I loved about SHB's combat? Yeah those are gone. Deciding how to maximize damage with your GCDs and using just the right amount of skill speed to gain optimized damage, alongside dancing with mechanics? Gone. The 2 minute burst window ruined so much enjoyment about this game for me. Raid buffs feel crushingly oppressive and honestly I genuinely believe they restrict dev freedom in job design, as we've seen with how evrey job just feels like it plays the same. That's not fun. Are jobs not suppose to have idenities and niches and design philosphies that differ from each other and allow them to stand out from the crowd? Because rn I feel like the only thing that makes a job different is what weapon they use. Coming from wow, where classes play very differently with themes and niches that suit their idenity, 14 feels like evreything is a cardboard cut out of half baked ideas that TRY to be different, but inveitably fall flat on it's face. This started with shadowbringers, but really has spread to all jobs and I honestly feel like 14 needs a full on combat overhaul at this point. Keep the core ideas, the GCD, OGCDs, exc….But please choose idenities for each classes and stick with them. It feels like Endwalker dosen't know what it actually wants to be or do after completing the legacy of those that came before.
Before I say anything else, I wanna say that I, too, feel like there's not much to do in Endwalker and I definitely feel the absence of a nice relic grind (which I was looking forward to but got disappointed). BUT I personally also think that Yoshi-P knows what he's doing. He seemed really laid back in the latest live letter, playing Zelda TotK at the beginning of the stream and telling players to go play other games if they're bored. What this is telling me is that he's confident in where the game's going. He's planning ahead for the next 10 years. There's a lot of maintenance going on in the background, we're getting the graphics update which is probably taking quite some resources. Island sanctuary kind of replaced things like Bozja and Eureka for this expansion, but now that the big chunk is done, they only need to add to it. Hopefully next expansion we'll get another zone again.
I had a very lengthy post written up, but went to sleep and forgot to press "post", lol
tl;dr Very disappointed with Endwalker on all fronts. Hope that 7.0 might bring changes but not expecting it.
The massive influx of people who have streamed the MSQ has at least some effect I feel. Lots of people who played this game for far longer like watching a new person's experience and it influences our own opinion. They plod through the massive story all the way up to current content and then it ends. A large amount of them stop making content about the game. They move on to other things. While it's fine that they don't just stick with only FF14 it lessons our excitement for the game. Someone we've been watching and/or helping through the group battles has now left and it sucks to stay in the game when they're gone.
In my honest opinion, Ginger Prime, I think Final Fantasy 14 should have ended at Endwalker 6.0, and if they wanted to do short stories after 6.0, they could have done it like this, and hear me out on this one:
IDEA: After 6.0 completes, we have it where your WoL dies, because the journey is complete. There's nothing left to prove or accomplish. You've done what needed to be done, and deserve that rest, much like the Ancients deserve their rest and wait for their time to be reborn. I think the same should have been for your WoL. SO, with you gone on the Source, you might think "Well, that's the end of our character then", but not necessarily. Remember, there are still 4 other versions of you out there on the reflections. So what it could have done instead is, for 6.1 and beyond, it would be: "As one story concludes, another is told of a shard trying to make it through." and the story begins with YOU, a reflection of you so you look completely the same as your avatar from the Source, and it would be a whole new story on a whole new world on a whole new reflection.
And I think that's what the 6.x's should have been about. It would have brought fresh life back into the whole thing, and power your character back down so you can enjoy the thrill of a new story. I think that with Endwalker, the tale has concluded in 6.0. And the story should have indeed completely ended there. It was a long journey to get there, and our character deserves that long rest into rebirth. The world doesn't need the WoL anymore, so your purpose has been completely fulfilled.
7.0 should have been saved for Final Fantasy 17 Online (AKA FF14-2 [well, technically 3])
Let me know what you all think here. ^-^
I mean i am glad i have taken breaks in the past, but always come home to Eorzea. I do miss the relic grind in some ways, in others, do not miss it at all. I am a raider, and not the best, but raider, so takes me time to clear the tier. At the end of the day, I really wonder, that the fact they are spending lots of money on servers, and other back end stuff, that we do not see in game. Stuff we do not play, but is why we have new housing wards, more glam spots etc. I think this is one of those times where resources were allocated to make the in game experience better from better technology, but we lost out on other content because of it.