Final fantasy XIV any good?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Did they add bots to ARR dungeons so you don't have to interact with people at all in this MMORPG? In case you really wanted to treat it as a padded out JRPG.

One of the unstated reasons why the bots were added was to make the game actually playable in the future. There are 89 dungeons in the game, and 50 of them are mandatory to complete to progress the story, and that's not even touching on the mandatory trials and raids. Players at endgame who have the jobs they want to play levelled up aren't rerunning old dungeons, which means new players have to wait longer for their queue to pop. FFXIV tries to entice endgame players to rerun old dungeons for tomestones, but again you get the gear you need quickly, and fewer and fewer players at endgame are remaining subbed to the game now. Endwalker has the worst player retention out of all FFXIV expansions. Furthermore, FFXIV's 15 minutes of fame has been over for some time now; most new players who joined during the WoW exodus have consumed all of the content by now. So queue times for new players are becoming increasingly longer, which turns people away and leads to reduced sales. God forbid you play on the new Australia datacenter, where people can remain in queue for hours and never see it pop.

People never interacted in dungeons anyway. People said hello and that was it. And, come on. This is a WoW-clone. If someone wanted to play an actual MMORPG, they would be playing UO or SWG.

 

[Caim]

Did they add bots to ARR dungeons so you don't have to interact with people at all in this MMORPG? In case you really wanted to treat it as a padded out JRPG.

Yeah, if I wanted my Final Fantasy to be a series of linear dungeons intercut by long circlejerk cutscenes I'd drink more to make the bad thoughts go away play Final Fantasy XIII.

 

[Data4]

I dabbled with this shortly after ARR and I liked it okay, but hated the mandatory dungeons because I hate people in my MMOs.

This might bring me back for a little while.

 

[Morenatsu.]

But liek, real mmo gayming is pleying with a groop of random speedrunners you don't know!

 

[Kem0sabe]

 

[Sukhāvatī]

 

[Garyxeao88]

The experience of actually getting in to play Final Fantasy XIV has been that: either learning to love it when it’s available or having enough patience and persistence to hold a spot in line like I’m queuing up for new sneakers or a graphics card. But that’s the outside, client-side of FFXIV. But it is absolutely worth jumping into in 2022.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I've got no lines on my server.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Do all expansions have those npc dungeon groupmates yet?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Do all expansions have those npc dungeon groupmates yet?

No. Right now it's the base game, and then there is a gap of no NPC dungeons until you hit the Shadowbringers expansion.

 

[Late Bloomer]

wtf is wrong these people?




on a side note it looks like they are including more dungeons in that "duty support system"

The Duty Support system has been expanded to include five additional dungeons from A Realm Reborn and Heavensward, some of which feature key characters from the story. Certain trials have also been revamped for a smoother adventuring experience.


* The duties newly added to the Duty Support system are as follows: Snowcloak, the Keeper of the Lake, Sohm Al, the Aery, and the Vault. Further updates will be progressively implemented in future patches.

By the time they cover every dungeon the game is going to be exclusively made for furries and twitter users though (or is it already?)

 

[Morenatsu.]

Furry Fantasy XIV!! MMMMM GIMME DAT CATMAN BULGY WULGY!!!!!1

 

[Myobi]

Furry Fantasy XIV!! MMMMM GIMME DAT CATMAN BULGY WULGY!!!!!1

How do I report this shit? If this isn't dealt with asap the mofo might go on a uwu rampage all over the fucking place.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Patch 6.2 trailer. The music was the highlight for me.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'm glad that we are finally getting a new party member.

Sadly the patch seems to have nothing going for it. I'll log in, beat the new story chapter and the new raid within 3 or 4 hours, and then that's it for 4.5 months until the next patch. Was hoping that the Island Sanctuary would alleviate the abysmal housing shortage, but apparently it's no substitute.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I'm glad that we are finally getting a new party member.

Sadly the patch seems to have nothing going for it. I'll log in, beat the new story chapter and the new raid within 3 or 4 hours, and then that's it for 4.5 months until the next patch. Was hoping that the Island Sanctuary would alleviate the abysmal housing shortage, but apparently it's no substitute.

If you have more thoughts on Island Sanctuary I would like to hear them. I am not currently playing FFXIV but am intrigued by the Island Sanctuary annoucement.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

If you have more thoughts on Island Sanctuary I would like to hear them. I am not currently playing FFXIV but am intrigued by the Island Sanctuary annoucement.

When Endwalker was announced in early 2021, one of the core advertised features was an Island Sanctuary. Yoshi-P said: "We are looking on a piece of FFXIV content where players can enjoy slow living. This is something for everyone". Yoshi-P described raising animals and cultivating land, which immediately drew Harvest Moon comparisons. The implication was that it would be instanced housing for all players, like the Halfhill farm from WoW's Mists of Pandaria expansion.

10 months later, Endwalker launched, and the Island Sanctuary was not present at launch. Endwalker has had the least endgame content of any FF14 expansion thus far. Furthermore, FF14 experienced a brief surge in new players checking out the game in mid 2021, which exacerbated the housing shortage to the point that there just aren't any housing plots available, so if you didn't own one before then you are out of luck. People hoped that the Island Sanctuary would come in 6.1, but it did not (a patch where you could complete all of the content in 3-4 hours). It should also be noted that another expansion feature, Criterion Dungeons, was not available at launch and did not appear in 6.1, so the playerbase on the official forums was becoming annoyed. Also didn't help that Yoshi-P said during the 6.1 live letter that "oh no, developing content is too hard, we need to delay our patch schedule from one patch every 4 months to every 4.5 months".

Then, a couple months ago, during the lead up to the live letter detailing patch 6.2, almost a year and a half after the Island Sanctuary was announced, Yoshi-P started backpeddling and telling people to lower their (already low) expectations for the Island Sanctuary. Supposedly he has people who have been passing on the fandom's perceptions on to him, but he waited over a year and a half to begin correcting them?

In the live letter it was revealed that in the Island Sanctuary, you could only grow IS exclusive crops. So no growing stuff to dye your Chocobo's fur or making raid buff food or selling stuff on the market board. It's all selfcontained. You also don't even get a house you can customize. It is also endgame only, meaning you have to slog through the entire 400+ hour long visual novel story to unlock it. SE probably made it this way because if they allowed the whole playerbase to access it, their servers would break and SE can't be bothered to fix their abysmal server tech. For a lot of this people, this was another straw that broke the camel's back and has caused dissension on the official forums.

 

[Late Bloomer]

If you have more thoughts on Island Sanctuary I would like to hear them. I am not currently playing FFXIV but am intrigued by the Island Sanctuary annoucement.

When Endwalker was announced in early 2021, one of the core advertised features was an Island Sanctuary. Yoshi-P said: "We are looking on a piece of FFXIV content where players can enjoy slow living. This is something for everyone". Yoshi-P described raising animals and cultivating land, which immediately drew Harvest Moon comparisons. The implication was that it would be instanced housing for all players, like the Halfhill farm from WoW's Mists of Pandaria expansion.

10 months later, Endwalker launched, and the Island Sanctuary was not present at launch. Endwalker has had the least endgame content of any FF14 expansion thus far. Furthermore, FF14 experienced a brief surge in new players checking out the game in mid 2021, which exacerbated the housing shortage to the point that there just aren't any housing plots available, so if you didn't own one before then you are out of luck. People hoped that the Island Sanctuary would come in 6.1, but it did not (a patch where you could complete all of the content in 3-4 hours). It should also be noted that another expansion feature, Criterion Dungeons, was not available at launch and did not appear in 6.1, so the playerbase on the official forums was becoming annoyed. Also didn't help that Yoshi-P said during the 6.1 live letter that "oh no, developing content is too hard, we need to delay our patch schedule from one patch every 4 months to every 4.5 months".

Then, a couple months ago, during the lead up to the live letter detailing patch 6.2, almost a year and a half after the Island Sanctuary was announced, Yoshi-P started backpeddling and telling people to lower their (already low) expectations for the Island Sanctuary. Supposedly he has people who have been passing on the fandom's perceptions on to him, but he waited over a year and a half to begin correcting them?

In the live letter it was revealed that in the Island Sanctuary, you could only grow IS exclusive crops. So no growing stuff to dye your Chocobo's fur or making raid buff food or selling stuff on the market board. It's all selfcontained. You also don't even get a house you can customize. It is also endgame only, meaning you have to slog through the entire 400+ hour long visual novel story to unlock it. SE probably made it this way because if they allowed the whole playerbase to access it, their servers would break and SE can't be bothered to fix their abysmal server tech. For a lot of this people, this was another straw that broke the camel's back and has caused dissension on the official forums.

Super appreciated. Thank you. Nice picture. Thats quite a bit of drama surrounding the Islands. Did they cut back on their workforce? Also, do you happen to know why they don't just instance more housing for people to buy? I didnt know what Criterion Dungeons were so I looked it up. They actually sound pretty cool.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

they just ran out of ideas to copy from WoW and have no idea what to do now

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Did they cut back on their workforce?

FFXIV is developed by Creative Business Unit 3, aka CBU3. We know CBU3 had around 260 devs as of March 2017 (last Heavensward patch/just before Stormblood's launch), when FFXIV was at the peak of its content output. At that time, FF16 went into preproduction (also developed by CBU3), with full blown development beginning in 2018/2019... coincidentally at the same time when FF14's decline in rate and quantity (and quality) of content began.

do you happen to know why they don't just instance more housing for people to buy?

So you have two problems. The housing wards (ie neighborhoods of houses, outdoors), and the actual housing interiors themselves.

There are a limited number of wards and SE rarely adds more. They added a few extra wards last year but they in no way adequate to meet demand. There is a raffle system where even if you have the money to buy a house and furnish it, the winner of the bid is random (previously it was first come first serve). Furthermore, a new system was introduced that made the vast majority of houses unavailable to players for private ownership. Only FCs can buy them. So that leads to people creating single person dummy FCs just so they can bid on a housing plot.

For inn rooms and story locations like the Waking Sands, those places aren't instanced. Everyone else on your server is still there. It's just that their visibility has been turned off so you only see NPCs. FFXIV's housing instances have to compete with raid and dungeon instances, as they both draw upon the same set of servers. When a housing instance is uninhabited by players, that instance ceases to exist. When you log off inside your house, the instance ceases to exist and when you next log on, you find that you have been kicked out onto your front porch (FFXIV doesn't spool up the housing instance again for when you are logging back on inside your house).

FFXIV's netcode and servers are notoriously awful and SE won't invest the money to rectify the situation. I'd wager that FF14 makes a decent amount of money off of people server transferring trying to find housing plots, or even apartment slots.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Seems to be a fact that devs are always greedy with the income from MMOs unless they're strictly an MMO dev. That is, funds generated by an MMO seemingly rarely ever get put back into the MMO because they view it as a low-effort cash flow.
See also: Bioware basically running on SWTOR income for a decade now while putting zero effort into it and constantly pilfering developers for failure projects.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Speaking of

At that time, FF16 went into preproduction (also developed by CBU3), with full blown development beginning in 2018/2019... coincidentally at the same time when FF14's decline in rate and quantity (and quality) of content began.

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/final-fantasy-naoki-yoshida-luminaries-2022

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/final-fantasy-naoki-yoshida-luminaries-2022

I hate the sensationalist title. "The king of Final Fantasy" please. Yoshida didn't create a single FF title. His most noteworthy contribution is salvaging a project and making it profitable enough to keep the rest of SE afloat (much like how FF11 kept the rest of SE afloat during the 2000s). There are a dozen other men higher up in line for the title of "the King of Final Fantasy".

 

[Late Bloomer]

His most noteworthy contribution is salvaging a project and making it profitable enough to keep the rest of SE afloat

So would Savior of Square Enix be better?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So would Savior of Square Enix be better?

That says less about Yoshi-P and more about the sheer ineptitude of modern Square Enix, where basic competence is surprising, not expected.