Do players still have a voice in the direction of FFIXV?Follow

Do players still have a voice in the direction of development for FFXIV?


There was a point in the history of FFXIV where the game developers were actively seeking feedback from players. Public opinion polls were created to determine what content players wanted prioritized. By using this information, they were able to successfully create a game that players wanted to play. At this point the development resources are being used to create content that may or may not be what the players want. I think it is reasonable at this time to request that a re-evaluation of players' priorities be done to verify that the direction of content development matches the activities that make players want to play FFXIV. I think that the resources devoted to each type of content should be proportional to the amount of interest that players have for engaging in that type of content.

From what I have seen, it seems that players spend a majority of their time playing the available PvE content. It does not seem that the priority currently given to future PvE content development is consistent with the level of demand for new PvE content.

Looking around Eorzea, I see a great amount of interest in Crafting. Players seem to enjoy this activity, and it appears the time spent crafting is a close second to PvE. Therefore, it stands to reason that the development resources for future Crafting content would match this level of interest by the players. However, players are currently expressing a great deal of frustration at the direction crafting is taking. The development team has stated that crafting gear will NOT be important to end-game activities moving forward, and no future content is being developed to serve as end-game activities for Crafters. This does not seem to match the original direction of FFXIV, which was to have Crafting classes have an equal level of importance as the Battle classes do. The resources devoted to development of crafting content should match the level of interest in Crafting.

I appears that the level of interest in PvP content is limited. Looking around Eorzea, I personally see a limited amount of players engaging in PvP. Those players are only engaging in PvP for a limited amount of their play time. I think that the resources devoted to the development of PvP content are disproportional to the level of interest shown by the general community. This may be because the level of interest the development team has for PvP is not consistent with players. It is not clear that PvP content has, or will, draw additional players to play and subscribe to FFXIV. That siad, I do not think that PvP is unimportant to FFXIV. I do think that the amount of resource development resources that will be allocated for expanding PvP content should match the overall level of interest shown by players.

It appears that the development of Housing has required more resources than was originally intended. While players did show interest in Housing at one time, it is unclear if the amount of time and capitol that has been spent on the Housing system corresponds to the actual amount of player interest. I can sympathize with having a great idea that turns out to be more difficult to implement than was expected. It seem at this point that the resources devoted to housing have not had an overall positive impact on player enjoyment of FFXIV. The housing system should eventually be made fully operational, and this goal should be balanced with the timeline for development of content that has a greater level of overall player interest.

Moving forward, it seems a reasonable request that the development team review the available data on what activities players are engaging in most. Sharing that data may help players understand the priorities that are being given to content development.

Is it possible that, with the release of the varying types of content, it is time to once again Poll the Player Community to better understand what priorities players currently have for the direction of content development?


Edited, Jan 10th 2014 10:59am by Gnu

I have to say they had a lot of coverage in their polls prior to the official launch of FFXIV. By now they should have a good idea of what the players want. It's like any project schedule, you want the best requirements you can get before you really get into development because it costs more and requires more effort to change something thats already been coded and tested because of a bad requirement.

That said, now I think what we're seeing is the ability of Yoshi's team to meet those requirements. Bugs and infrastructure problems have been plauging the game since beta. They are still having to devote a lot of resources on simply keeping the game servers from crashing. That undoubtably set content development behind. I'm not saying thats ok, just that seems to be how it is.

I have noticed a slow widening gap between development and players. The outcry concerning housing prices and the reply really irked me. You're right, it's not how it used to be. Maybe they dont need to poll concerning new content, but it cant hurt to actively seek feedback. After all feedback should be a part of any major project.

I can understand their reluctance to rush in and change their plans for housing right away. However, if the prices deflate down to their minimum and people still aren't buying houses, then it really does mean their original plan was flawed and they're going to need to change something fast.

My crafting linkshell on Lamia is consistently capped out - we cannot accept any new members. Part of us wants to make ourselves a full fledged Free Company dedicated to crafting, but there's no point in us doing so right now.

Edited, Jan 10th 2014 12:00pm by Catwho

I think they do. I believe Yoshi altered the worst aspect of his housing plan based on the outcry of players. During FFXIV's "time in the wilderness" before 2.0, Yoshi also ran several questionnaires for the players to participate in.

However, I do think there is a limit on how far that can be useful. "Game design by focus group" can produce utter disasters such as Dragon Age 2 which try to please everyone at once and end up pleasing no one. As the director, Yoshida has to lead with a certain amount of vision and not be afraid to make a few mistakes along the way. Part of FFXIV's flaws is that it's a little too derivative of other MMOs. It really has to start finding its own direction as a game and introduce elements we haven't seen before.

The players aren't going to be the source of this innovation, and in fact, they may even resist it. Do you know anyone who actually quit FFXIV because jumping was added to the game? Because if the official forums were to believed back in the day, it was going to destroy the game's immersion forever, and no one would play FFXIV ever again!

I think the development team still has our interests at heart... but as another poster indicated, the days of pouring over polls are long over. For the most part, the development team knows what we want, and now the big issues focus on how to implement fun and innovative content with the players' desires in mind.

I think the housing debacle is the first time we've seen the development team appear to really deviate from what players want. We want accessible housing that we can get into without having to treat the game like a second job... and other players would rather just have individual housing. I'm sure developers want everyone to have access to housing, but they've got to override that with the need to have infrastructure.

I'm eager to see what the next big content patch brings. I'm also curious to see how the dev team addresses housing and the flailing economy over the next month or two.

It's probably planned as part of housing! Lulz!!!

Not focused on PvE?

Pharos Sirius?
3 Extreme Mode Primals?
The Crystal Tower?
2 Hard mode dungeons?
Hard mode Ultima Weapon?
Several Main Story Line quests?
Good King Moogle Mog?
Treasure Map fights?
Duty Roulette?
The Beastmen Missions?

And that's not counting things like the barber shop or seasonal events or the new minions...

You might not even have noticed the housing or PvP with all those things.

Here's what I keep coming back to:

Putting in Housing, PvP, CT, Pharos, Beastmen quests, and Treasure Hunts had no real impact on the progression of players currently in-game.

But now look at it from a new player's point of view in 3 months when PS4/2.2 comes out. All that content I just mentioned fills several holes that have been there since 2.0. I think they're still rapidly expanding the foundation of the game to be where it really should have been when release was here. I think if you were to roll a new character when the PS4 version starts, you'd see a much more complete vision of what the 'ideal' vanilla release of the game would look like.

My 2g any how. :)

They botched up MMM but they turned around got things right with Meeble Burrows. And they put some great gear in there to make it worth doing, and allowed us to be flexible to do it daily or store up to 10 attempts to spam at once.

It can be used on any level of crafted gear, which tops out at i70. In many cases, this gear, when slotted appropriately, is BiS until you get Myth/AF2.

When you add a new tier of difficulty to something, you are adding contnet, I'm getting really upset at people thinking reused assets is not content. If that were the case Castlevania's 2D market would have been out of business with STON and Harmony of Dispair wouldn't have sold NEARLY as well as it did.

And especially in the case of Moogle Mog, model assets mean absolutely diddly when you have to reprogram the skeleton frames, the animations, the particle/lighting effects and make them ALL Fit in timing.

Then you have to reprogram all of the damage scaling and combat mathematics, including design changes, character behaviors, etc - likely from scratch to fit into the new server and game clients.

That's a monumental amount of work for something you claim not to be new content. The only things that really remain the same is the base fight concept, some of the model assets, and the rewards.

The level of broad strokes people regard content with these days honestly feels repulsive. There's almost no excuse in today's access to information that people cannot simply look up the actual work that gets put into projects like this. Even if it is things like additional difficulties on Primals, it takes a lot of effort to sift back through code and alter it to add new flair and mechanics to already finished content. And I'm beside myself at the level of entitlement people have regarding a patch, and a patch who's description is 87 printed pages in description to boot.

There's a LOT wrong, with 2.1, but to flat out not call content content because of the method of generation or your disinterest in it is just plain rude.


As for the rest. We're griping over the first patch of a game that had to be rebuilt. There's quite a bit of content in this patch to begin with. Sure, there's a whole lot that still needs to come down the pipeline, group crafting, Frontlines, Field-based Primals that are capable of being summoned, New Classes/Jobs - the list goes on and on.

It may have been a wonder that they managed to resuscitate this game, but I don't think it's right to start expecting repeat performances. They're not miracle workers, they're just hard workers.
-------------------------------------------------- / vent


As far as the matter of the communication between players and developers. Players will always state what they want, but their wants and the game's needs do not always align - not when faced with the cold hard facts of reality.

That said, some instances, Housing in particular, I think they error-ed too far on the side of caution. But that does not mean players have any less say then they had before - more along the lines of they've already said it before, and, as before, SE ultimately has to make the final decision based off balancing the wants of the player and the realities of the business.

I often don't like it either, but arguments and feedback really do need to be kept in the realm of reality here. A game like this is a LOT to handle, and I expect many, many more blunders to occur in its lifespan. It's just human nature.

I know it's not thousands, Hundreds, maybe.

There's only 5 wards per the three locations, so 15 wards total. Whatever the limit of housing number in that particular ward becomes the deciding factor, and I'm fairly sure it's sub thousands, especially when you factor in the likely competition for the medium and large land plots, which, really, are the only feasible ones for a Free Company of any decent size.

And the fact that the server expansions on these is likely to come slow to begin with as it will compete with expanding personal housing, which they have to focus on creating initial servers for to begin with.

I can see why they panicked. But, honestly, I think they inflated the numbers too high for the trickle-down to be worthwhile.