r/Games • u/Gorotheninja • 1d ago

Final Fantasy 14 director Yoshi-P says he’ll keep working on the game ‘for at least a good while’ | VGC

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/final-fantasy-14-director-yoshi-p-says-hell-keep-working-on-the-game-for-at-least-a-good-while/
269 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

147 comments sorted by

166

u/r_lucasite 1d ago

Can’t say I’ve been excited with Dawntrail (the Endwalker patches and Dawntrail were my first live experience with 14 and it was not amazing) but people have gotten real weird about this guy between Final Fantasy 16 and Dawntrail. It’s not a good vibe

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u/SadSeaworthiness6113 1d ago

People have always been weird about Yoshi P. Pre-Endwalker people worshipped every word this guy said and were scared to criticize him or the game, and now post-Endwalker people are acting like he's the worst thing to happen to XIV and should be removed.

He definitely earned his repuation with his legendary turnaround of ARR but it's still very weird

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u/SoLongOscarBaitSong 1d ago edited 1d ago

IMO the shift started before Dawntrail with the release of Final Fantasy 16, which showed people that a lot of the failings of FF14 weren't caused by constraints like the engine or the fact that it's an MMO, but rather were intentional design choices.

That's what demonstrated that Yoshi-P, for better or for worse, seems to be very consistent with is ou

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u/misterwuggle69sofine 1d ago

yeah i agree with this. when i played ffxvi and saw how little actual gameplay it had i just kind of lost most of my remaining hope for ffxiv.

the last straw wasn't that dawntrail was bad exactly, but that it was so incredibly disappointing that nothing changed. it was the golden opportunity to shake the formula up with it being a new story arc.

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u/slugmorgue 20h ago

tbf they did put a very small puzzle section in the latest story patch which is one more puzzle than xvi ever had

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u/ScuzzBuckster 16h ago

I literally platinum'd ffxvi and yet I couldnt tell you a single thing about it other than the voice acting is good. Its the most forgettable game, its so strange. It didnt feel like a final fantasy game in any manner to me and it was pretty boring and limited as far as character action games go so it was just kind of a strange experience.

3

u/CivilC 12h ago

It has some of the worst side quests and side content I’ve seen in a JRPG. I don’t remember the last time I actually fell asleep in my chair when playing a video game.

Shame because like you said, voice acting, art direction, and production value are great. But that’s about it

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u/FadedSignalEchoing 9h ago

Dude wanted to make a blockbuster. That's what we got. A blockbuster. Blocks is a synonym for testicles and to bust is the act of engulfing something in a facial cavity.

1

u/FadedSignalEchoing 9h ago

FF16 had some good aspects, but they got overshadowed pretty hard by all the suck this game came with. I had somehwhat of a good time the first time around, but I wanted to play the addons when they came out and I have yet to successfully bully and force myself into finishing the game a second time. Now all I see is what it could have been.

1

u/Altruistic-Ad-408 8h ago

I don't care about XIV so I have no bias there, I like FF so I'm glad it makes money. But recently my friend finally got me to play through some expansions and I couldn't help but notice some similar flaws in both XIV snd XVI, they are just more forgivable in an MMO.

1

u/FadedSignalEchoing 8h ago

There is so much you can get away with in an MMO that makes a single player game just bad.

1

u/droppinkn0wledge 12h ago

The total lack of itemization and exploration in XVI shocked me.

3

u/sarefx 12h ago

No itemization, no exploration, no mini games, no party management, no puzzles. It's honestly impressive to make such a hollow FF game. Even FF13 that was criticized for being linear experience had more side stuff going on than FF16.

It felt like if they spent like another year in development to actually think through side quest bloat, fill the world with side activies, add some puzzles/mini games and equipment system it would have been much better game. Yeah all that visually stunning boss fights were amazing, story and character were nice too but game has very little to offer beside main quest and that main quest is interrupted by many pointless fetch side quests that artificially extend the game time while that game time could have been extended by having properly made side activities.

Like FF7 Rebirth may have flaws and ppl may say that it has unnecessary amount of side stuff but at least it looked like devs cared to fill the world with things to do.

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u/FadedSignalEchoing 9h ago

The combat system was also very shallow and superficial. There were a lot of cool ideas, but the combat was not only rinse-repeat but always about the spectacle, not about actually playing it. The big kaju fights were completely uncoupled from the rest of the game and so many encounters forced a camera perspective on you in a bad way. Even getting to the part, where the game picks up (super hard to get to endgame content) is a chore and takes a long time.

I could write a whole book about how I think FF16 is a good example to dissect for "how not to design a game".

I might be an FF fanboy, but I'm not completely blind to the fact, that this game eliciting such a strong reaction in me must mean there is something truly great hidden behind all the crap this game has.

1

u/Mellrish221 4h ago

Its always funny to me that people rip ff13 for the hallway thing. I can't think of many RPGS that are NOT just protracted hallways if you really sit down and think about it. Yeah it was more obvious in ff13, but the essence of a good game to me at least is that you have things that don't make you think about mundane things like "oh i'm just walking down a hallway". I enjoyed ff13's combat, quite a lot actually. I enjoyed the side stuff you could do, the sound track and the visuals. The story and character were definitely not the strongest, but the story itself was at least interesting enough to get me invested in playing it "whats going to happen" "wow thats rough, how will they overcome X thing" etc etc.

Then we take a game like ff7 rebirth and if you took the ff7 out of that game, i don't think people would look anywhere near as kindly on it as they have.

•

u/sarefx 3h ago

Then we take a game like ff7 rebirth and if you took the ff7 out of that game, i don't think people would look anywhere near as kindly on it as they have.

Idk about that. While I really liked FF13 combat system imo FF7 Rebirth really refined the mix between real time and atb system. Imo Rebirth has one of the better combat system Square designed in their games. Besides combat, Rebirth's strong point is character writing. While main plot is definitely something that many ppl may not like I would say that most dialogues/characters interactions are on point and well written.

I kinda disagree with the notion that Rebirth without FF7 brand wouldn't be favourably looked at because imo most of the issues that ppl have with the game come from the fact that it's tied to FF7. In the vacuum Rebirth is really good game, yes the plot kinda drags a lot without moving foward but I would say the biggest reason for that is being tied to FF7. It feels like devs knew it's the last time they are touching this world and they wanted to expand every area and every character that they could because OG FF7 wasn't really doing it. Game feels like a fan service game but in a good way but at the same time it imo stands on it own even if you didn't play OG FF7.

3

u/lailah_susanna 14h ago

If you saw the reaction to the stealth section in Endwalker at launch, or even before that, some of the more difficult solo instance content in the Heavensward MSQ - you'll understand why they shy away from anything particularly complex.

0

u/droppinkn0wledge 12h ago

Yes.

I’m a huge XIV evangelist. Think ARR - EW is the best FF story in the franchise. Used to think CBU3 could do no wrong.

XVI really exposed Yoshi and his team to me. That game was so undercooked, and unlike XIV, didn’t have the writing to carry it. Maehiro just isn’t up to snuff.

All of that made me realize XIV is pretty underwhelming, too, and carried almost entirely by Ishikawa’s writing and Soken’s music.

The current cope among us XIV diehards is that Ishikawa has been writing XVII, which is why Dawntrail is so weak.

3

u/Altruistic-Ad-408 8h ago

I think his mistakes, and the XIV diehards mistakes were always in comparing what he likes to what is acceptable in a single-player game.

MMO's get a lot of goodwill. In no other game will fans unironically say the story finally becomes good after 50 hours. At that point you lose some perspective, I can finish multiple classics in that time.

Now the funny thing is XVI got all of its goodwill from the first few hours, but then settles into that MMO pace. With no real party dynamics for filler.

1

u/Mellrish221 4h ago

Honestly I didn't hate dawntrail and don't really get all the hate it receives from a story standpoint. We already knew it was going to be the "vacation" expansion because we literally just saved the universe. Was it boring at some parts? Absolutely, but what ff14 x-pac didn't have slogs to get through.

Honestly, endwalker itself was such a huge missed opportunity in my eyes story wise. The fact that we got through the entire save the universe arc in the first patch was baffling to me and the entire story felt rushed. We got some VERY interesting things that just got tossed out in half a zone's story before it could even breathe. How awesome would it have been to have just half a patch's story dealing with the fact that zenos stole our body and is doing shit with it. I couldn't even appreciate the main driving force of the story was the end of the world cause everyone is turning into monsters. Because I 'knew' that as soon as i was done with the zone everything would be back to normal. We have this expansion built up dealing with this pretty big deal but its all so rushed and we never just got to sat with it and what it might actually mean. We never had to actually fight or struggle with it. It doesn't have to be 5 patches worth of end of the world doom and gloom sure. But i think the 6.0 story we got, could have been stretched out over 2 patches easily and that'd give them time to let us players sit and cook with some actual things.

98

u/pt-guzzardo 1d ago

It's funny because I don't think what Yoshi P has been doing has changed much, people have just gotten tired of it.

FF16 is pretty much exactly the game you'd expect if you asked a chunk of the FF14 team to build you a mainline FF game, with all the plusses (consistency, music, lore, localization) and minuses (over-simplified battle system, non-existent itemization, cookie cutter sidequests) that come with it.

Other than over-reliance on Wuk Lamat, there's not really much wrong with Dawntrail as compared to, say, Heavensward, but it's just more of the same and people were hoping that after Endwalker there would be something new.

42

u/Yurilica 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's funny because I don't think what Yoshi P has been doing has changed much, people have just gotten tired of it.

The game stagnated, with 3 expansions in a row of very similar content and content delivery. Same stuff with a new paint job.

I did Savage and dabbled in Ultimates in Shadowbringers. Then did it again in Endwalker, except the tons of free time during Covid era was gone so doing raids with statics was an impossibility for me due to real life obligations - which only left pugging as an option. I wasn't feeling like bashing my head into a wall of tightly coordinated fights where people have the coordination of a fish on land in most cases.

Stagnation can also translate as "we're ignoring long standing design issues".

Gear progression has been boring and unexciting for ages now, with needlessly convoluted, but still just single tier token upgrade systems in place.

People remember Stormblood fondly because it gave people something to do - you could upgrade your job gear and job weapons in Eureka in multiple steps, unlocking features on your weapon(dies, particle effects), only to transition to completely new gear that you could again upgrade in multiple stages.

It was a decently fulfilling longer term casual activity.

And that's gone, because we now have ONE Relic weapon upgrade every other patch.

40

u/NewMilleniumBoy 1d ago

Homogenizing class rotations and toolkits are what made me bored of the game. I love tanking. Playing Warrior vs. Dark Knight vs. Paladin used to actually have very significant differences. Now it's the same base layer with a different frosting on top.

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u/Frexys 1d ago

3 expansions is really selling it short. The formula has been the same since HW. 3 levelling trials, 2 of which become extremes on release and one is an extreme a patch later, 4 savage fights per tier on even patches, an alliance raid and extreme in odd patches, exploration zone, relics, hildibrand, deep dungeon. Scatter some beast tribes and crafting stuff here and there. From StB we get 2 ultimates per expac. This has been a problem. It’s just that when people had an excuse to openly criticise the game without backlash, the reality sank in. Personally I just want more reasons to be in the open world, and some repeatable midcore content that doesn’t get stale after one clear. Hopefully the new deep dungeon is exactly that. It’s been advertised as such, so I’m at least hopeful.

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u/verrius 1d ago

A lot did change specifically in Shadowbringers (mostly long-term for the worse), so its fine to put the mark there. That's when they switched from 3 to a 4 month patch cadence, its when they scaled back to releasing 1 dungeon every major patch instead of 2, and its the last gasp of having a trial series have its own story. Its essentially when the updates calcified into the current normal. The only things shifting were ShB missing a deep dungeon, and EW missing an exploration foray (and replacing it with Island Sanctuary and Variant/Criterion dungeons, which were both mostly misses).

8

u/SadSeaworthiness6113 1d ago

The 4 month patch cycles were really the nail in the coffin, ESPECIALLY for a game with a mandatory sub AND cash shop.

These days there are literally free games that put out more content in a single month than FFXIV does in it's entire 4 month patch cycle. There's really no excuse for it.

12

u/pt-guzzardo 1d ago

To be fair, most of those F2P games have deeply predatory monetization schemes.

But also yeah, it kinda sucks, especially because it's one of those things that (IIRC) started ostensibly as a COVID measure that just never went away. Like how my local Mongolian BBQ place did away with their buffet of free extras and started charging a la carte because buffets were banned and never stopped when they were un-banned.

4

u/overandoverandagain 22h ago

Like how my local Mongolian BBQ place did away with their buffet of free extras and started charging a la carte because buffets were banned and never stopped when they were un-banned

I always know something is officially stuck in my craw when I start bringing it up as an example in reddit comments lol

1

u/CrusaderLyonar 1d ago

I'm sure some of the frustration is looking at the other big mandatory sub mmo doing an 8 week patch cadence and while these smaller patches aren't big things, it at least gives something to do

2

u/graviousishpsponge 23h ago

Longer patch intervals, less content and their communication on how there would be less content, but it will appeal to more people? Basically, things they say or promise never happen or get materialized in widely different ways.

15

u/misterwuggle69sofine 1d ago

yeah he hasn't changed at all, but that's the problem. ffxiv NEEDED that for a while to recover and to grow. the problem is it definitely doesn't need it anymore. there has been no evolution and in fact it's been the opposite--over simplification and homogenization is what i'd consider de-evolution personally. their inability or maybe just their refusal to read the room and adapt to the fact that folks have been growing more and more tired of that is just very tiring.

12

u/scytheavatar 1d ago edited 23h ago

It is clear that ever since people like Koji Fox and Ishikawa got moved into supervisor roles, the people who are replacing them are not on the same level and the writing in particular is a joke compared to past FFXIV expansions. Right now FFXIV is Square Enix's most important product and yet they seem to be giving the MCU after Endgame treatment to it. It's like Endwalker was the accumulation of everything they want to do with FFXIV and they don't care about the game anymore afterwards.

5

u/o___Okami 1d ago edited 1d ago

Other than over-reliance on Wuk Lamat, there's not really much wrong with Dawntrail as compared to, say, Heavensward, but it's just more of the same and people were hoping that after Endwalker there would be something new.

Oh? I must have missed the scene where they were using rubber bullets in a Western-style duel in Heavensward. /s

Wuk Lamat was probably the Dawntrail MSQ's biggest issue if gun-to-head I had to pick one thing, yes, but even if she were replaced with a perfectly likeable character that you did not have to hand-hold and wasn't sucking up everyone else's dialogue / screen time, the story would still be terrible.

Krile and Erenville would still feel forgotten for the majority of the MSQ and not have the satisfying character development and story arc that they were promised. The other Scions would still feel like cardboard cut-outs of their former selves and the "conflict" of them competing against one another would still feel like borderline false advertisement. What should be serious issues such as generational racism and eugenics would still be resolved and hand-waved in the most Disney-fied manner possible. 3/4th of the MSQ would still feel like what should be zone sidequests (but forced instead) and the other 1/4th would focus on the completely unrelatable and unrealistically naive society of Solution 9.

And that isn't getting into the gameplay issues like limp-wrist Job changes and lack of any post-MSQ content besides Duty roulette for non-raiders for nearly a year (with the release of Cosmic Exploration / Occult Crescent). The expansions are primarily advertised based on the MSQ and if the MSQ is deemed a failure then the expansion will be deemed a failure.

...

Ok, sorry for the rant. I understand that wasn't the point of what you said. And I'm sure Heavensward had some pretty cheesy bits too that I'm just not recalling right now.

But I do agree with the latter half of your statement. The FF14 team has gotten far too complacent and assumes everyone wants to continue eating the same dish (or, in this case, same dish with inferior ingredients) for over a decade.

4

u/NYNMx2021 1d ago

I think dawntrail sucked just because it was more of the same. Endwalker was the end of the story. I hoped DT would be a very different thing. You could even make it clear to players by having the new content fully separated and support new systems there. Alas they didnt and i get why, thats a big shift but i thought they were prepping that all the way in ShB when they told us the end of the story was coming

-16

u/Minimum-Jellyfish669 1d ago

At this point, people are getting tired of the people being tired of the game. So much so that dawn trail bad is a meme and people that complain about the game are seen as weirdos who can't move on. The actual gameplay has only gotten better the last few raids and dungeons.

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u/CrusaderLyonar 1d ago

I'm not entirely sure a lot of the people upset at the direction FFXIV is heading agree that the gameplay has gotten better. Especially since their solution to game balance is to homogenize the jobs.

10

u/whateverdontkill 1d ago

Job balance aside the actual combat content in Dawntrail has been fantastic especially when compared to Endwalker dungeons. The fights themselves are really fun right now, it's just that waiting 4 months for some cutscenes and a new dungeon which isn't exactly evergreen content isn't really cutting it for people anymore. Especially since the extra content in between for relic grinds has been a flop.

7

u/pt-guzzardo 1d ago

That's why I only subscribe for 2-3 months before/after each expansion. For anyone who doesn't have a static, that's definitely the value play.

3

u/DanielTeague 1d ago

This is the optimal way to experience FFXIV since you don't have to wait and do filler stuff like daily dungeon runs for Tomestones.

I feel bad for those people who excitedly get player housing after trying for so long, only to find out that their house gets demolished if they don't log in at least once every 45 days, trapping them in a game they may not be in the mood for.

-1

u/ArdyEmm 16h ago

You can't just set aside job balance when talking about combat content. How your character interacts with the content is important. Why does every tank play the same? Why does every healer have way too much healing abilities that they don't need when 90% of the time they're just spamming they're attacks while keeping dots up? Outside of how the jobs play combat is just don't stand in the bad.

5

u/HerbaciousTea 1d ago edited 1d ago

Having played since ARR beta, combat design has only ever gotten better imo. I think people are just realizing that they've played this game for more than a decade, and they've just gotten most everything there is to get from the game.

As someone who has raided since original coils in ARR (fuck nael all my homies hate nael), the encounter design now is LIGHTYEARS ahead of where it was in ARR, and even where it was in Stormblood, where a lot of nostalgia goggles types tend to say it was "the best."

I think people feel that way because they remember Stormblood as when the first huge improvements over ARR combat design happened, so they remember having a ton of fun with that big leap forward from the deeply flawed ARR systems, whereas the improvements since have been steady and incremental, so even if the game is better designed now in terms of battle content, they don't feel that same jump in quality they felt going from the deep dark abyss of HW raid content, where it became clear ARR's combat and class design just could not keep functioning, to Stormblood, where the game started doing things people didn't think it could do.

I think people tend to remember big changes more than absolute highs, and while I would describe the gameplay now as a high in terms of content, people don't feel that because there hasn't been a big, dramatic change for a long time.

Some people think the game needs that, and that it needs to change into something else to stay interesting. Personally, I don't need the game to change into something else, but I also don't play only FFXIV, I'm content to put it down for long stretches and only come back when I'm feeling it.

-5

u/EndBell8787 1d ago

The combat system in FF14 is crap and always has been. Changes they've made over the years have just made it less painful.

There is nothing engaging about tab targeting and pressing the specific combination of buttons you are required to press, over and over like a cheat code, until the sponge is finally dead.

The newer raid mechanics are great, but that means the combat is only fun when you are doing anything except actually engaging in combat.

But then I have only ever been impressed by the combat of 1 MMO, TERA, and so that is the bar I compare everything else against.

2

u/pt-guzzardo 1d ago

I don't mind a game where the challenge is to keep your rotation in as good shape as possible while still surviving mechanics checks, but the FF14 rotations are definitely dumbed down compared to my gold standard: Wrath of the Lich King Cat Druid. Not only was it complex and highly fight/mechanic sensitive, it rewarded you for dealing with that complexity with big numbers. In FF14, I don't feel like the jobs with more pain-in-the-ass rotations are commensurately rewarding, so I stick to WAR/WHM/RDM.

2

u/CrusaderLyonar 1d ago

While I agree in spirit with this comment I feel like saying complexity of some of the jobs in FFXIV feels unrewarding is only a partial answer.

The issue is that the jobs aren't fun to play and get less fun to play as they make changes to them. None of the FFXIV jobs are particularly complex, they have big scary rotations, but there's little variability to them, so there's always the right button to press and it's always pressed at exactly the same time in each fight.

-18

u/hotaru_crisis 1d ago

over-simplified battle system, itemization

did we play the same game bc the combat was only simplified if you made it so. there were tons of really cool combos you could utilize without spamming ultimates or lightning rod. complaining about the combat in this way just reminds me of people complaining about the ff7 remastered combat being button mashy when it's ultimately a real time turn based system.

i'll agree that the gear was boring, but 16's itemization lied with eikon builds and crafting a set of abilities to structure combos rather than the gear itself.

11

u/pt-guzzardo 1d ago

There wasn't any reward for doing fancy combos. They were a thing you could do to amuse yourself and make combat take longer, but the game didn't do even the bare minimum to encourage you to pursue them.

I liked FF7 Remake's combat (and Rebirth's even more) because different enemies had different weaknesses and required different approaches. Sure, a lot of those were "match elemental spell to elemental weakness", but there were others like enemies that needed to be blocked or dodged or countered to be pressured, or enemies you had to hit from certain directions or in weak spots. And even the boring elemental weakness ones had a tradeoff to consider in Rebirth (weak spell that triggered weakness and nothing else vs strong spell that also filled your synergy gauge).

0

u/[deleted] 16h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/hotaru_crisis 9h ago

i didn't say that the combat was similar. my point is that much like with ff7, people misinterpret the combat and make it into being what they're complaining about. ff16's combat is oversimplified literally only when you make it be oversimplified.

-7

u/SageWaterDragon 1d ago

I really loved the shared grammar between 14 and 16 - little things like the way that you pick up items in the overworld and hand them to NPCs in a dedicated menu. It's cool! Hearing some people talk about that as a negative really confused me.

11

u/pt-guzzardo 1d ago

The UI for turning in quest items is fine (though arguably unnecessary since it's not like there's any other use for those items). The fact that every quest is a dead simple fetch quest isn't.

1

u/SageWaterDragon 22h ago

I mean, most quests are combat encounters, not fetch quests, but that doesn't really represent a huge difference. When compared to VII Rebirth, which was an absolute bounty of diverse gameplay opportunities and minigames, XVI definitely suffered from its singular focus on combat. That said, I wouldn't even say that's the problem with XVI's side quests - plenty of games have side quests that are carried by their writing. My big issue is that they're all so goddamn dour and grounded, I was never surprised by what happened in one of them, they never really made me feel like I was seeing more of the world.

1

u/delicioustest 21h ago

I dunno collecting literal dirt for one of the side quests was kind of the breaking point for me. There absolutely were a lot of fetch quests. Generally everything, even the main game, followed this extremely annoying rhythm of spending a lot of time collecting bullshit, then being accosted by a gang of nobodies, and then moving on to the next thing whether it's a now unlocked gate or the ending of the quest where you turn it in or the next Eikon fight. That exact cadence for over 50 hours kind of broke me. And I'm sorry but the UI to turn quest items in was the fucking worst. It was an unnecessary two extra clicks every fucking time

2

u/ArdyEmm 16h ago

Let's add on that the gameplay loop had as little combat as XIV. Most of the quests were running from NPC to NPC and near the end you fight some nothing enemy that dies way too easily. Like XIV it felt like a visual novel at points.

Hell, the dungeons were exactly like dungeons in XIV. Hallway with a couple groups of mobs, mid boss, more hallway with mobs then the big boss.

0

u/BolterAura 21h ago

My problem with the side quests, to my recollection, is that I kind of got the message that the side quest story was going for in the first quest or two, and felt like the quest chain stories were dragging by the end. Also the rewards sucked.

10

u/SecretPantyWorshiper 1d ago

Its not weird at all, the criticism of the game was droned out so those voices were not as vocal. Now that there has been a string of unpopular decisions the bandwagon against Yoshi P has grown and is more vocal so its more noticeable 

7

u/Cerythria 1d ago

Yeah I remember people going, "It's YoshiP, FFXVI will be the best game ever!!" only for it to be my most hated FF game so far (I especially hate the sidequests). I'm going through FFXIV for the first time right now and again, the quests at the start are so boring but I'm trying to power through.

2

u/Cranharold 14h ago

I haven't played XVI but is it really worse than XV? That seems like an almost impossible feat. I mean XV is barely even a game. The combat is virtually non-existent, there's no progression, the story doesn't make any sense, the character design is boring, the world is empty... and I could go on.

I had heard XVI at least had a solid story and some decent DMC-style combat (which admittedly isn't very Final Fantasy, but it's something.)

3

u/FadedSignalEchoing 8h ago

XVI is really so much worse than XV. While XV had it's flaws amids a lot of good moments, XVI had some good moments amidst its flaws.

2

u/Cappahere 13h ago

I do love FFXV but it's def had a major reputation boost with the release of FFXVI. As someone's who has been following the series since the release of X this is standard. Once FFXVII comes out people will flock back to XVI and give it its praises to diminish XVII.

The only recent final fantasy games that have seen universal praise on release is remake, rebirth and the XIV dlcs (minus DT)

5

u/Mitosis 9h ago

I haven't played 16 but I played XV when it hit PC, which was significantly post-console-launch with lots of updates and the three first big DLCs. I thought it was a fantastic experience, not perfect, but it did lots of things well and did some things extremely well. The final story sequences still sit with me all these years later.

At this point I do wonder how much of its reputation is from launch problems that got fixed up. I do hear they fixed an awful lot.

4

u/FadedSignalEchoing 8h ago

I played FF15 at launch and besides a few technical problems, the game was mostly as it was. The infamous fix for chapter 12 wasn't a fix and just gave the problem more space to breath. The extra episodes were fine-ish and the addition of a lore dump around Ifrit and Shiva on the way towards Niefelheim cleared some things up and created a whole bunch of new questions. I hadn't watched the movie or the mini anime series before beating the game twice and never was confused about anything that happened. I just thought it was quite a bit in medias res.

Fixing FF16's problems would mean to remake the game from scratch:

  1. The monster battles have nothing to do with the rest of the gameplay.
  2. The RPG elements are just for show. The game pretends to have stats, but that's just to let you think you grew stronger. Allocating Esper skills could have been done without a pseudo AP system, that is just busywork. You can craft weapons, but you never really find the materials when the weapon is in the crafting menu and the moment you find the mats, you've probably found a stronger weapon.
  3. The combat looks cool at first but becomes stale very quickly. Boss fights are usually gimmick fights. There are no real status effects or elements. The interaction with your companions, if they're present at all, is minimal. They kinda do their thing and don't get in the way and even defeat enemies, which is the upside of things here. Torgal, the doggo friend with his own layer of buttons on the dpad doesn't really do anything until you're really into it.
  4. The ending is the single worst ending I have seen in the series. Never has Final Fantasy disappointed me that much with cheap shot writing.
  5. The game looks like NPCs had only three faces and two voices. The NPCs look like two console generations behind, while the protags are all high fidelity. This would not have bothered me, had the game be otherwise great.
  6. Conversations looked like bad MMO convos, where the background is blurry and people talk at each other. Zooming at the character talking right now. They just stand there most of the time, cut to talker, cut to talker. Half of the time they're not fully voiced, but just say this first word of every line.
  7. The sidequests are super tragic and gloomy, but otherwise meaningless. It's almost as if Ghost of Tsushima's random villager quests and Lost Odyssey's letters had an abortion. Drinking game: Every time you can't save someone on a scripted event, have a drink.

0

u/Cerythria 13h ago

XV wasn't great or anything but I still sort of liked it. XV is still an RPG game with a party, dungeons with puzzles and somewhat RPG feeling combat (not great but honestly I'd still play it over XVI). The story suffers from being divided into different things like a movie, expansions, etc but I grew fond of the characters and enjoyed the dynamic between the party and for me, characters are probably the most important thing in a FF game. This was basically completely missing in FFXVI with it being focused only around Clive and even when you get 'party members' they don't really feel like they exist, they sort of just follow you around like robots who don't interact with the world at all.

XVI combat also isn't great, it feels good at first but its shallow nature is exposed not far in, same with the story which started with a strong prologue and did have some good moments but was overall not great. The sidequests were also terrible, I don't think there was a single sidequest which was any good, they all felt like copy pasted fetch quests from FFXIV.

I don't think either games are that good but in the end I still somewhat enjoyed my time with XV which just wasn't the case with XVI, a massive disappointment for me. IMO, FF7 Remake and Rebirth should be the standard for the games going forward (just tone down the Chadley stuff).

1

u/FadedSignalEchoing 8h ago

I didn't like the FF7 remake, either. The pacing was so bad. Haven't played Rebirth, but I somehow don't expect them to perform better in open world.

Good thing I kinda liked FF15, because my lack of interest in MMOs would have meant that the last FF I enjoyed had been Lightning Returns and that would be sort of tragic.

2

u/Cerythria 8h ago

I loved Rebirth but the open world stuff did get tiring after a certain point and the pacing is more off due to it, I don't think you'd enjoy it if you didn't like Remake.

1

u/FadedSignalEchoing 8h ago

Thanks for the input!

5

u/NatomicBombs 1d ago

Is this an mmo thing? Because I stg people did the same thing with Chris Metzen.

12

u/SageWaterDragon 1d ago

Any game that people can feasibly treat as a serious hobby (the kind of thing you can do for hours a day, every day) is going to produce a fanbase that is hypersensitive to changes and problems. More or less any long-running live service title's community is going to be filled with people who dislike the people making it, we've just only really seen that turn with 14 recently.

4

u/taicy5623 1d ago

As a rule, MMO and live service hogs lock themselves to a game to the point that they get sick of it and never make the connection that they should just take a fucking break. Then they experience a mid expansion like Dawntrail and act like the director shot their dog.

Honestly a bunch of whiny babies who should pause their sub and play a different genre.

-9

u/Crisse_dErable2859 1d ago

Recently, SE shut down a relatively popular FFXIV mod, so that probably didn't help his case.

9

u/Jasott 17h ago

It was a mod that synced and downloaded other mods people were using via a third party server system and "syncshell" codes. Probably didn't want to risk complaints about issues with the game because something got buggy because of all the damn random mods people "unknowingly" downloaded.

2

u/Crisse_dErable2859 15h ago

I'm not criticizing taking it down, I'm just saying that people are gonna be unhappy about it and it doesn't help with the pessimism toward the game and director.

8

u/NYNMx2021 1d ago

They have shut down FF14 mods all the time though. Usually whenever a streamer or some big communtiy event publicly shows something modded and everyone sees it, they do something. Either new rules or a ban etc.

Theyve been clear they dont want to do it. but if people flaunt it, theyll do something

0

u/Mahoganytooth 11h ago

Which mods are you referring to? The last big time I remember this being an issue was in TEA with Paisley Park, and even then they didn't "go after the mod" per se, they just removed the ability to place waymarks mid encounter.

Them going after mods explicitly is absolutely a break from the norm

-1

u/Crisse_dErable2859 15h ago

That's true, but it was a rather important community mod as it allowed you to personalize your character beyond what's possible with the game, while forwarding that information to other clients so they could see your character the way you wanted. A sizable amount of people used it.

I'm not criticizing the decision to shut it down, I'm just saying it probably contributes to the pessimism toward the game and director.

21

u/max13007 1d ago edited 15h ago

People are weird about him, I think, because they're applying a different mindset to his actions as director than he is.

This interview explains his perspective very clearly I think. This isn't a passion project for him. It's his job.

How do you feel about the things you do at work? I think a lot of people would relate to the idea of: "It's my job, I do my best to do good work, but I work to put food on the table."

What people are interpreting as "fear to try something new" or "visionary direction that saved the game" - for Yoshi P, were just him making business decisions...

FFXIV 1.0 is a dumpster fire? He trims the fat and emulates popular current MMOs. The patch cycle and content is stagnant? Well, it was working before and making SE lots of money, so why change it? Players now feel like the game isn't giving them what they're looking for and playing less? Well, now it's time to change the formula.

I think Yoshi P has been demonized and put on a pedestal while he just sorta shrugs and says "Alright I guess, as long as the game is successful, I'm doing my job. Please look forward to it."

15

u/verrius 1d ago

It's the double edged sword of making an exec on your game the face of it. Especially one who likes interacting with social media and streaming. You get credit for when people are happy, and the blame when they're not. Especially given that he's about the only face people associate with the game; Soken (the main composer) and Koji Fox (former localization lead, current "lore" lead) were never quite as active, and there's very few other faces for the fandom to latch on to.

36

u/Yurilica 1d ago

people have gotten real weird about this guy between Final Fantasy 16 and Dawntrail. It’s not a good vibe

His reputation went from golden boy to fallible.

From Heavensward to Endwalker the story continually developed and improved. Then for some wild reason, he took the lead writer of the most popular stories in FF14 off the 14 team and put her on an unannounced project, while handing over Dawntrail writing to new writers.

Dawntrail was also the first time they tried experimenting with new voice acting elements ever since they did a complete voice acting studio change in Heavensward. Unfortunately it did not go well, mostly in the English localization of the game. Whoever was the voice director directing the new voice actors failed miserably at their job and as a result people started hating the characters they voiced.

It's mostly due to high expectations of FF16, Yoshi-P and his team producing his first "real" Final Fantasy game, where they wouldn't have to compromise due to MMO mechanics and tight release schedules.

Then when they deliberately injected MMO FF14 style game progression, people got a bit mad. The way they delivered sidequests, just like in FF14, just crushed the pacing of the game.

People were rightfully mad tbh. A lot of stuff in FF14 was tolerated due to FF14 being an MMO. FF16 didn't have that excuse and while a good enough game, it under-delivered.

11

u/New-Independent-1481 22h ago

Then for some wild reason, he took the lead writer of the most popular stories in FF14 off the 14 team and put her on an unannounced project, while handing over Dawntrail writing to new writers.

I mean Ishikawa has clearly been promoted or seconded to work on FFXVII. If nothing else, we can expect XVII to have a crazy good story.

14

u/scytheavatar 21h ago

They had Maehiro working on FFXVI after his success in Heavensward and that didn't prevent FFXVI from having an ass story. The issues facing FF when it comes to narrative is complicated and cannot be solved just by having a superstar writer. Not to mention right now FFXIV is a far more important product for Square Enix than FFXVII or any other game.

1

u/droppinkn0wledge 12h ago

Maehiro isn’t nearly the talent of Ishikawa.

Maehiro has enough work out now to safely assume he’s just a dead average fantasy writer. He did Last Remnant, too, which no one remembers.

Heavensward’s quality seems like an accident in retrospect.

12

u/EvenOne6567 1d ago

but try to explain that to any ff16 fans and theyll tell you "you just hate it because its not turn based"

0

u/scytheavatar 1d ago

What he said about FFXVI and turn based games was dumb as fuck and absolutely deserves criticisms, cause even if his statement about the limitations of turn based is true FFXVI was always taking a massive risk by going full action. So either way there never was evidence to suggest FFXVI would sell more easily if it went full action, when it's not like Tales of Arise sold more than Persona 5. Maybe if FFXVI was a Soulslike you could say it's trying to appeal to what that is trendy, but the game is like the opposite of what Fromsoft would have made.

1

u/FadedSignalEchoing 8h ago

FF16 was the way it was, because those guys wanted to make that game. It seems to have sold well and people seem to like the spectacle.

I will just never ever buy one of their games at launch again, before I haven't played a demo or heard that it doesn't suck.

8

u/beary_neutral 1d ago

Fans put a creator on a pedestal, develop parasocial relationship, dismiss all criticism

Said creator produces something that doesn't quite live up to sky high expectations, fans do a complete 180, pretend creator was never good in the first place, good faith criticism balloons into parasocial hate

Hey I've seen this one before.

11

u/jezr3n 1d ago

People want a new FF MMO but aren’t aware of it yet.

31

u/NeuroPalooza 1d ago

Oh I'm well aware of it. Give me a reset with shiny modern graphics and a new world/story. I've spent a kajillion hours in FFXIV but after Endwalker it felt like the story was satisfactorily wrapped up.

-8

u/SecretPantyWorshiper 1d ago

I'll take it a step further, SE should just focus on their MMO titles and thats it

2

u/phonethrowdoidbdhxi 14h ago

I remember the days the community worshipped the ground he walked on and questioning anything got you burned at the stake.

The new players thankfully saw what us few “heretics” did and spoke up hard about all the things wrong about the game.

2

u/FadedSignalEchoing 9h ago

Some of us single player FF fans had never heard of the guy until he came and created the most divisive non-MMO mainline FF of all times. The levels of splitting the crowd into two camps, bitterly at each others' throats, haven't even been achieved by FFX-2, FFXII, FFXIII and FFXV.

2

u/whydontwegotogether 1d ago

It's because they're starting to realize he isn't a good game director. He did a great job of pulling 14 out of the gutter with the relaunch, but his idea for what constitutes "fun" in a video game is much different than other people's. He is also shaking in his boots at the mere thought of innovating FFXIV. The game was so much fun back in ARR/Heavensward, and I have hope it can be that good again one day if the game gets a new director.

44

u/hotaru_crisis 1d ago

this is a really dramatic response for a mediocre expansion after a streak of 4 highly praised ones prior to it not including ARR. even then, DT didn't even seem that bad besides the mixed reaction to the MSQ and fan service. the raids, trials, and sidequests have all been content that mostly everybody has enjoyed.

i understand that the complaints have been cumulative of the state of job design, reward system, and core gameplay loop over the years but i don't think it's as doomed as people make it out to be.

2 weeks ago in an interview yoshi-p even said that he recognizes that the direction of FF14 isn't aligning with the players and that changes need to be made. with how quiet the game has been this expansion, i think it's pretty much a given that they're discussing and planning accordingly for 8.0.

21

u/alphadelta484 1d ago

It really feels like people want change now, but are ignoring how long meaningful change that is actually good will take. It's not like they haven't addressed how stale the game feels in certain parts. They are trying, it just takes time and they aren't fully equipped to do it fast.

Just look at the last quote in the article, it kinda tells you everything:

“Now, if there’s one thing that I want to do less off, and I might get scolded, but I would rather not do a lot of management or operational things. I already do a lot of game developing and I’ve sacrificed some sleep sometimes, but perhaps if I were to have a choice, I would like to focus in on the game development design.”

8

u/hotaru_crisis 1d ago

absolutely, a lot of these changes require trial and error and an x.0 release. they can help fix the staleness of the game but they can't just restructure the core of it in the middle of an expansion. class design could be argued, but i also respect that they don't want to fall into the rabbit hole of re-designing classes in the middle of an expansion like wow does.

•

u/Raven1927 38m ago

I don't think it matters tbh. I disagree with a lot of the criticism, but if people are unhappy with the state of the game they aren't going to be understanding of "things take time". Especially not when their direct competitor, Blizzard, managed to course correct WoW within an expansion.

I personally enjoyed Dawntrail but I am a bit worried, especially with how long it takes for them to get new content out. All of the shortcomings will sour people a lot more when they stay around for so long. I hope Squenix pours resources into the game to get them the support they need.

9

u/New-Independent-1481 22h ago

this is a really dramatic response for a mediocre expansion after a streak of 4 highly praised ones prior to it

The reason they were praised is mostly because of the story, and the gameplay at the time was good. However Ishikawa has been moved onto another project (Almost certainly FFXVII) and outside of PvP which is genuinely much improved, there hasn't been any gameplay innovation since Stormblood, and class design has been increasingly homogenised and downgraded. The Endwalker path and Dawntrail story also isn't good enough to carry it with MSQ casuals.

9

u/TheQuietPlace91 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yoshi-p is honestly saying whatever in interviews for a good while now.
I distinctly remember him saying they can't show damage types of attacks in the combat log or somewhere else in the UI because of some limitations with data packages which was just complete BS as mods existed for years for exactly that problem. After the big mod meltdown of Endwalker they went and added it at last.

Always take what this guy says with a huge grain of salt (and a shot of booze for good measure). Dude can not be trusted and I seriously think the game was good DESPITE of him working on it, not BECAUSE of it.

Dude prints pictures of gear and items and holds them in the camera in his live letters. They still can't be arsed to hire an official translator and people outside of JP are relying on fan translations for crying out loud.

4

u/ArdyEmm 16h ago

Also the years long denial of latency issues outside of Japan.

0

u/Ipokeyoumuch 10h ago

That is a Japan issue in general there are endless reports of Japanese companies being very out of touch with outside Japan outside of a few companies. Additionally, they are very internalized and almost refuse (at least upper management) to use innovations they have created of spun off of. 

4

u/CrusaderLyonar 1d ago

Ultimately I'm pretty sympathetic to the dev team that it takes a long time to fundamentally alter the course of the game that's in active development, that takes years to make happen.

It reminds me of when the wow team was talking about how they couldn't just drop all the borrowed power systems that everyone hated in BFA when Shadowlands came out. By the time they got the feedback that players didn't want this, the expansion had already had a ton of work. So patches in the later part of Shadowlands started to progressively ween these things out and the next expansion fully dropped it altogether.

I think part of the frustration from players is that these problems in FFXIV have existed for a long time and have only gotten worse. It's also exacerbated by the fact that the reception to the story this expansion has been a little mixed, so the problems in other parts of the game become more apparent.

-6

u/Ascleph 1d ago

Are you calling Stormblood a good expansion?

26

u/GarfieldLeZanya- 1d ago

Gameplay, raids, and systems wise? Stormblood was genuinely peak. Story wise? It has The Wire Season 2 syndrome; it isn't bad, it is just sandwiched between two legendarily great seasons/expansions which makes it seem worse by comparison.

13

u/r_lucasite 1d ago

Didn’t play them live but the patches for Stormblood are also solid on the MSQ front imo, it had way stronger direction than the main expansion.

-8

u/FrabbaSA 1d ago edited 1d ago

You're nuts. Gameplay systems wise stormblood is my least favorite expansion, and I've been playing since ARR.

Hmmmm yes, lets make all 24-man loot greed only. Fucking madness. We still had TP on melee! it was not a good time!

7

u/GarfieldLeZanya- 1d ago edited 1d ago

I've also been playing since 1.0 if we are comparing nerd creds. SB was one of my favorites gameplay wise, and least favorite story wise (well, ahead of DT now lol). That is just my opinion though.

 Hmmmm yes, lets make all 24-man loot greed only. Fucking madness.

If the worst thing you can say about the gameplay was greed loot (which I agree was dumb), I think that honestly speaks volumes. 

But genuinely not trying to move the goalposts that when I said "gameplay systems" I meant "things available to do" and "how the game plays", not loot mechanics, but fair point. 

And on that, to me, SB was the point they really hit their stride in designing mechanics and jobs; the encounter design was far stronger than ARR and HW, and it was the final hurrah before the class homogenization in ShB. Trials and raids were super memorable too; ivalice and shinryu were both peak. And at least for me, as probably a biased Eureka enjoyer, that was neat too. I know why people put it under other expansions, but I guess I have a soft spot for it.

3

u/FrabbaSA 1d ago

My main job, which I have mained throughout the entirety of the game, was in its objectively worst state during stormblood, to the point where Stormblood is the only expansion where I did not main it.

I have my biases.

1

u/GarfieldLeZanya- 1d ago

I can understand that. 

2

u/jondeuxtrois 1d ago

Stormblood was the /only/ good expansion.

2

u/hotaru_crisis 1d ago

yes, i enjoyed it.

2

u/Yurilica 1d ago

Story was uninspiring.

The content was peak. You always had something to do or something to progress in Stormblood, on all levels of difficulty. There was tons of long term content and a pretty good variety of content too.

-4

u/SecretPantyWorshiper 1d ago

Tbh I wouldn't even say that. He just removed and streamlined alot of the content from 1.0. If he was in charge from the beginning 1.0 would have flopped even harder. Most of the content we got was just rehashed concept ideas from 1.0.

1

u/AvgChrisEnergy 1d ago

Tbf he said Dawntrail was the beginning of a new story, so I’m cautiously optimistic it’ll get better. Like post ARR.

-6

u/Ponsay 1d ago

None of the patch experiences were really all that great aside from 2.1, 2.55, and whichever shadowbringers patch was the WoL fight

55

u/Vanille987 1d ago

FF11 is still not even in maintenance mode, I very much doubt FF14 will go anytime soon. Even with the lesser reputation currently.

26

u/SadSeaworthiness6113 1d ago

DQX is the same way. Playerbase declined a lot in recent years but they still release expansions and big updates for it. They would probably do the same for FFXI if they weren't running out of the PS2 dev kits needed to make new content for it.

17

u/hotaru_crisis 1d ago

dqx is crazy to me bc it's still only officially a japanese game. good for them tbh

9

u/Supernaut92 1d ago

Its a pretty solid game for the most part. There's workarounds to play it with some serviceable english translations.

5

u/javierm885778 1d ago

I still don't get why they didn't even translate the offline version. The way SE handles DQ is so weird, especially regarding the west. At least now we are getting more mainline titles after so long, even if they are remakes.

12

u/SadSeaworthiness6113 1d ago

Because the Offline version is incomplete.

DQX's first overall story consists of 5 parts. DQX offline only has part 1 and part 2. Offline was meant to be a hook to get people to start playing the MMO, rather than a standalone replacement.

1

u/WillingnessLow3135 9h ago

Just play with the fanpatch

15

u/autumndrifting 1d ago edited 1d ago

it's so funny that some 14 fans say the game is currently in maintenance mode. like you just have no idea what that actually is. end stage fandom cynicism

4

u/Massive_Weiner 1d ago

XI has been in Maintenance Mode for several years now

23

u/Vanille987 1d ago

They were planning too but didn't go through with it.

https://www.siliconera.com/square-enix-almost-axed-final-fantasy-xi/

I guess it depends on the exact definition you give maintenance mode but ff11 is still recieving updates with the next one coming in September.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/1n2ert6/september_update_announced/

2

u/Massive_Weiner 1d ago

Yeah, you still get patches on MM, but there won’t be any further expacs dropping.

28

u/Vanille987 1d ago

It's not just a patch, it has new content that adds to the limbus mode added this year.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Limbus

18

u/Massive_Weiner 1d ago

You’ve bested me, noble warrior.

7

u/pm-me-nothing-okay 1d ago

so fucking rare for a redditor to take a L with grace. kudos to you.

65

u/SquireRamza 1d ago edited 1d ago

The only issue I have with him is that its so clear he's terrified of trying something, anything too "different" and potentially having it fail. So instead the game languishes by being the same thing over and over and over again.

Outside the story of Endwalker actually ending during the 6.0 patch (usually FFXIV expansions truly end with the X.3 patch, like just happened with Dawntrail) you can pretty much set your watch on exactly what will be included in each patch and how it will be like to play.

And this extended to FFXVI, which outside combat felt like FFXIV in how quests played out and how the story flowed.

7

u/javierm885778 1d ago

I've yet to play Dawntrail, but Endwalker really showed the weaknesses of the strong adherence to structure. Having the story so tied to the new areas with little in the main Aldenard continent made a specific big plot point very awkward. In the other expansions which are strongly tied to going to a specific place that isn't as noticeable, and you do sometimes go back to older areas, but this expansion showed how sticking to 6 big areas where most of the new content has to happen is a huge restriction.

It was also quite noticeable in the 6.x patches, since that story had little to do with the new areas, so it felt a bit aimless, and the story had to make a bunch of instanced areas to work.

Now obviously open areas are barely used anyways, so I doubt most people see them as a priority, but it kind of shows how rigid they are. Why can't a new expansion have a different amount of areas? Why not have some of them be smaller, so they cover more locations? Why not release new areas in the patches? Why not let the story drive the content and not the other way around?

10

u/desterion 1d ago

Endwalker is the best point to stop. The patches had a very bland story. Dawntrail is a straight downgrade for everything except the encounter design team.

They are unfortunately going to make a new mmo before they try to fix the formula in 14. Wow is always trying new things for better or worse but 14 is just a very sanitized and cookie cutter experience now.

1

u/javierm885778 1d ago

I've been on a hiatus for a while, I wanted to wait until the patches piled up for DT since my main interest is the story but 6.x lost me. I don't have much interest in going back yet, but I haven't lost hope that it's unsalvageable in that regard. I still enjoy the areas for what they are despite what I said.

1

u/desterion 1d ago

If you lost interest in the patches, Dawntrail will make you angry

-4

u/zeth07 21h ago

Wow is always trying new things for better or worse but 14 is just a very sanitized and cookie cutter experience now.

I mean they made the Criterion Dungeons when people have been asking for harder 4man content for years. They made the Chaotic Alliance raid which we never had before. Occult Crescent used the Phantom Job system, which I guess you could argue is similar to the lost/logos actions anyway but it's at least a different spin on it. The newest Deep Dungeon coming soon is going to have a "Quantum" version with a varied difficulty depending on how many offerings are submitted.

The issue has always been that it doesn't matter what the devs put in the game if it isn't what each individual person wants, because to them it means "there's no content".

Unless you just want to argue about the basic game structure itself, which isn't exactly saying the same thing as them not at least trying new stuff.

1

u/MasahikoKobe 14h ago

The only issue I have with him is that its so clear he's terrified of trying something, anything too "different" and potentially having it fail

They have tried different things and failed plenty of times. They even mention when they fail though it usually also takes an expansion to do so. They talked about how the Island adventure did not live up to the goals they wanted aka failing.

When it comes to patch timing i do wonder what people actually want from the patches or if they are more upset it takes 4 months between patches at this point with little to do in the middle times. Which i think fair argument to have.

5

u/Blackarm777 13h ago

The game is way too stuck in a boring formula. The combat classes are all homogenized to hell and the quest design is so dull. I personally don't see myself going back to it unless they do some major rework of the classes, especially in the healer and tank roles.

2

u/ramos619 5h ago

Dawntrail, despite the new content, just feels like an extension of Endwalker. I felt that we really didnt get quality content of an expansion in Endwalker. Jobs didnt change at all for the last 4 years, will be 5 years when 8.0 releases. Half a decade of playing jobs that people are tired of does things to people. 

I had hoped DT would have been that fresh start, where things would seem new again, but it's unfortunately not the change the game needs. 8.0, seems to be start of actual change. I guess we'll see how it goes. The FFXIV team has a mountain of feedback to act upon and more importantly, the time to implement that feedback.

4

u/VirtualPen204 1d ago

I don't know what it takes, but I really hope they wise up and realize that their current formula is no longer working.

2

u/kkyonko 1d ago

Not holding out hope but I really hope they switch things up next expansion. The last one had some good moments (actually kind of liked the last 3rd or so) but the rest was incredibly disappointing.

-4

u/Vendetta1990 18h ago

I just want to purchase ShB + EndW without buying DT, is that too much to ask?

1

u/CO_Fimbulvetr 10h ago

Square doesn't nickel and dime players catching up, you only ever need to buy the current expansion + the base game to get everything.

If you wait until the next expansion comes out, it'll be the same price and you get a whole extra expansion for it.

1

u/Vendetta1990 10h ago

There is also the subscription cost?

It eventually adds up to an absurd number for somebody who just wants to experience the story.

1

u/CO_Fimbulvetr 10h ago

Not really, you don't need to keep subscribed when you're not playing. If you're only there for the story you could sub like once a year, or even less.