FFXIV Is Hurting Its Veteran Players (and here's why)

greetings travelers time to make a boring and complicated video with les joker where i talk about a bunch of stuff and somehow it all ties back into final fantasy 14 just so that youtube will recommend my content to people i am but a mere slave to the algorithm in today's class we are going to start with the coldest take in all of human history designing games is very hard all games not just of the video variety not only is the medium hard to design for there is such extreme variety within the space of games that there can be extreme gaps between what people enjoy or what people even want from the game itself not everyone likes solitaire and not everyone likes sekito shadows die multiple times for very different reasons some games want to tell an interesting story some are designed to help you relax and others want to piss you off enough to keep playing them sometimes when playing a game that is fun and successful it almost feels like a fluke that it was even created in the first place because one of the most difficult things to do is to make a successful game and know the exact reason for its success this is usually something that you will see if a team develops a sequel to a game where it still feels good to the majority of players even with some slight gameplay tweaks because they are able to keep what drew people into the game in the first place still these sequels often won't appeal to every single original player of the original game but i'm getting off track with what i want to focus on skill floors and skill ceilings the floor being the bare minimum amount of work to understand the fundamentals of a game and the ceiling being the amount of effort required to become the best at a particular game some games have low floors and high ceilings go and chess are easy examples some games have high floors and high ceilings like my personal favorite board game of food chain magnate bonus points if you know what that is those skill floors and skill ceilings can often get conflated a lot when they involve playing against another player because while chess might not be hard to learn if you are playing against someone who knows what they are doing you are going to get obliterated this is also true for fighting games and true for all competitive games it is why it can be super hard to get into competitive games when you will usually have to get to a similar skill level of your opponents to start feeling like you have any chance at success not many people can let themselves get steamrolled for several hundred matches before getting frustrated so this introduces a problem you are a developer and you want to sell copies of your game you don't want people to get scared away by an initial skill curve so in order to get more people to play your game you lower the skill floor and you do it again and you do it again over and over again does this have any consequences yes it is almost impossible to change the skill floor of a game without affecting the skill ceiling as well although it doesn't directly correlate that lowering the floor also lowers the ceiling it will most of the time but the skill floor exists to get people into the game what is the skill ceiling here for to keep people playing the game games with really high ceilings will have people playing them for seemingly forever as the game will never truly be solved for all of human history [ __ ] like chess starcraft league of legends super smash brothers melee and your choice of tekken marvel vs capcom old melty blood or even skull girls you get the idea i could jerk off the fgc some more but that would leave me feeling disgusted at myself besides i threw melee in there as well which of course i only listed competitive games so far are there single player games with extremely high skill ceilings hell yeah celeste mushi hime sama hades and hand it over that thing every popular from software title and literally anything that is actively speed ran speed run speed rund speed ran what is the proper past tense of speed run nah who cares an ideal game is one that is easy to get into but gives you the opportunity to waste tons of additional hours going way beyond what is expected for the average player i will emphasize that this is an ideal and not often a reality for games that you only want to sell one time and people sinking many hours into it doesn't automatically make the company more money you might think that having a high skill ceiling wouldn't matter for sales but it does help build brand loyalty so that people keep coming back for your next title and don't feel ripped off i am not going to go into an entirely business focused discussion here but much like how there is a balance in game design with the actual art of making a game and the balance of making money there is also a balance in where you place your skill floor and the skill ceiling you don't want your game to be too alienating that nobody can get into it but you also want to give a reason for people to stick around so they don't immediately get bored and feel like they wasted their time so how does this all tie back into final fantasy xiv well i'm glad you asked allow me to elaborate on some of my recent comments on the direction that has been stated for the game job design and fight design baby something that can be really hard to understand jobs in final fantasy 14 used to be so much more complicated than what you see today i'm not talking about shadowbringers or stormblood i'm talking mostly about heaven's ward this was the peak of complexity for job design and final fantasy 14 in many ways an era that is either gilded or stained in people's minds based on whether you could get past the initial skill curve with dps checks so notorious that whispering faust in the direction of a veteran from this time causes them to pee themselves just a bit either with excitement or fear or a mix of both this era is usually met with some mixed responses because while jobs had some of the highest ceilings it was also met with some of the most difficult skill floors and other associated gameplay jank this is from a time when people didn't get their cooldowns reset after a wipe also a time in which paladin was unviable physical ranged had a casting stance cleric stance existed monk was monk and accuracy was an actual stat this expansion is hard to talk about because people need to be very specific about the stuff that they liked in particular and also have to acknowledge all of the additional jank that probably wasn't that good savage rating was also way harder than today in literally every aspect stormblood saw the reduction of a lot of the jank that was associated with heaven's ward and it's also where savage was made easier and ultimate was introduced to appeal to people who like the difficulty of older savage shadowbringers removed even more complexity usually in the form of things like aggro management heal mechanics and different damage types with no changes to the actual difficulty of fight design except that the epic of alexander ultimate was largely considered to be the hardest ultimate by many and i don't really want to elaborate on it too much you kind of get the idea a big part of why tanks and healers don't like shadowbringers is that they had complexity removed in the form of aggro management no longer existing and healers having less damage buttons in its place they got absolutely nothing else great this made it easier to get into the support roll types that would originally alienate new players and clog up the queue times for everybody however as most people who play those jobs after the change it feels like there is a massive hole for what they had to manage before a missing puzzle piece that hasn't been filled since then this is where i want to get into the difference between easy content and hard content in final fantasy 14. things like old aggro management do affect casual players with how they will emit the initial skill curves in this game because yes you need to be able to hold aggro and even the most comatose inducing of content dps buttons don't really affect healers but having to press cleric stance and manage cleric stance certainly does healers having something like two more dps buttons and dps buttons in general is where i want to focus the most because dps buttons in easy content in final fantasy 14 do not matter at all you cannot call any of it difficult you want to know why because you don't need to do anything with it to complete the instance i don't give a flying [ __ ] how overly complicated you make some dps rotations in this game it can require 500 apm and 8 hot bars to maximize if you don't need to do that amount of damage to clear the encounter you can't call the job hard this is why dps is so incredibly brain dead easy in anything that is considered normal content because the game doesn't require you to press anything you just exist this is why talking about job design and final fantasy 14 is so immensely frustrating because how hard and how easy a job is considered by you is going to entirely be based on what type of content you are running black mage rotation is easy and straightforward it's basically free in anything that is easy since it's not going to make you run around a bunch and even if you manage to drop your entire rotation you are still going to complete the fight on the flip side if you are playing black mage in ultimate content you will have to be pretty calculated and probably work harder than someone playing a physical range job this is why i still call black mage hard because even i'm not enough of a [ __ ] masochist to even consider playing it in ultimate there are people who consistently do play the job though even in ultimate even during progression and that's great they like it they also probably play the job a lot and know how to manage it well kind of like how i still play samurai because i'm comfortable on the job this all kind of wraps back to the idea of jaws being easy but the gameplay content is hard this just isn't possible with how final fantasy xiv is designed but also i simultaneously think it's its greatest strength final fantasy 14 is awesome because hardcore and casual players can effectively separate themselves so that we never have to step on each other's toes this distinction is made based on what type of gameplay content you want to participate in when the jobs have some challenging parts and interesting optimizations it means that players can make easier content more fun for themselves by trying to deal maximum damage parsing it's not just for annoying parsers though even players who never want to step foot into something like ultimate are more than willing to try to play the game better i know plenty of people personally who never attempted savage for a very long time but absolutely knew their rotations for jobs because it made the game more satisfying for them the game offers you a skill ceiling a way to get some more hours out of it for the typical complete idiot they can see the samurai aoe changes and proceed to use their single target rotation for an entire trash pull anyways because these changes aren't going to make them play the game in a logical manner which brings me to the real question who are these changes intended for super casuals who don't want to play the game correctly anyways it can't be because they're just going to mash whatever button their little heart desires is it for hardcore players who are going to maximize their job no matter how stupid it is that doesn't seem right either because usually those are the players that are most in love with the small amounts of complexity that the game offers them what these changes seem to be is a way to lower the tier of entry to get into something like savage or ultimate because when you are completely new at this game and nothing is required of you as you play all the easy content for thousands of hours you might start to get a little bored and want to try something a little bit more challenging only to finally be hit with some of the first real skill curves this game will throw at you learning how to maximize raid buffs at the start of a fight and maintaining a dps rotation of some kind for tanks and healers it's also when you really have to start planning out your cooldowns this is when the game goes from absolutely nothing mattering to everything mattering all at once players who hit this first wall will usually experience some frustration at how they feel like they have to completely change their approach to the game you do it is not the same game that you've been playing this entire time because there is this distinction though between easy and hard people who don't want to learn how to play their job correctly can just be filtered out so instead these changes of making the job easier to play seem to be directed at players who want to get into ultimate but also simultaneously don't want to learn how to play their job usually at the cost of pissing off people who like the job for whatever difficulty or gameplay that it provides ultimately making it easier to get through something that is supposed to take up the time of the people who put the most hours into the game in the first place is it hard to do stuff in ultimate yes that is the point that content is here to [ __ ] us up not everyone is suited to slam their head into something over and over again until they get it right that's why it is so weird that it appears that they want to lower the bar of entry when it helps let players gauge if that type of content is something that they would even enjoy in the first place like many things in final fantasy 14 it is not for everybody once again reminding us that we get to decide how serious we want to take the game depending on what we sign up for the only time casuals and hardcores have to deal with each other is when the jobs themselves change this also gets into the very hard territory of what is considered gameplay nuance and gameplay hinderances what is considered a unique hurdle to play a job correctly and what is considered unintended difficulty a question that you can only really answer if you play a job a lot and have an exact understanding of what it is that you like about it you will commonly see people throw around the claim that the developers do not play the jobs in this game that's not true they play three jobs black mage dragoon and paladin these jobs have varied in their viability but from the raw gameplay standpoint they have been consistent since the dawn of a realm reborn black mage is not having its cast times reduced to make it a generally mobile caster dragoon still has to use its gap closers for dps and paladin still has the most interesting core gcd rotation for a tank even though people find these aspects of the jobs challenging or frustrating when learning how to play these jobs they have never fully compromised them black mage has more mobility options now and dragoon doesn't get locked down for as long anymore but they would never outright remove these aspects of the job because they can easily identify that it is core to the gameplay loop and core to the identity of the job when a change is made to a job that causes a massive uproar from the community that mostly plays said job things like the chitin removal and trick attack changes it is usually because it seems like such a drastic change in what people think is core to that job even something like removing dots on summoner has been met with some very solid pushback i don't really care for the argument that the dots make the job harder it really doesn't but the idea that dots are core to the identity of summoner is a much more solid and reasonable argument especially since dot gameplay isn't really expressed anywhere else in this game at least not with the way of how old dreadworm trance and try disaster functioned sorry bard given how summoner currently plays it's honestly not that hard to see how these two buttons could have still easily fit into the rotation with little to no consequence to the gameplay and still preserving this aspect of the job's identity i don't hate the new summoner by the way and my biggest problem with old summoner was trying to get the pests to cooperate which even then hey devs you want to know why people wanted instant casts during bahamut it was so that you wouldn't lose a worm wave while bahamut was out since that was tied to you finishing your cast but now that bahamut is entirely independent i would have expected it to be a low mobility phase and for phoenix to be your high mobility phase at least based on how it played in previous expansion also why doesn't summoner get to alternate two buttons during phoenix anymore that was something that a lot of people liked and i didn't think it needed to go away all this comes around to asking the same question again who are these changes intended for i don't know the answer because every time i try to come up with a solution it doesn't seem like it makes sense is it the people who play the job or is it the people who don't like the job and apparently can't find anything else in the game for them to play a lot of these changes do not seem directed towards preserving aspects of the job that people enjoy some jobs are not going to be popular with every single player but i think that's okay you have 18 jobs in this game it's fine if some of them are not as popular especially if the people who play it like it you want me to give two more examples how about gun breaker people will complain about how much weaving that you need to do on that job and you know what i say why the [ __ ] are you playing gun breaker it is literally the busiest tank that is the identity that is what makes gun breaker gun breaker you have paladin and warrior if you want to play a less busy tank that is also viable because everything is viable so why change a job that is designed to have tight weaving in burst windows it's a bit mind-numbing because they did make the job busier this expansion and that kind of seems like the next logical step to expand upon the job from shadowbringers they also gave it another cartridge and added another cartridge spender which seems about right while i don't think this is a perfect upgrade i can see the direction that they want to take the job and i think it still preserves the identity of what it was about you wouldn't want to remove an aspect from a jobs resource management you would expect them to add to it i personally like the business of gun breaker that's why i like playing it over the other tanks don't take that away from me yeah it might make it harder to move bosses during burst windows but it's not impossible and it's a gameplay nuance to playing the job another tank that got a change is the cone attack on warrior why is the cone optimal no is it viable yes you have three other tanks in this game that do not function that way three other choices of jobs that don't have to deal with this nuance the same people who will scream about homogenization of jobs in this game are more than willing to indulge the practice what about samurai aoe i liked having to weave my character in and out of a trash pole so that i could cleave everything [ __ ] being able to walk out of the middle of a trash when all of their aoes get baited was a nice thing you could say that a cone is better than a circle in very specific circumstances but no samurai couldn't possibly have this uniqueness people couldn't possibly like it they want to make it like other melees who don't have to move is moving our character and targeting an enemy considered to be too much to ask seriously you know why i'm really irritated at that change in particular though the playstyle of having circle aoes and building up your big hits that are cones you want to know what job does this right now yeah that's right it's reaper reaper gets to have the unique aoe shapes that have this fun little movement pattern of weaving their character in and out but not samurai anymore reaper's allowed to have that fun and it's considered gameplay nuance for them but not for nippon steel learning how to angle your aoe was something that you just picked up over time and got better at that's it it was viable so why did it need to change who were these changes intended for i guess reaper's going to get this taken away next expansion after they decided that people enjoyed it too much i'll say the last quiet part out loud here why did anyone put the work in to play the job correctly if it is just going to be taken away why did i waste my time learning it because it seems like the correct answer to these skill curves in this game is to just complain enough until they take it away that is how i feel that is how it seems to me and to many players it doesn't have to be the intention of the developers but it definitely comes across that way and for all the people who keep complaining about these micro difficulties having uniqueness to jobs will make some slightly harder to play than others it is fine as long as nothing is unviable because if you are going to complain that an aspect of one job is harder than another the only answer is going to be to make them all exactly the same anyways i could go on for hours and fixate on tiny changes that i don't like and go back to being the joker here is what i want to be clear about final fantasy 14 gets this complexity from the job design it gets a skill sealing from the job design this is because you don't have to play the jobs correctly unless you're attempting to play something hardcore you can still challenge yourself to maximize a job though and content that you find boring to make it interesting for yourself making players only able to satisfy themselves by going into only the hardest content that they like is going to make them hate the rest of the game by proxy this is something that hardcore players already experience but this will absolutely exacerbate the problem even further final fantasy 14 is a good mmo because it gives you the tools to min max if you want to but it doesn't require you to that is why i hate lowering the skill ceiling because it hurts some of the most dedicated players who sank the most amount of time into this game min maxers already coexist with mediocre players like me that is why this game works that is why this game is successful the last thing i want to mention that i didn't have a good place to slide in i don't like this quote of yoship that gets thrown around a lot when discussing the game because i think it gets misinterpreted at least in my opinion yoshi p said that people shouldn't feel bad about unsubbing and that they should re-subscribe when the game gives them something that they want to do this does not mean that he wants people to actively unsub it means he doesn't want people to feel like they are forced to stay subbed unless you own a house he wants players to play the game when they feel like it has earned their time i think it's still an admirable way to make an mmorpg centered around not forcing people to waste time on it but by continuously lowering the skill ceiling that exists it will slowly push people away over time and give them less reason to stick around and less reason to stay subscribed that is the reason why i am so passionate about this because i like this game heck i'd even say that i love final fantasy 14. i do not want to see it fail because by the time these issues really start to catch up with the game it will already be too late i don't think the state of the game right now is bad but i don't like the direction that it is going in this is something that everyone should at least keep in the back of their mind these flaws and these negative feelings that people have towards certain aspects of the game are very real whether or not i am the one voicing these opinions it is also why criticizing games isn't always about trying to ruin them at least not all the time now let's get out there and turn all jobs into just one singular button that plays on autopilot

Channel: Misshapen Chair

Views: 161,474

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Id: 1d_fMH9Lwvs

Length: 25min 6sec (1506 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022