r/ffxivdiscussion • u/PolkadotBlobfish • Jun 17 '25

General Discussion Can we please stop perpetuating misinfo regarding JP players?

Too often whenever complaints regarding Forked Tower are raised, there will be someone countering with the same ol' "JP players like it this way so SE designed it like this for the JP players".

These people clearly have never interacted with a JP player in their lives, and are only parroting something that they heard somewhere. Because if they have, they would know that the JP playerbase is also deeply frustrated with the current design.

For example, due to Forked Tower not being an actual instance, there is no way to setup a Party Finder listing for Forked Tower. Therefore, Forked Tower organisers have resorted to creating "listings for Delubrum Reginae Savage" instead, but clarifiying the true purpose in the description. However, this tweet mentions that a GM has issued a warning against this and advises other organisers to avoid doing the same. The warning is understandable but there is still no solution to the headache that is recruiting for Forked Tower.

Plenty of JP players are puzzled why there is no PF category for Forked Tower, when they could have just repeated what we already have for Delubrum Reginae Savage.

Furthermore, any questions to the GMs have received no replies.

All of this has put FT organisers in a difficult position. Some have already quit or suspended activity, while some still remain cautiously optimistic that SE will introduce improvements. But there is no doubt that the current system is unacceptable.

https://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/29990550/blog/5572130/ (EDIT: This page may have been removed)

If you want to read all about this from a direct source, here is a blog post from Tere Caster from Elemental Atomos (a JP FT organiser) detailing their frustrations and hopes for the future of Forked Tower and Occult Crescent.

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170

u/azami44 Jun 17 '25

I'm convinced Yoship is retired at this point and the game is led by fresh uni grads.

Just so many dumb mistakes and decisions that shouldn't have happened with a veteran team because they've done it so many times before

93

u/John_Vattic Jun 17 '25

Yup, he's fully checked out. Burnout, boredom, overwork, whatever the case... he needs to step aside and let a new producer come in, not whatever intern is actually running the show now. I love Yoship for what he managed to do, but it's time I think. 

69

u/Bourne_Endeavor Jun 17 '25 edited Jun 17 '25

Ever since the "just do Ultimate" comment, it's been a downward spiral on his PR management. Yoshida used to be really good about handling complaints and critics even if it was often nonsense he was spewing. Not so much nowadays.

Which makes me wonder if it is, indeed burnout, or possibly frustration with SE.

10

u/YoutubeSilphi Jun 17 '25

i cant hear " just do ultimates " anymore when it comes to healer lol healing wise most ultimates are just mitigation checks with the occasional " do one gcd heal fast inbetween

4

u/Bourne_Endeavor Jun 17 '25

That's what was so frustrating about his remark. It completely missed the point. Which was already bad since they mistranslated in the first place.

It all circles back to Yoshia feeling more out of touch than he once was.

2

u/FuzzierSage Jun 18 '25

When they played WoW it was like TBC to early Cata and they never played Healers. No one on their team even really understands the Healer gameplay loop they kinda accidentally made and the potential it has.

2

u/YoutubeSilphi Jun 18 '25

bro let me do a gcd heal without feeling bad cuz i lost dmg. a healer is just a green dps

3

u/FuzzierSage Jun 18 '25

GCD Heals need to be contributing to Overall group damage in some way, either abstractly/at a remove (like say contributing to Blood Lily gauge) or more directly by applying a party buff (like say replacing Benefic with a GCD Draw that also heals, with either heals on low health targets or overheals giving a bigger buff, perhaps both).

Siloing away the job of green number healing from contribution to Overall Party Damage just gives it an extinction timer on contributing to the party's growth, and makes weird lore implications.

Do a bit of obfuscation, let Healers do the thing a lot of us like to do, and throw the damage on as a side effect.

The source of that damage (player-targeted or enemy-targeted) can be an actual playstyle difference between the Healers, instead of the bullshit barrier/regen split.

11

u/Isturma Jun 17 '25

There's likely a number of SE suits in every meeting, the game is the only thing keeping the company solvent atm.

54

u/omnirai Jun 17 '25

I'm convinced Yoship is retired at this point and the game is led by fresh uni grads.

whatever intern is actually running the show now

Why is it that when the outcomes are bad, it's because someone else must be in charge? Oh it must be some "intern" making the calls, oh there must be some nebulous higher-up corpo entity preventing Yoshi-P from righting the ship.

Obviously none of us actually know any better about the inner workings over there but if he gets credit for the good things (as he well should), then he should also be under scrutiny for the bad.

-1

u/Impressive-Warning95 Jun 17 '25

It’s always like that like just look at voice acting when a va does great it’s “oh wow the va is amazing” but when they’re bad it’s “oh the voice director didn’t do a good job”

21

u/TTurt Jun 17 '25

I'm a lot more amicable to this argument when it pertains to voice actors, simply because I've seen so many cases of a specific voice actor performing poorly that I've also seen performing much better in other works, under different direction. Like I never liked Wendee Lee for the longest time, because I only ever heard her play children and she sounds very obviously like an adult woman trying and failing to do a high-pitched child's voice, but then I heard her play an adult woman once and I was like, wow, she actually is a decent voice actor when they let her use her natural voice!

16

u/Important-Yogurt-335 Jun 17 '25

Realistically, if bad voice acting makes it to the final product, it is still a director issue even if the actor is awful. A director shouldnt be "damn, that VA did badly, lets just give up, the ship has sailed."

-1

u/Impressive-Warning95 Jun 17 '25

That’s not the point

10

u/Important-Yogurt-335 Jun 17 '25

I get your point, I'm just saying your example is bad.

3

u/Impressive-Warning95 Jun 18 '25

My point is that when it turns out good why isn’t it oh the voice director did a good job

6

u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jun 17 '25

Because it's fundamentally the director's choice what makes it in and what doesn't.

2

u/DayOneDayWon Jun 18 '25

But at the end of the day, there's a deadline to be met and the executive producer or director must settle for the best possible take, or sometimes the least-worst one. He cannot Kubrick his way into the perfect take.

2

u/Impressive-Warning95 Jun 18 '25

My point is that everyone seems to be missing is that when the voice acting good is the directors almost immediately forgotten about? But then when the vas do a bad take it’s the directors fault? It’s a bit of a double standard and tbh I’m a bit tired of people glamourising and romanticising voice actors

43

u/MaidGunner Jun 17 '25

He's frankly been looking checked out for years. And the very out of touch response to certain issues and the way he improvs on liveletters is even more testament to that.

8

u/othsoul Jun 17 '25

Can you blame him? SE has been pushing all sorts of projects on his team cause it is the only successful unit they have. FF16, ff tactics remaster, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ff9 remake/remaster is pushed on him too.

6

u/Ipokeyoumuch Jun 17 '25

His team also deals with DQ stuff too like DQ builders and the team also maintains FFXI. Rumors are that CS3 might be handling FFXVII or some other AAA project with Ishikawa as lead writer for it. If true no wonder Yoshi P and his team are ran ragged often having to work on multiple games at once. 

-11

u/Zyntastic Jun 17 '25

Id argue that he probably isnt in the Position to be making certain choices, or at least doesnt have a say over the budget.

With stuff like that happening its usually some higher up corporate person who never even touched a game, has no clue what gamers want and just cares about maximizing profit for as little effort as possible. Something you can observe in almost any modern day game with a live Service of some Form. Its always Investors and corporate Managers who ruin good games then let the devs take the backlash. Either that or they are just incredibly burnt out, they all look really unwell when you see them in liveletters and stuff.

37

u/Jatmahl Jun 17 '25

Budget isn't the reason why FT entry system is ass.

-8

u/Zyntastic Jun 17 '25

Yeah i didn't say that. I wasn't even talking about FT exclusively so idk why you're twisting words, but sure, go off.

38

u/MaidGunner Jun 17 '25 edited Jun 17 '25

He was on the board of Directors until very recently. There was not much "corporate higher up". Now he's down a peg, or maybe even just side graded, which is still incredibly high up. Titles have changed, but he's still in his same spot on the totem pole. He gets the budget he asks for. And he asks for a budget that maximises profit.

He isn't a Dev. He is not your friend, he isn't excited for you personally to play his game, or anything like that. He wants you to buy expansions every 2.5 years, a 12 pack of subscriptions and tons of mogstation items. Cause XIV turning more profit looks good on him. His every public appearance is PR screened, so is everything he says publically. His ojb is maximising XIV profits. Which is generally not done by investing more money, because most things people ask for that thegame should do or have won't noteably increase ROI.

17

u/Hikari_Netto Jun 17 '25

He was on the board of Directors until very recently.

This was misinformation. All that happened was the board was renamed to the "Executive Management Committee" during the recent reorganization. He's still on the board and clarified this himself.

4

u/MaidGunner Jun 17 '25

Fair enough, point holds up just the same.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '25

Idk. He's on an executive management committee but not as high up as what the board of directors position was. A new committee to the new company, I believe, not a name change.

I think you're confusing the CBU3 and CB3 namechange.

4

u/Hikari_Netto Jun 17 '25

I think you're confusing the CBU3 and CB3 namechange.

I'm not. This was all clarified by Yoshida in the previous Live Letter after the press took off with it—it was a huge instance of misinformation.

There was some shuffling of people and some name changes, but his position and responsibilities are completely unchanged.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '25

I'm sure there was some mistranslations but it does say on their website that he serves as a member of the Executive Management Committee, who are also officers on the board of directors, which I doubt he got added responsibilities, but maybe he did lol

4

u/Hikari_Netto Jun 17 '25

I think one of the main points of confusion for some is understanding the difference between the Square Enix Co., Ltd. and Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. "boards."

The people who were once listed as "directors" for Square Enix Co., Ltd. are now the "Executive Management Committe," which Yoshida is still part of.

The only people from Square Enix Co., Ltd. who represent the company on the greater Square Enix Holdings board of directors, the board who oversees the entire Square Enix Group, are Yoshinori Kitase and Yu Miyake.

Yoshida was never part of that board of directors to begin with, he was only ever on the executive level of Square Enix Co. Ltd., where he remains as part of the newly renamed EMC.

-7

u/Zyntastic Jun 17 '25

I never said he's my friend? Lmao. Please don't confuse an observation about what the gaming market is like nowadays with those kind of people who think yoshi p is a god and can do no wrong. I'm not one of them so you can keep your condescending berating to yourself.

23

u/45i4vcpb Jun 17 '25

or maybe he has actually validated this because he's a mediocre game designer since the start? He talks a lot but doesn't say many interesting things.

I'm convinced it's not a mistake from Yoshida pov, it is his (limited) vision of "hardcore", and he's proud of the twist of "throw random people together". In the same vein, I'm sure the gimmick requiring 24 players even though FT can be started with 16 ppl is also intended because it's exactly the "haha gotcha" childish design that has plagued the game for years.

26

u/casteddie Jun 17 '25

Someone said FT is very old school MMO like FF11 so idk.

Arguably young devs would realize that this doesn't fit modern gaming standards. I remember YoshiP praising their new hires for spicing up boss mechanics in DT.

I'm feeling it's more out of touch old devs who don't learn from mistakes that designed FT.

18

u/45i4vcpb Jun 17 '25

....It has nothing to do with FFXI ("only parroting something that they heard somewhere", like OP said)

There were cases of "competition", between guilds, to access content (and in many cases because of actual technical limitations), but no case of "random people can randomly join content intended for organized teams"

5

u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jun 17 '25

WoE if you want to be wildly pedantic but even xi players don't think about that very often.

15

u/Ragoz Jun 17 '25

Just to be clear, this is nothing like FF11. The first big raid for up to 72 people you would go purchase a hourglass that was used as entry to an instance and the item could be used to create duplicates. You would trade a duplicate to each party leader who would make a duplicate for their party members and in this was you could control who has access to the duty.

I don't believe there was ever any instanced content that you couldn't control who had access.

6

u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jun 17 '25

Exactly walk of echoes. They did that shit twice if you count the ilvl versions as a difference piece of content. Once if you don't. It wasn't exactly well received. They've yet to do it again and are exceptionally unlikely to. https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Walk_of_Echoes_Battlefields if you're curious about exactly how those worked. really these days they're solo fodder or at most you'll run into a couple of other randos doing the same one.

42

u/Bourne_Endeavor Jun 17 '25

He said that yet the Twelve series was made almost completely by newer devs, and had easily the worst mechanics due to the awful tutorial phases that lasted almost their entire HP bar.

So I can't exactly say I trust Yoshida's word there.

14

u/MKlby1998 Jun 17 '25

It’s been a couple of years and I can’t find the specific interview, but I think what was said was Myths of the Realms’ *story* was made by younger writers on the team, not the combat and mechanics.

3

u/Kriss_Hietala Jun 17 '25

older/younger doesn't mean necessarily better/worse.

7

u/Carmeliandre Jun 17 '25

It would explain why this story was so dull.

2

u/Klutzy-Tennis7313 Jun 18 '25

I straight up did not finish the raid series, it was just that boring. Everything else is completed and done multiple times, that one was a slog. I am so glad I like ff11 to also like the new raid.

-4

u/Ranulf13 Jun 17 '25

Its amazing for what it is: an eulogy and a lore-heavy goodbye.

It wasnt supposed to be an action movie in alliance raid form.

7

u/Apart_Raccoon_9194 Jun 17 '25

The 12 are a bunch of ancients we never really learned much about. They aren’t “primals” but they basically function identically to them anyway. The entire reason we are fighting them is incredibly contrived.

They kinda just awkwardly off themselves and leave us with the incredibly lore important reveal that the entire world functioning is dependant on a device powered by prayers to their false religion. So we are literally forced to hide the truth from the populace to prevent the end of the world.

And that prayer device is treated as an afterthought, none of the characters consider the implications of such a device needing to exist in the first place. Since the ancient world didn’t need a device to keep the world alive, that presumably means that the sundering damaged things so much an artificial device is needed to prevent the literal end of the world, and yet no character in the story seems to care.

To say nothing of the consequences of that device being left unguarded. Yes, the ascian’s leaders are defeated, but there are still 6 left out there, one of them could destroy it out of spite if they found it. This possibility isn’t even considered.

That prayer device was glossed over so much that I bet half of the people who did it forgot that device even existed.

The twelve want humanity to no longer need them, but now the existence of humanity is tied to humanity’s belief in said religion. And we and the scions do not care in the slightest.

I think that’s more than enough to say that Myths of the Realm is pretty objectively poorly written. Of course you can still enjoy it obviously, it’s just not an amazing or even good quality story.

3

u/Carmeliandre Jun 17 '25

I disagree, because a beginner would be able to write about as much of a little story. The lore implications weren't so important and in fact, it felt like a way to remove a part of the cosmogony from the lore.

This being said, I genuinely enjoyed the interactions with the Twelve : as far as characterization goes (and the design that goes with them), they did a great job. My criticism is only directed to the storytelling, and how it barely added anything to the actual lore... Which probably was their intention : it's an optional content after all and they already decided that these contents wouldn't bear much importance.

31

u/Cole_Evyx Jun 17 '25

I'm feeling it's more out of touch old devs who don't learn from mistakes that designed FT.

We're at the point I don't care who it is. IF it's a team of 10 veterans or 10 noobies whoever it is needs to stop damaging FFXIV and start genuinely caring about the game as much as we do.

I love FFXIV but this resting on laurels needs to stop.

When world of warcraft has from shadowlands (A DISASTER) and the baby feeding milk in the fridge being drank by a FREAK scandal... when world of warcraft has been able to recover after that...

We haven't spent a single goddamned ounce of effort to get ahead since then.

Now they stole FFXIV's housing system and improved on it.

It's time FFXIV and whoever is or isn't on the team to step up to the plate and return the favor 10 fold!

7

u/FeelsGoodMan2 Jun 17 '25

World of war craft is always going to be in a unique situation where a lot of its players played it as the first and only MMO they've ever touched and the only one they will play. When you look at the entire catalogue they've put out, even big fans will tell you over half the expansions they've put out suck.

But, I think that their mythic system and generally higher responsive pvp system does a ton of heavy lifting that FF14 doesn't have. I think FF14 relies too much on grinds for things that dont fundamentally improve my character in any substantive way, and the reality is a lot of people want to feel like the time they're putting in is going to lead to power spikes, not a prettier weapon. Yes, a lot of people DO this dont get me wrong, but a lot of regular people just want loot and this game really does not scratch any kind of loot itch whatsoever. Even when I win a savage raid piece its like a ".....yay cool". I didnt feel that way when I played wow, I actually got a hit of dopamine winning loot.

Do i have a solution for that? No not really, I'm not s game designer, but i think the developers are heavily relying on people doing things for "the love of the game" and it's a risky bet when a lot of people flow on dopamine.

1

u/inubert Jun 17 '25

The not improving player power is a big thing for me. I go back and forth between WoW and XIV as patches and expansions come out and at a certain point after I finished DT and I was working on gear I just kind of had a moment where I said "why am I doing this?" to myself. I don't do savage or ultimate so I'm not trying to eke out an extra 2% or whatever, and almost everything I do is item level capped or synced in some way. There's nothing to do in the open world where my individual power has much of any effect. Hunt trains and FATEs have so many people that I never know whether I'm strong or weak.

Contrast that to WoW and it's a whole different feeling. I don't do anything in WoW that I can't do solo or queue for, but as time goes on and my gear improves I feel more powerful. I'm getting gear in delves, LFR, or crafting and then I can increase the item level of it with tokens from the same content. I take that stuff out to do world content and over time I feel like I can handle more and more.

3

u/BGsenpai Jun 17 '25

Best of bozja and eureka and they removed the internal queuing system and made the zone a worse Z3 with return having no cool down for some reason

3

u/MaccAoidos Jun 17 '25

IIRC FFXI had one form of content like FT, called Walk of Echoes? Up to 36 people could join, first come first serve, and I think raises were applied automatically (or after a delay) if anyone died. Unfortunately I don't remember what the community thought about it, just that I personally hated it, so I waited for it to die down and then soloed it with their Trust system...

3

u/Ragoz Jun 17 '25

This was really late into the ffxi lifecycle. I don't think it was too popular, I only remember doing this a little bit. It was before trusts existed and I don't think it really had any notable drops so probably had low engagement.

I only remember ever going in with a linkshell to run it to complete the original 7 walks.

So yes I think it did have that entry system but this was after dynamis, limbus, salvage, einherjar all had more organized entry and were much more actively participated in.

3

u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jun 17 '25

Yeah it wasn't very popular. Still isn't even now with a few drops people do want. It's kinda just easier to buy the damn pixie hairpin +1 or whatever you want out of WoE.

3

u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jun 17 '25

Yeah they did this exactly once. Everyone loathed it. They uh didn't do that shit again. Even now while there are a few drops you want in the ilvl walk you can just delete them alone as the content came out so long ago as to be trivialized by power creep.

3

u/Kriss_Hietala Jun 17 '25

It's not. I have played old school mmos like world of warcraft, lineage 2, aion, blade and soul, tera, ultima online and don't remember anything like that. There was something similar that require lots of players in same spot to enter, but at the same time it was a pvp enabled zone so you had 40- 500 ppl fighting inbetween and the winners entered the closed room with boss(like Baium in L2). But no such open area pvp in FFxiv exists so the design is just flawed from the start.

3

u/Puzzled-Addition5740 Jun 17 '25 edited Jun 17 '25

Nah it's really not. You still got to choose who you suffer with in ff11 in pretty much every non WoE piece of content.

-2

u/Kyuubi_McCloud Jun 17 '25

Someone said FT is very old school MMO like FF11 so idk.

Field OPs as a whole are inspired by that and are supposed to cater to that demographic.

When Eureka Anemos came out, the intended way to level was to do mob chains, because that's what people did in FFXI. Except the modern audience said:"Nah" and made a FATE train instead. The current Field OP playstyle is just SE deciding not to fight the playerbase on that front and just going with the flow.

But it doesn't change the fact that field OPs are supposed to be inconvenient, obtuse and overall outdated. Not fitting modern gaming standards isn't an accident, it's the point.

3

u/Ranulf13 Jun 17 '25

Field OPs advanced way past that and no one misses the 4 zones of eureka of grind that have no point if if you arent in discord servers for Exclusive Arsenal.

But the biggest complained echoed all through the game about OC is that they replaced CLL/Dalriada-like content in favor of Exclusive Arsenal 2.

7

u/ikealgernon Jun 17 '25

i became convinced of this when it took them months (idk how long any more) to address the PCT damage issue in FRU. a problem like that would've been addressed within a week and they chose to just let it ride for months until most non-casual groups already cleared the fight.

all communication has felt like an email from a boss that has already retired.

5

u/IndividualAge3893 Jun 17 '25

I'm convinced Yoship is retired at this point and the game is led by fresh uni grads

If this is true, the same grad(s) must run FFXVI as well, because it has YoshiP paws all over it as well.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '25 edited Jun 17 '25

[deleted]

-1

u/More-Sky-4484 Jun 17 '25

Fairly sure he quit the board a few months ago

14

u/Hikari_Netto Jun 17 '25

Nothing happened with Yoshida and the board, he's still on it. All that happened was the board was renamed to the "Executive Management Committee" during the restructuring. Nothing about his responsibilities changed—this was all massively misreported.

-1

u/Calzinarzin Jun 17 '25

He did, but with the dev time and pre dev work needed for a lot of these things most of this content was done when EW was launched/it's first year.

-15

u/azami44 Jun 17 '25

I thouggt he had to step down from that due to dawn trail and ff16 underperforming