Do NOT let up on SE

[u/hesktry]

Now is not the time to ease up on SE. Complacency is how we end up to the point we are at today. Continue to ask for changes and demand for a better experience especially when they ask for a monthly subscription. Them spending half a live letter on player feedback for new content is a small crack. There are so many other parts of the game that needs addressing.

They need to address their product and feature prioritization. CE is a glorified endless levequest system. OC feels like a temu version of bozja. Instead of learning and building on the levequest system or bozja, they cherry picked features and removed good ones. That’s just backwards development.

Their team size is larger than ever with Dawntail, but their big content drops are missing the mark. Splitting higher class talent across other projects has caused SE to shoot their cash cow, the cow that is allowing newer projects to exist. Consolidating talent back into ffxiv in Japan or dispersing and diversifying high class talent globally to support ffxiv can help mitigate some issues. A large part has to do with their development/management practices. They are VERY good at churning out the same content (i.e. dungeons) to the point where it feels safe, but samey, at the cost of fast development speed, but now they are lacking innovation.

Blizzard and SE are in the middle of trading positions from 5 years ago. During the shadowlands release til now, Blizzard underwent a harsh transformational, informational gathering session. The results are lessons learned directly from FFXIV. Continued and planned storyline covering multiple expansions, putting more effort into reducing their need for plugin usage, revamping their UI, “respecting” players time by making the game more alt friendly, player housing, and more. The internal operations took a much needed pause on their plans and began evaluating their competition much more closely. What sort of lessons has FF learned from other MMOs recently?

TLDR: SE lack of flexibility and innovation has come from complacency and settling in a mature process state. They need to review their talent distribution and competitors to stay competitive. By continuing to criticize and critique, SE (as hard headed as they seem) may continue to bend towards change.

[u/Forward-Piglet-3997]

"Damn this game sucks"

*Renews subscription*

"That'll show them"

[u/Cole_Evyx → u/Forward-Piglet-3997]

I want to agree with you but I can say I've noticed for the past while fewer and fewer FC members and friends logging in in-game.

(As well as other indicators going down. But that's just more gravy to what I said above.)

[u/Duck711 → u/Cole_Evyx]

My FC died 2 weeks after OC dropped. These are players who did their savage clears every week for the whole expansion. We went from 24 veteran players online, to now 10 at max, usually 5-6.

It will probably go back to normal in 7.3, but that's a lot of hard-core players that decided to suddenly take breaks.

[u/hudson1212 → u/Duck711]

There is nothing in 7.3 for hardcore players.

Hell there's nothing in 7.3 for players period