9:43 Shoutout to my wife for holding my phone up against my forehead to get this POV shot.

So correct me if I’m wrong because I’m just basing this off of videos I saw in the past. Didn’t we have more customization like setting stats for characters and stuff like a lot more types of materia you could slot on different roles. But then if you didn’t have strength materia on tanks, or put all your stats into w/e made you do more damage, that wasn’t considered ok by people?

You make a lot of good points, however I feel the same way about FF7 Rebirth. I think Square Enix should avoid open worlds in their games, 14 being the exception. I would argue that the limited open worlds from Yoshi P’s team are actually much better executed than the more unfettered open world areas from Rebirth. Essentially I think it’s more of a Square Enix problem

You failed to rub two brain cells together in this video. Nothing but self-inserts and projections.

Yeah there is a reason I quit so quickly. I started 14 during the dark times (shadowlands) and enjoyed the story. But once I got to the end game and saw what was actually there… i think I lasted about 2 weeks at max level. Long enough to clear savage, but that was it.

FFXI had way more customization that FFXIV.

How is gearing in FFXIV any worse than every other MMO? The biggest MMO (WoW) has the exact same type of gearing. Also the FFXVI ship cutscene thing is pretty standard. Most games don’t create some combat system for a random one off scene that is completely different than everything else. Some do, and that’s cool but it’s not the norm. I agree that these games have issues but I don’t find that any of the examples you provided were that compelling.

I’ve watched this video 3 times in a row to make sure I wasn’t being unfair or maybe I missed something?
This is just another slop ragebait FFXIV video, it’s full of completely baseless assertions and conspiracy theories about how Yoshi-P is some sort of secret tyrant.
Just admit you’re burnt out on FFXIV and stop playing, this is just culture war grift tier shit.

Yoshi P is creatively spent and burnt out. He was one fire back in the day but now he’s so overworked he can’t do anything but tow the line.

Mmm I understand where you are coming from but I don’t think the blame falls entirely on Yoshi P. I think the current MMO player base is more of an issue. The problem with easy gearing and boring game design doesn’t just happen in ffxiv it’s in wow and most MMO that have released lately because gamers complain when shit is too difficult for them to do. It’s the same thing with those endwalker quests you talked about a portion of the ffxiv community threw a fit about them and said they were too difficult and they didn’t like them. The studio is obviously making decisions based on these reactions which is probably not a good thing and they should worry more about innovation and good gameplay but I imagine it’s difficult when your community acts like children and throws a tantrum the second something is to difficult. Yoshi P should do a better job filtering out the loud minority but I don’t think the current direction is his fault solely and is more the community as a wholes fault with the devs and played base.

I didn’t really care for Shadowbringers. Too much asking me to care about people I don’t really know in a world disconnected from the usual one we play in. Felt too side-story-ish. And defining the WoL’s backstory (but not really) kinda rubbed me the wrong way.

i just want to add that ff has been too safe not just since DT, but since ShB. the story was alright, but everything else just felt like it took a quality hit, or at least so after the expansion that was stormblood. which was packed full of new ideas and content, maybe the story wasnt all that but im not playing mmos for a story. Yoshi p definitely needs to be critiqued though.

So when he mentioned a “Good MMO” and went to WoW is when I stopped watching. His IQ is completely shown from that still alone. Nah.

Funny, I don’t like Yoshi P, nor do I care for FF14 these days, but I LOVED FF16. In fact, its my second favourite FF game behind VI.

I have my criticisms, but I adored it.

I refuse to come back to xiv because of the shitty model Yoshi p pushes. I want a game I have enough to do that I don’t need a filler game.

Anytime someone asks why I don’t like FF14 I’m just going to send them this video. Shallow, easy gameplay for tens of hours on end with a boring story (until you get to the good part we swear). Sounds awful.

In before the “mAyBe ThiS gaMe isNT foR yOu” people appear, well said.

“They hated him because he spoke the truth.”

Awesome video man

Man, couldn’t agree more. Especially the world…it’s why I loved FF11, the world was dangerous AF, and you’d de-level dying….it put some weight into the game world.

Pretty good, levelheaded video. I just recently went on a break from the game and will go play FF11 maybe. I want something fresh and new stories, Dawntrail was sadly very Yawntrail. And not to speak about them making the patch cycles even longer, with no casual content to enjoy.
I dont even want to raise another chara, ARR is too sloggy…
They justed reported falling numbers too yesterday. Good to read:) vote with your wallets guys.

I quit playing way back in the day when they took movement in combat away from Bard. Then they started to ban players on the forums criticizing them over the changes even if they weren’t being hostile so I decided I was out. After Endwalker I had some friends ask me to play it again so I thought fine it had been long enough, so I hopped back on only to find out that not only was my house sold (fair enough I guess I wasn’t using it but still annoying that I wasn’t compensated) but all of my furnishings had also been sold instead of just being put into my storage. Like why? That’s such a dick move. But if you try to voice any complaints about the game you’re just greeted with the most toxic positivity and worshiping of Yoshi P it’s beyond awful. Him and the player base are super fragile and do the Warframe strat of hiding behind their one go to move. For Warframe it’s trading plat and that’s their end all be all for shielding criticism and for FF14 it’s their copy-pasta free trial

I fell out of love with FF14 too. In Dawntrail after completing the main story, I have no drive or care of wanting to continue playing.
I basically play anything else right now and just wait for FF7part 3 or the next FF that hopefully learns from FF16’s mistakes. (even tho I liked 16, I still had so much lost potential in terms of gameplay/RPG system and quests)

I see this guy like I see Keiji Inafune: credited for reviving something yet is actually inept and just a business man. Just like Business Unit 3

I got out of 14 at the end of Endwalker’s story at launch. I felt like things reached their nature conclusion and to keep going would just be for money reasons. Its like Endgame for the MCU, everything else after is just… well why?

Story aside, the gameplay of 14 was never one i was fond of. I came up from games like Phantasy Star Online and Star War Galaxies, so to go from those kinds of games to a game where there’s only vertical progression and all anyone cares about is line go up and dungeons are a locked in instance (you cant just run in and start and have more people join during the dungeon, you need a full party to start and they have to be of certain class roles). Between the stale GCD combat and completely and purposeful avoidance of emergent gameplay eventually turned me off and I was just coasting along for the story, which, to me, eventually finished.

Mmos are 👎. Because the gameplay is stripped down. They make canned animations and layer math over it. Movement isnt fluid. Combat is stale. Without friends and community the games would be too boring to play. On other hand, the characters and worlds are usually very interesting.

I have had way less fun after Shadowbringers, but I think you totally missed the mark on the assertion of FF16. The way I see it, the game is ABOUT the super cool dominant fights with the best animation, visuals, and music in the industry. The rest is filler padding. They deliberately make the cutscenes take forever, and make the sidequests boring and plentiful to just make the game take longer. They were afraid of getting pushback if the game was only 20 hours long. Some of the S-Rank hunts are a little hard but that’s about it. The real challenge comes from getting S rank on all Arcade missions. If you think the combat is just spamming the same combination of moves over and over you are straight up just wrong. I will say that one of the reasons why you did not feel anything getting BiS in FF14, is probably that gear doesnt actually do anything, especially for DPS. The only thing you get to do with better gear is PARSE better, which is against ToS and not an actual game mechanic

All difficulties should be available at the start. It’s something I’ve hated in video games for ages. Let me make it hard from the outset if I so choose, dammit all. I honestly gave up on playing XVI for the moment, especially coming off of playing Judgment. It’s just too easy at points that feel like it should be better. The music and voicework was beautifully done as expected but, a lot like XIV, there’s so very little that keeps pulling me to continue playing.

I’ve played FFXIV for a long time since ARR and a tiny bit in 1.0. My character has always been maxed out with every expansion. However, I stopped playing one day shortly before Endwalker came out and couldn’t explain why. Your video sums up how I felt about the game. It was just a huge time sink with minimal variability in rewards. The game forces you to follow a specific mold, expansion after expansion.

oversimplification and overlobotomizing the game to appeal for “everyone’ , the truth is you cannot appeal for everyone.
I get it that XIV is more about the MSQ/Story but we cant forget that XIV is a video game at it’s core and MMO, Gameplay as the game is really important to keep the game running.
Me personally like Stormblood gameplay alot, i feel i have choices on what i can do and decide what next move or role skill i can bring, its a simple one but it feels great to make myself going. Ember’s pointing things out about it, they want to push the narrative going, they simplified the access, they put less hurdle in “the way” which could become a big flaw when the story is at lowest, thats the reason many people feels “bored” when doing MSQ, i get that it’s “the story time !” but you are paying to play MMO a video game, not watching a movie, those are icing on the top.
The flaw become problematic when the pattern repeats without anyone able to criticize it, many dont want the game to fail me included, thats why i hope they can learn from this.

Its probably not his entire fault but it always sucks that those who become the faces of these when things are positive also have to be the face when things are negative.

“It insists upon itself.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It insists upon itself.”
“It has a valid story to tell. That’s why it’s insisting!”

“I liked Final Fantasy 11. I will leave it at that.”

Understand that I don’t know much of anything how the team and creative planning actually functions.

Your argument seems very short-sighted, I believe. You made it sound that quests, dungeons, and the open world are all that ff14 has to offer. But people enjoy ff14 for various other reasons; the story, the gameplay, the social aspect, role playing, crafting, and even housing and glamour, to name a few. The fact that FF14 has so many options doesn’t really make it lacking in novel and differing experiences, it’s just that you’ve either exhausted the content you enjoyed or all of them to its fullest extent. Which, at that point, it’s more suited to say, “take a break”. And they DO “Introduce new kinds of content”; Island sanctuary, chaotic alliance raids, occult crescent, and cosmic exploration are some of the recent or soon-to-be released content.

As a game design standpoint, there definitely should be mix-ups to the formula, to keep the flow of gameplay engaging. The suggestion of adding in dramatic set pieces that introduces new radically different gameplay, I kind of somewhat of disagree. Your example of creating a massive boat chase scene in FF16 would have been amazing and surely fun. But the team would have to create a whole new system for controlling the boat, camera, environment, & it’s combat system, for just one section of the game. It’d definitely would’ve steeped into the allotted time and production costs they had to work with, when it’s better to just put their time and resources creating a good & optimized final product. And we all know how incomplete and unoptimized AAA game releases has been for almost the past decade. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t add features and gimmicks to mix up things up, but they have priorities.

Each game has their strengths and weaknesses, and each player have their own tastes. Fair point that the open world and Jrpg elements of 14 & 16 are severely lacking; but the combat, bosses, and end game are well crafted and engaging, which, at least for me, makes up for those particular shortcomings. I imagine there is a lot of effort creating a good combat system for 14 & 16; Like how important it is to ensure that each of Clive’s moves are well-balanced and flow well with each other to create a combat system that might be on par with games like DmC and Bayonetta; Or having to create new moves for 21 playable jobs and trying to keep them relatively balance must be immensely consuming; Not to mention having to create normal, extreme, savage, ultimate, and now chaotic content; and one more thing, they literally spent the past 2 years updating 14’s graphics and are still doing it.

Plus, it’s more of a AAA games problem that making combat too easy is linked to making them more accessible for a wider audience. But when points like, ‘the story is too long’ and ‘it takes forever to get to the engaging late-game content,’ making the beginning and middle parts, where new players are adjusting to new mechanics and systems, accessibility is practically essential for them to stay playing. Just don’t pretend high-end content dumb things down; planning, preparation, and team-coordination is a whole sub-system in itself. But I agree, the biggest problem is that it takes too long to get to the good stuff.

And the ratio of too much story over gameplay has always been an issue with the FF series, not mutual to 14 & 16. Which makes me further question whether this blame should solely be placed on Yoshi-P, or on some executive, or just the status-quo. To be fair too, FF and Square Enix success is rooted in extravagant stories, it is its whole identity after all. Doesn’t mean it’s wholly right or wrong, it’s certainly a contentious debate with modern games feeling more like overpriced movies. But this has always been the main focus of the series since FF4, and people value story more than gameplay and vice versa.

We should still be critical, though. The developers do listen and improve. I just think targeting the headpiece of the project and treating him like all the game’s flaws are made in malice and calling the varying amount of content offered, “slop,” is in poor taste. Yes, he is a part of an organization to sell games and make profit, but he also put years of passion, effort, and feedback-based refinements into these games, and to belittle him for lack of hindsight isn’t fair. Nor does making dehumanizing remarks like, “Not your friends”, really support your “critique”.

According to your points, I believe the real things to blame are the formulaic nature of the games being far too repetitive and not mixing things up (at least for quests and msq), certain elements are lacking or not suited for everyone, and FF 14 & 16 are plagued with some of the same problems as many other AAA games on the market.

Final fantasy is not a game for you and thats ok. A lot of your complaints on gamplay second ans story first ties directly to the franchise itself. Blaming this on a specific studio and director is flawed. These are Final Fantasy games, not TES or The Witcher. They are made using a different philosophy than orher current rpgs. Its ok if you dont like it and there are other games that explore different things in the rpg experience. They can coexist and does not diminish the way Final fantasy games are made and have been made since their inception. They are not perfect and there are things that can be improved especially the weapon and crafting system, but it just seems that stroy driven jrpgs are not your cup of tea.

Guess im the odd sheep in the fandom.
I hated shadowbringers so much it took years for me to come back and beat endwalker. I hated shadowbringers that much.
I loved FF16’s story and world and themes. The combat is good. Not amazing. Not ground breaking. Just good… and thats honestly ok. Not every game can be some god tier “X”.

Your opinion would be very popular if FF14 wasn’t

You know what’s really ironic, I think it’s actually the technical limitations of the time that made the early final fantasies so great. I’m pretty sure that Square actually wanted to have way more cutscene in Ff7, 8, and 9, but back then they were prohibitively expensive. So what that meant was that these games had very few cutscenes by modern standards, and you would spend the vast majority of your time in the game exploring, fighting monsters, talking to NPCs, playing mini games etc. And when you did get a cutscene, it would feel really special.

And I mean, this is kind of what made those games great. Some of my best memories of those classic final fantasies was all about fighting a really hard boss, or nervously trying to get to that next save point when I was almost out of MP.

The newer FF’s seem to have completely forgotten that gameplay is important.

Japanese RPGs have always been cut scene heavy, especially for ff franchises known for their cutting edge cut scenes going back to the 90s. Its not really a problem specific to ff14/16, but thats what Japanese games/gamers are familiar with.

I spacebar all msq and only do savage and ultmates, game is boring imo. My friends only play still because of “mods”

Yeah, I agree with your points. I feel like DT was a pretty package but wasn’t FUN. I’m tired of running from one spot to another, clicking piles of dirt, talking to npcs, and watching cutscenes. I adore 14 but I pay monthly to play a game. If the gameplay and story aren’t up to par, then I’m just paying to play old content. I’ve been getting back into GW2 lately and finding the horizontal progression a breath of fresh air. Every little bit of progress feels meaningful because it won’t become obsolete in a few months, I can build a unique class + gearset, etc. I really want 14 to improve but it feels like robbery just paying my sub to keep my house from getting demolished..

Too based, one of my favorite memories in FFXIV is sneaking around in kugane with Lyse and that asshole namazu who tried to scam us, the reason it stuck with me is because i was a ninja at the time and when i read the description of the item you are given to dodge the guards i was like “hol’ up will this work?” And i used NIN’s hide to completely trivialize the duty, it was the only moment in the game i experienced emergent gameplay, where my choice of bringing one job over another actually mattered

Pretty much spot on at least with 14, I wont’ touch 16 due to it being a rehash of 14. Played 14 since 1.0, and your completely right about the gear, hence I have 0 motivation to raid in also the fact all the “fights” boil down to DDR-with friends & guitar hero. In the age of AI and self driving cars it feels kinda old. I haven’t even tried dawntrails MSQ due to flat out boredom with the job design and system as a whole. Yoshi had good ideas but also he gets extreme tunnel vision design-wise and now that FF14 is a “success” he will never admit something in the game failed. Just look at how many times he tried to shove Diadem down our throats *shivers* or the current housing situation. They are so scared of “failure” or upending “balance” that nothing ever changes.

FF14 went from shit to playable but then stopped there. Final Fantasy in its entirety pretty much died with X-2, anyway.

Such a based take. I unsubbed last week for pretty similar reasons. Gonna lose my house and I don’t even give a fuck. All you missed imo were the massive 4 month gaps between content updates.

So he became another Kojima, where they’re releasing interactive movies lol

I just want classic turn-based combat back. I hate modern Final Fantasy games which are Final Fantasy in name only.

You really said it all with this one, so I don’t have much to add. I’ve always liked FF14 despite its flaws, but now that the MSQ sucked, it’s harder for me to forgive those flaws (I still haven’t been able to bring myself to finish Dawntrail). I feel like CBU3’s biggest problem is that they are too afraid to offend any part of their playerbase. Everything they make is frictionless. Any challenge or excitement is caged away in their higher difficulty raid content that more casual players don’t have to worry about. And I myself am a fairly casual player, but I too want something exciting even if I don’t bother with raiding. I want to discover something in the game’s world. I want to progress my character in meaningful ways outside of just the looks of my outfits. I want the game world to feel alive and not just a set piece for the MSQ. I want to have some choice (what about a talent tree of some kind? What about making side quests with player choice altering the narrative? Anything that isn’t just “click a highlighted object” or “speak to this npc”?). But they don’t want to “force” anything on their playerbase. So yeah, the base game is just predictable and boring gameplay-wise, and I don’t see it changing any time soon.

Maybe you should try playing the game

i feel this boils down to why can’t set pieces be like darksouls. While that is nice it is also a bit silly. wanting to do more with less is a hallmark of the video game space. I personally hate it when they have extra set pieces but don’t do much with them. however, i did enjoy the story of FF16. the game’s lack of difficulty felt less like the game being bad and more the game just being in the modern setting. I do understand that wanting to pilot the boat to avoid slashes would be cool but also understand why it was not done. some of the game play enhancements would be nice albeit generally square enix is spreading their people thin on projects at times so i also understand not implementing that one section of the game.

however, i do have beef is the 1 hour play session complaint. RPGs take time. Japanese ones especially like persona, final fantasy, and many more. those games have such a focus one story that it would be disingenuous to say that you devoting one hour didn’t have gameplay when you are at a story beat. the point of those games is for there to be a story to engage and when it asks you to engage, then yeah it is something to sit down and watch/read. complaining that a game that’s genre usually recommend more than 1 hour play sessions and only playing 1 hour would be unsatisfying is a not great.

i feel mixed on this. on one hand yeah i do want more from these games. i do want more difficulty and area exploration. however, on the other hand i feel this video also shows a lack of wanting to play RPGs in general and wanting to play more action games as you don’t ahve to worry as much or devote as much time. this partially comes from the long work day comment. at that point while it would be nice maybe long game genre’s might not work for you or games with daily bonuses to work to would be more your speed.

As a fan of CBU3, I agree with most of these points. If they work on these points and provide a story on the level of Heavensward, Shadowbringers, or Endwalker the sky is the limit. Great vid.

Yoshi P saved the game with ARR. He built it up through the expansions, culminating in the excellent Endwalker MSQ. Unfortunately, he got a huge amount of plaudits and then split his attention to work on XVI. This was too much and XIV suffered for it with EW post-MSQ and now DT. He needs to understand that he can’t grasp all the responsibilities he has been given and to go back to basics. Find good writers and put them in key positions, NOW!

I never made it more than 20 levels into 14. For 16, me and my roommate had a conversation about game design while he mashed one button and periodically tilted a stick or let a cutscene with naked people not having sex play.
The level design also struck me as archaic. Those are NES Final Fantasy rooms in 3d with pretty texture work. I’d love combat rooms that pretty in a DMC sequel, but holy hell, Squeenix has been bad at level design for years and they aren’t getting better in a hurry. Remember when Final Fantasy games started off letting you roam a little and go fight that optional overpowered dinosaur near the starting area?

I went from being stunned at how great FFXIV was pre Dawntrail…
…to being stunned at how bad Dawntrail was, and requesting a refund.

What a massive fall from grace imo…

While Yoshi-P deserves praise for what he did for XIV in ARR, I truly do not know how he is still considered the patron saint of game development in the eyes of the playerbase. XIV has quickly become one of the safest, most neglected cash cows in the history of gaming and a lot of that is attributed to Yoshi-P’s corporate minded nature, where he develops “packages” of content that has worked in the past and just repeats them ad nauseum with close to zero innovation.

I actually truly believe it’s not the “spaghetti code” that causes a lot of the problems we see in XIV. It’s bizarre creative choices, lack of funds from SE, and corner cutting. FF16 proved that. If a small mobile game studio can rebuild the entirety of the game to be more responsive and have QoL players have been asking for for half a decade, I don’t see how the great Square Enix can’t do the same. I really don’t.

Bro, you could have everything you want by just playing Guilty Gear Strive instead of Final Fantasy. So why complain about FF being baby mode, or DMC, or any PVE game. They should allow hard modes at the start the same way they should allow easy mode and skip cutscene, but there are so many more jrpgs that aren’t easy just play one of those. tl;dr go play GGST and a real SMT game.

The worst part about comparing 14 to 16 is with 14 you pay 20 dollars a month to watch cutscenes

Th issue you have isn’t with ff games, almost every one of those points can be any rpg game. Gear is a means to an end, any story game will push the player through to get the major story points. With most with the choice aspect of gear you either get forced down a rabbit hole to progress a specific way for the current raid due to players making it so, or you have simplistic general bis to not exclude anyone not playing the meta. In any story game the scenery is just a set dressing especially in ff games. In almost ever ff game it’s either barren ground to fight mobs or is a hallway

Xenoblade as a series is the original FF devs. They understand emergent gameplay and world threatening better than Square. FF14 is the literal ppposite of Xenoblade. Xenoblade has items, chests, rare monsters, high level monsters in low level areas to constantly keep you aware of everything. Square Enix qnd their design philosophy has left a sour taste in my mouth. It is kind of sad that the best RPG they have made in years is Dragon Quest 3. Square should take a good hard look at DQ and see why people loved those games and what they do differently than FF. Ff14 doesnt even feel like an rpg where your gear matters all the way through normal raiding at the final level.

Honestly that stock footage of the dev floor, if that is cbu3 then I hope the lady with the Jack frost figure takes inspiration from atlus and passes it on to yoship for ff17, sega have been killing it in the jrpg space, and square is lagging. Its a shame too, octopath traveller has an amazing turn based system and does a great Job innovating the ff5 Job system and the brave system. I would love if they had the courage to do an atlus and stick to there guns innovating the same system over and over until it feels great, like the smt press turn system, rather then either playing it safe or trend chasing.

If the next protagonist is yet another edgelord/lady (looking at Lightning, noctis, clide) I just might become one.

Gimme another carefree blondie with no ties to a monarchy.

I only play for my friends now, after ew i expected dt to be so much better. To actually let the wol relax and unpack the tramas of the shbr and ew. I mean we literally had our soul ripped out and shoved into some random dead imperial soldier and we gonna unpack that?
I didn’t want another ‘save the world’ plot, i wanted to see more of the wol’s personality??? Ff14 has really made me hate silent protagonists. In making an everyman he appeals to no man

First things first, I’m ESL so sorry about any English grammar errors!

I agree that FFXIV is at a crisis point (and contrary to what many say, form e this point has already started in Endwalker, especially the post-patches, who plays the endgame as I do know what I’m talking about, but I disagree with many points addressed in this video.

It’s not Naoki Yoshida’s fault – it’s the fault of the Final Fantasy franchise and the Square Enix company as a whole.

This problem of invisible walls already happened before FFXVI. One of the biggest criticisms of XV is the amount of it and the map being unexploreable in a whole, and considering the last FF games released (XII, XIII, XV and XVI, XIV being the exception because it is an MMORPG), XVI is probably the best one. XV per example needed DLCs to solve its narrative problems and had a large amount of contente removed in the final version of the game (like Insomnia).

You were also unfair in some things – compared the map design of ARR (which yourself mentioned in the video to be from the PS3 era), when we have amazing map design in later expansions, and then I would only agree with the lack of interactions on these maps (although understandable for being na MMORPG, I already think this game, especially after Dawntrail launch, is poorly optimized, let alone what it would be like if it had more map interactions).

You also said that the hunts don’t offer difficulty, but compared it to low level hunts, which to me makes sense it doens’t offer harder fights, because we are max level, so it needs to be easier. Even so, most S rank hunts can hithill you with the mechanics and aoes offered by them, even at lower levels, and in general I don’t want an Absolute Virtue 2.0 fight. Hunts are farmable contente, it is made to be easy, people make hunt trains, no one wants to got through an “extreme fight” every single time. Also, rare FATEs (like Chi on Endwalker) are still harder fights, mainly due to the level sync, and only suffer some kind of “cheese” against Blue Mages on level 80 and below.

Even with criticism involving the ease of the current contente, in fact the opposite effect is happening – many people, in forums and outside, complained about the higher difficulty spike in Dawntrail’s dungeons and raids (harder aliance, harder normal raids, harder dungeons, the expert one Strayborough Deadwalk with the first boss being one of the most “stupid” bosses in the game).

About progression, imo it’s a matter of perspective. I had a lot of advantage with DRG BiS (ex I solo farm SB EX, especially Tsukuyomi, making profit with the materials, selling the shiny weapons). I’m also a player who likes to optimize my gameplay (yes I care about shiny numbers from a site), but clearly the gear helps in killing faster even in Dawntrail (faster kills = faster farming = faster items = faster profit).

I agree that the game is not immersive, but that’s a problem in the entire game, not Dawntrail. Even HW and SHB (best exp imo) have many quests where you help a person X with Y problems that has no relation to the bigger problem, Endwalker being the worst in this regard when in the middle of the end of the world you have to talk to Loporrits or look for 6 scients in an area of Labyrinthos in a very boring and time-consuming quest.

Overall, I believe Chaotic is a good step, also we will have Beastmaster that will expand the contente horizon, the return of Field Ops that is something excelente (Endwalker have the WORST relic imo), so Dawntrail (atleast for me) is on a positive path, better than the path that Endwalker was taking. Dawntrail is, umtil now, being an exp focusing more on QoL and things like that. I don’t think it’s wrong to criticize, regardless of wether we agree witch each other or not, because everyone desserves to have a good time with this game, because both you, me and everyone else pays the same montly fee, so we desserve to have our good experience.

The problem is, as I mentioned before and used several examples, it is not something exclusive to Yoshida, but to the company itself, and unfortunately I fear that if they fires Yoshida and put another guy on his place, this game would probably go bankrupt, because given the situation of several life servisse games in recente years, Yoshida is probably the best diretor among them. I’m not a fan of Yoshida myself, I’ve made several criticisms of him in the past (especially in the Endwalker period), but I admit that he tries a lot, and a lot is also not in his control, especially Square Enix being a company with a negative reputation in ecent years.

Anyways, good video in general! New sub!

13:38 I don’t inherently disagree with your take on gear. However, in a majority of games, most gear is trivialized to stat stick or a piece of equipment that buffs a certain skill or ability. For you to feel nothing from achieving that BiS is understandable, but since ARR that’s what the game has been like so maybe you just don’t like the game?
As for XVI it feels like you chose to not invest into the system and try different things other than “your combo that you have been doing since the beginning of the game.”
You can try by taking away will-O-wykes and inputting different primal to do snazzy combo strings.

End all be all its your choice and your opinion is your own! Hope you have a good day!

Someone asked yoshi p during the dawntrail interviews an interesting question, it went something like this
“Are you planning to spice up the dungeons? Experiment with the template, because now we have 3 bosses, and between each one of those we have 2 pack of trash mobs..”

And then I realised, yea? It is like that, it’s literally down to the formula. Why can’t we have dungeons with 4 bosses? Alli raids with 6? or 2? Just do whatever, something different. Nowadays you enter a dungeon and it’s the same sht…

And he replied that
“They don’t want to do that, because it allows them to make the dungeons really quick, the artists/designers know how many bosses there will be and how the dungeon will flow, with it being formulaic like that they can design a dungeon really quick. Same about the amount of alli raids, expansion content etc. Their workflow can be easily planned out, that’s the reason”
Wish I had a link to that, because it’s a really rough recollection.

At that point i understood the issue with this game, and that this will probably not change. Back in ARR they had to have this strict workflow to fix the game. You mentioned a bit about in the video. Seems like they’re still stuck in ARR mindset and are afraid to go out of their comfort zone. That’s why with every expansion we basically get the same game over and over again, LITERALLY down to the formula, you can predict the amount of content and what kind will be released throughout the expansion. It’s fkin boring.

Dawntrail is a wakeup call for many, there’s absolutely no gameplay in this game, at least when it comes to the long af story.
Speaking of the story, what sort of strategy is this? They make a critically acclaimed expansion, Shadowbringers, that literally shines a spotlight on their game, they get a huuuge wave of new players and WoW refugees. Everyone absolutely loves the story, everyone is hooked on the universe and the writing.
So what do they do? They end the saga that got everyone interested. Move their great writer Ishikawa away from a writing position to an overseeing position. And replace everything with the dumpster fire we got. Whoever was behind dawntrail should get fired, at least moved away to a lower position. How can the writing go to such a dog sht level in one expansion is baffling.

I think the most valid critique is how the world is made. Not even the lack of danger, but the lack of exploration and incentives to do so. Everything else (with both 16 and 14) is likely due to “lessons” CBU3 learned with FFXIV (TL;DR: the players were a major part of why things got this way, any difficulty in the non-raiding content got a lot of outcry from the vocal minority), but the zones in FFXIV were always kind of…just there. I don’t think they’ve ever purposefully tried to make them differently, even Eureka was only slightly different because of how dangerous the enemies are. In fact, I think they just don’t know a different way, because for the last 15 years, they’ve made their zones that way.

this whole thing read like a long therapy session for me. there isnt a single point i disagree with.

this type of game design is what works today. many people are fooled into thinking theyre gamers, and you can find them all on platforms like twitter, bearing arms against anyone who critiques either 14 or 16, never knowing that this medium used to have a soul.

Sad reality is that casuals complained about Dawntrail dungeons being too hard lol

hit the nail on the head.
The community won’t accept it though, they’re absolutely blind to ANY flaws this game has – however, a louder and louder crowd is being heard about just how stale and safe this game has become.

Can we just say his titles totally miss the mark on the only thing they want to do, tell a good story? Both FFXIV (looking at Dawntrail and parts of Endwalker) and FFXVI kinda drop the ball when it comes to story and storytelling.
Sooooo… Stories are meh, storytelling is meh, VAs are meh, gameplay is meh, characterization is meh, world building is meh.
Tbh I’m just sad ’cause I used to love XIV and, as a lot of people, purchased 16 in preorder just because. But I now realize ARR-ShB was just a lucky shot, a perfect storm gone long ago

Dawntrail is the first expansion I refused to buy, and I haven’t logged in or subbed since it’s release. I started playing during Heavensward’s patch “Revenge of the Horde” and started raiding in “Soul Surrender” (yes I even remember the names of the patches, because I had so damn much fun with the game back then); and I noticed the downfall in quality as soon as 3.0 (Stormblood) hit – not with the story, but with literally everything else. I still did some raiding with friends, but ultimately got more and more frustrated with the game and the direction it was going – that direction being the watering down or straight up removal of all the deep systems I enjoyed in Heavensward. And it only got worse with Shadowbringer and Endwalker. I am not planning to go back.

Erping transvestites have become the face of this game, for some reason.

I think FFXIV’s endgame is the worst i’ve seen in an mmo. Grind weekly each week in savage raids to increase your gear stats just for you to do it all over again and again until the last tier, making the gear you farmed pointless (except for glam). Majority of content at endgame is catered toward raiders, locking out and imo neglecting the players who are more casual or do not have the time or flexibility to be in statics. We havent had a field operation since ShB. Meanwhile they add a plethora of hardcore content to satisfy a portion of their players. I’m not hating on the harder content but if majority of endgame is focused toward a portion of players that applies to and nothing for the rest then that’s bad game design.

3 Visual Novels in an MMORPG trench coat.

Worst 60 euros i spent last year on ff16 wouldve been more worth to buy 60 euros of weed tbh

The man saved Squeenix
Worry about your business and dogs bruh

A lot of people are downvoting, but where’s the lie? I agree with most of this. I couldn’t catch up with my friends in Dawntrail, because I had a mental break running from one unvoiced cutscene to another across a map with nothing in it, for 7h in a row. I completely gave up trying to watch the cutscenes at some point, and now struggle to get through them in any game. FF14 completely drained my patience.
I’ve had a lot of fun returning to GW2. It’s not a difficult game, but it has a lot of midcore content. I am happy when a boar attacks me in the open world, because it might have usable loot. Every piece of content is still relevant, and not arbitrarily tiered into obsolescence.

FFXVI was the best game I have ever played. I liked it so much more than anything else. Yeah, it is surely not perfect, but the presentation, graphics and music was insanely good

SPOILERS FOR FFXVI AND DAWNTRAIL

Also what’s become really obnoxious for me, is that Shadowbringers & EW (since they share one story arc), FFXVI and Dawntrail basically have the same “twist”? An ancient civilization that has one leader figure remaining, who wants to prevail their heritage. Like, it was really great with Emet Selch and the Ascians, then when I saw Ultima in FFXVI and heard his backstory I thought I was back in Shadowbringers again. It’s not a bad motive, but I’m kinda tired of it at this point, I already get it, we need to move along with our culture as time flows, but we shouldn’t forget our past. I hope they’ll come up with something new next expansion.

And don’t get me started on FFXVI writing which is, frankly, so ass. Jill is probably the worst written female character I’ve seen in a long time, as she needs to be constantly rescued by us and can’t handle any situation herself (which is a gameplay issue, since we’re only controlling Clive. If we’d have Jill and others as playable characters, there could be any significant moments for them. But as we can only control Clive, he needs to get every important battle). The whole world is 101 fantasy worldbuilding basics without any interesting bits(the only way this story was different from the baseline fantasy world was the inclusion of gay people, which is based, but come on, it’s 2024, not 1990, for it to be brave or innovative), Barnabas could have been such a interesting character, and he became just a support for Ultima, who was cool, but underwhelming… This game was just such a big letdown, both narratively and gameplay wise

Meanwhile, I remember XI’s story having missions that were actually fairly difficult and required proper preparation and decent gear and strategy and you still might not overcome the fight for a few days.

As a player of 14 since the beginning I can confirm that not only the crafting system is an accessory but it was made on purpose like that. It used to be a challenging and useful experience since Shadow Bringers but then was oversimplified to a level that you can find macros online to just paste in the in game macro system and press a button, and even the crafted gear is provided for free in some side quests so no reason to craft anything.
Also the story was always a visual novel where there are no choices, each chosable sentence gets a generic answer that fits any of the inputs we choose, but at least it was an amotional story until this childish last expansion where you can skip all the cutscenes and still miss nothing.
I keep playing becasue i have my friends to talk with on Discord in the evenings but the game has almost nothing to do anymore. And even the frinds now come for the quickly weekly things, repeated over and over and over again and they jump to other games, which is what I am starting to do as well.

Those large, massive maps from FF14’s 1.x Version were never on PS3, just so you know. And the segmented stuff is a legacy of the overblown detail that was way past what systems could viably handle back then, you needed rooms with occlusion walls to make the game only render the stuff you have right now. Even more seen in the Shroud, when you are in the Sylph Lands (and the lowlevel ‘segments’ of that), with rooms and zigzagging paths connecting those.

No matter how many times I come back to Final Fantasy XIV I always get the feeling of how bland, boring, hollow and almost straight up silent the overall game feels.
The cutscenes and story on the hundreds of times are to me what Bilbo Baggins described in Lord of the Rings as “too little butter spread over too much bread”.
The expansions feel like a roller coaster in terms of overall quality, and the disparity between each of them is too plain to see and feel, and impossible to ignore.
One of the many reasons why I stopped playing the game is the terrible server tick that creates this in-built lag/delay to every single action to which a lot of the players defend it as a purpose “turn base feel”… when a League of Legends in-game problem isn’t a problem, but a feature!…

So, let me get this straight:

Naoki Yoshida, who helmed Shadowbringers, peak FFXIV, is also responsible for Dawntrail, shitty FFIXV, based on:

-A baseless assertion that he’s been micro-managing the team down to the minute for over a decade that you never follow up on. I dunno man, maybe he is a tyrant, powerful men get away with more using less, but maybe provide some evidence for this instead of using it as a weak umbrella to cover:

-FF16 being too easy, which isn’t relevant unless you’re trying to tie it all to Naoki Yoshida being Bad (TM)
-FF14’s mainline content being too easy, except for all the hard content, which doesn’t count because you have to play a story to get to it
-A flat-out stupid assertion that a studio that spends a significant % of its assets and time on making extremely punishing content for a tiny section of its player base is, actually, “afraid of failure” and people not seeing their narrative, which is why they don’t let you skip cutscenes, or give you options for how you want to skip/speed-up cutscenes.

Earnestness is not honesty. This critique is an incoherent mess of vibes, and it was a waste of my time to sit through to give you the benefit of the doubt. You didn’t even try to argue why Dawntrail is slop. You just cowardly implied everyone who likes it is in some sort of sheeple cult and threw up clips of Wuk Lamat, as if that means fucking anything. No one cares your tastes have changed and life has shifted what you prefer to do with your spare time. That’s not a “critique,” that’s just you. You know what’s slop? Turning that into stupid filler rage-bait content. Bitches leave.

I enjoyed the new expansion it’s the wannabe hardcore raiders that ruin the game in pf. They think it’s cute to leave after 1 pull and talk like they are good but def on the worst end of players. Players need to look in the mirror first and stop trying to be like the good streamers cause they are good and you are not and it’s causing griefing. For example, healers not healing and tanks not using cooldowns and dps not meeting dps checks but act like they are a somebody in fflogs. Get good rookies.

I’ve watched a few videos so far and I’m just convinced this guy doesn’t like Final Fantasy lol

You’re wrong and you should feel bad. Never disliked a video this fast before.

I love the game, but yea it has been very boring after endwalker finished. I really think thancred should have died and became ultima thule itself. The patches just need too come out sooner. I want to play more but i have nothing to work for

ff14 kind of sucks as an mmo and always has. you can’t even really build your character. there are no talent trees, every class is one role, period, there aren’t interesting sets, the items are literally all just stat sticks, etc. When the game blew up a few years ago while WoW was flailing, I saw it as a competent alternative to the obviously superior game at its worst point in its history, but beyond that, it obviously sucked in comparison to WoW’s best times.

I understand that story takes precedence in Final Fantasy games, and that’s exactly why I buy and play them. The narratives are second to none. When it comes to world-building, lore, and storytelling, very few franchises can rise to the level that Final Fantasy consistently does.

As for gameplay, yes, it can be difficult if you’re not familiar with how a basic JRPG works. But honestly? It’s not that bad. I tend to overlook this aspect because I play these games for their rich stories and the nostalgia they bring from my childhood.

That said, I still believe these games are fantastic—whether the gameplay is fast-paced and action-packed or more methodical. The narrative and overall experience are what truly make these games unforgettable, not just quick combat with a rushed story that’s beaten in five hours.

When you break down the price per hour, a $70 game that lasts only five hours means you’re paying $14 an hour. Compare that to a game with hundreds of hours of content, and you’re looking at mere pennies on the dollar in terms of time value. I’d rather spend my money on something that will engage me for longer periods, rather than a quick fix.

Today, we’re seeing too many poorly-made games that don’t respect the value of our time. You mentioned yourself that we’re all busy, and sometimes we just want to unwind with a game for an hour or two after a long day at work. But with beloved titles, we know what we’re getting into. I enjoy being told stories, and the gameplay needs to be at least somewhat decent. I can overlook clunky controls for a great story (looking at you, Gears of War 1). Likewise, I can overlook repetitive gameplay if the narrative is strong (Final Fantasy). What I can’t forgive, however, is lazy writing like in Dawntrail or completely destroying years of established lore and world-building (Dragon Age: Veilgaard).

Ultimately, as consumers, we support the IPs we love, much like we do with anime, movies, and books. By supporting these forms of media financially, we back the ideas, creativity, and direction they pursue. If you don’t like something, don’t buy it. If you tried it and it wasn’t for you—good for you for stepping out of your comfort zone. I can empathize with the time you feel was wasted, but at least you gave it a shot.

That being said, I think Final Fantasy stands head and shoulders above titles like Throne and Liberty. I’ve played many MMOs in my lifetime and watched plenty of them die off. From my experience, the story in Throne and Liberty is uninspired, the pacing is slow, and the areas feel restrictive given the narrative they’re trying to build. Maybe I need to revisit it, but when it launched, I was thoroughly unimpressed.

When it comes to work environments in Japan, we, as Westerners, should be careful not to impose our cultural values. While we can express our opinions on practices we perceive as unfair, it’s important to recognize that workers in Japan often have a strong sense of pride and belonging in their respective workplaces. For us to judge another culture’s work environment without truly experiencing it firsthand is both ostentatious and narcissistic.

Yes, there are instances of verbal and mental abuse, and yes, many workers endure long hours. But no one is forcing them to stay in these jobs indefinitely—they still have a choice. We shouldn’t position ourselves as superior or attempt to enforce our values onto a culture that has consistently given the world so much in terms of media, entertainment, and innovation.

Game is in Maintenance Mode IMO. If I ever play again it’ll only be during Free Login periods.

Switch to FFXI ❤

Completely disagree on how much a lot of these things that overlap into 14 are actually something that’s hurting the game but at the same time can’t deny that your criticisms are completely valid.

The open world being set dressing compared to the main focus of the game The hardcore content being pushed to the back for optional play and letting the story be something easier to get through while still having something in Dawn trail with some of the challenges.

This is all stuff that I really like about 14 but can completely understand why it’s the aspects of the game that just you do not care for

Man discovers that not all video games cater to his interests. More at 11.

Your critiques are exactly why I’ve avoided these games for awhile despite being interested in the series.

As someone who mostly plays wow as my main mmo and dips my toe into ff14 for the story every few years, I feel like they’re making the game their community wants and you just took a while to realize that that game isn’t the one you want.

Since ARR I’ve been saying that FF14 is a better game for casuals than wow, what wow does well is high end competitive content… but wow historically hasn’t served your more casual players very well. They’ve started to try doing that as we can tell by them taking things like the MSQ or pushing delves this xpac… but its still not going to be as friendly as a game like ff14 for those players.

I love ffxiv and I want to keep on loving and playing it but its definitely becoming harder to stay an active player. Im at the point where I really only log on to do stuff with my fc or to do the recent patch quests. I hope that in the future it can maybe go back to the ShB days but it might be too late if that ever comes along. Anyways love you Ember! Looking forward to more <3

Do I love this game? Yes. Do I still want to play it? Yes. Do I think it has a crapton of issues? Also yes. I agree with you but I’m still (semi) playing this game. I work alot and I have an active social and family life. 14 fits fine in the timeframe and attention span that I have with the minimal work I have to do in-game. I do hope Yoshi.P and the team wise up and do better with future expansions. If worst comes to worst, I’m planning to do as some friends do and only re-up my sub before an expansion.

ShB story was good. ShB gameplay however is when the butchering truly unleashed so I’ll not say I completely agree with the take that it was “that good”.

I have not played FF16 so I cannot say anything about that but the absolute lack of danger in the open World, and it’s eventual obsoleteness once you reach endgame in FF14 makes it feel hollow.
There is nothing left other than gathering, grinding FATEs, hunt marks. Being able to teleport and fly everywhere makes the world feel even smaller than it already is.

While FF11 was by no means flawless the world felt dangerous, and moving around the world was an adventure and could take a long time to get somewhere with how it was built. Quests were kind of more involved what was asked of the player but honestly without a guide on the side quests were almost impossible to figure out. However no matter how much I loved FF11 I don’t think I would enjoy it how it was nowadays simply because of how much time you needed to put in to get anything done with how little I have no compared to back then.
FF14 is a good story game to me but a terrible Online Multiplayer Game. It trying to be an MMORPG limits what the game could be.

Having absolutely no choice to modify your character other than stats makes gear progression feel pointless.

I don’t know why they can’t put in random spawning treasure chests to FFXIV which contain random level appropriate crafting supplies.

I could tolerate the mediocre gameplay if the story wasn’t so awful. Ever since Endwalker, the quality of the writing has been declining, and now in Dawntrail, I don’t think I’ve heard that level of bad voice acting since A Realm Reborn. To be fair, I blame the direction these actors have been given (or lack thereof) because they’ve got really good VA’s, and in DT even the really good VA’s sounded awful.

I’m a Roleplaying Game guy at heart, I love story driven games. Heavensward was what got me hooked and Shadowbringers was absolute peak for this game. Dawntrail was such a letdown that my love for the game’s just crashed completely, and I don’t think they’ll be able to get it back.

I really do not disagree with this. This has been my thought for a few year now.
Funny the other day I was speaking about how bad DT (Dawntrail) and how rocky EW (Endwalker) was. Saying it feels likes Shadowbrings if FF14 Wrath of the lich king. The best of the best. I do not mind having a bit of a easy approach due to my work and its convinet to me but game play alone been taken away from the million of cutsceans and it does annoy me. I do love a challenge and i do like the long cutsencs but I do feel they forgot the gameplay aspeshely in DT but then again DT was even a terrible story one of the worse since I started and so far with only a few bits i liked and it was not even part of the main Woke Lamet story line… but so far its only really the one I have had such a issue.

I fell off of love with xiv after endwalker. Never felt the same after that expansion

taking some things such as the gearing and build customization and the champion system from ESO would improve FF14 a lot though we do still need actually challenging combat in 14 still.

This game was the most fun to play in the heavensward/arr era. Dungeons even had dangerous moments, unlike now.. I kinda blame players a little on this. After that, everything became bland gameplay wise. The story still held up well until the end of endwalker but had peaked in shadowbringes. Dawntrails story was terrible. I hope things turn around, but the only thing keeping me invested now is the savage/ultimate content.

While I can not comment on ff16, I have played ff14 between heavensward to endwalker.

I adored the game during this period, the excellent story beats, the characters, the fights! All great, even have several boss and dungeon tracks in my music lists.

However, I truly believe that ff14 story had come to a complete end with endwalker (ironically). Yes I understand being a mmo, it must go on, but that expansion was the end for me. Everything came to a head, our sacrifices, our blood, sweat, and tears. Cumulated in that expansion, and while I enjoyed the experience and all the friends both npc and company I partied with along the way.. it was a good time to stop the game.

When dawntrail was announced I legit thought “What more is there? What else can we, the warrior of light, even do at this point?” Guess.. just watch and observe

Dawntrail was the perfect opportunity for Square to make changes to the MSQ experience. Instead, we got the same formulaic experience with even less solo combat instances than any previous expansion on top of the last 1/3 of Dawntrail being just a repeat of Shadowbringers. I’d honestly be okay with Square delaying the next expansion by 1-2 additional years if it means a drastic overhaul of the MSQ gameplay experience.

This guy needs a break he’s overthinking this shyt

I agree with most or all of the criticism towards 16 but to call it slop seems a tad too much.
Granted, that you need to complete the game to be able to enjoy it with all the skills, some actual difficulty and by making a beeline from story segment to story segment is not something that should be.

Hey man, interesting video to listen to.

Im not an FF14 player, so I cant really get into the nitty gritty of your points, but there are 2 things I agree with because its how I felt about FF14 during a period of time where I tried it out, and gave it a good try too (159 hours)(also a 3rd optional hot take)

First disclaimer is that as a gamer, im heavily gameplay motivated. story is secondary to me, as it should just serve to give fun scenarios for gameplay, rather than being the entire point of the game. I think if story is the main primary focus, then it should be made into a movie, show, or book.

The gear is BORING AF. seriously, in an mmo, let alone RPG to not have interesting gear AT ALL is kinda crazy, and I didn’t realize how bad this was until recently when I got back into WoW.

The gear in WoW (and other rpgs like baldurs gate 3) are interesting, dynamic, and change your gameplay. sometimes in big ways (like giving you a new ability, often seen with trinkets in WoW’s case) and other times its small (like a passive resource generation buff). The gear being interesting leads to me looking forward to different gear, or being intrigued when a piece of loot drops, you can almost always count on a piece of gear being unique and making you think about how your class would interact with it. basically, it gets the gears in your head turning from a gameplay PoV. This doesnt exist in FF14, and maybe it was part of why I couldnt get into it too deeply.

The other issue is lack of customization, specifically related to classes. No talent tree, no speccing, no nothing. The class is just 1 thing. This might not be the worst thing in the world, but for me, coming from WoW where every class and spec has a skill tree that will somewhat alter the gameplay depending on how you spec, I found this to be a pretty big downgrade cause I have less control over my experience in a way. Sure, there will always be a meta, but for leveling meta doesnt matter, and even in endgame it sometimes doesnt matter (unless you are a highest level raider or dungeon or pvp player), so you basically still get lots of choice. But in FF14, this does not exist.

My final issue was with the story. Now, I understand that this is the most hot take thing I have to say, but i wasn’t “wow’d” by the story. To me, it was just fine (I finished heavensward but never started stormblood). I did not really enjoy the fact that I was forced to engage with the story. As a WoW player, i love instanced content and world content, and I wanna do stuff. This applies to leveling too, I wanna be busy with content and do stuff. What’s key here though, is that WoW doesn’t generally FORCE you to engage with the story, outside of an “intro” which takes place during the leveling of the current expansion, and its generally not that long of a thing to do. To me, having to sit through hours and hours of cutscenes was just boring. I dont pay a sub fee to watch cutscenes lol, I do it to play the game and engage with the game, and engage with players. There could be an easy fix to this, to allow a “story focused” or “gameplay focused” way of leveling, but idk if that currently exists for “new” players (basically anyone who never reached the current expansion). However, I understand that FF is RENOWNED for its storytelling, so I don’t necessarily hate on this too hard, because i recognize that FF14 is probably just NOT FOR ME in this regard.

Again, interesting video, I never thought the ff14 hate was for more than story, but im glad that im not the only one who has an issue with the gameplay.

I think what saves 14 is the customization of your character. Creating a character and then customizing its style then watching that character go through the story makes it personal enough that you can go easy on all the shortcomings the game may have. Another thing is the world 16s world is a bit bland at times 14 has so many races colors it’s just more to look at and discover.

God I love these walk and talk alongs… makes me forget I bought a bloody game

You know what, this is totally true.
XI was so different. Anything would’ve killed you on the way to do stuff.

I personally think people put far too much stock into XIV’s story, it’s never been that good and people cope too hard. Dawntrail is basically ARR which people universally agree is bad, it’s the start of a new arc and Endwalker was the end of a decade long arc. To compare the two is moronic. I personally enjoy the dungeons in Dawntrail and I didn’t stop playing XVI because it was boring, I stopped playing it because it runs like shit on a goddamn 4080. XIV’s decline in quality has likely come from them having to shift resources to XVI instead and they’re unable to do both. Get 2 games being developed at once and they’ll both give you half the quality and they should’ve never agreed to make XVI.

I find this “Veteran player is tired of the game” videos pretty boring, if not ragebaiting.

Do you invalidate the fun you had when you first started playing?

The biggest point of the video being “There should be more gameplay over CS”. That is not a rule, the game is a successful product being what it is.
Dude is good at that, let that be what dude does.

Understand that if you drastically change it the game today, it will no longer be the game you initially enjoyed.

You make a lot of valid points in this video. I just started a new character after not playing for years. I wanted to get a friend excited about playing to so I said ” you know what? Let’s do the story together” this is his first mmorpg and we started playing about two months ago and we have just started Stormblood after almost 200hrs of gameplay and we have barely done any additional content other than extreme primals cause I wanted to get him excited about the ponies. We’ve played for so long now and we have done anything but the story cause we have a life and responsibilities outside of video games and when we play we only do a couple of hours but still…. the fact we have played so many hours and have only experienced de story and nothing else is a little down putting. At this point I have been trying to get him to try new classes and show him different things here and there because I am worried he will get tired of the repetitive content of the story. Though One thing we both agree on is that we love the community and interacting with the other players and even making some friends on the way. I hope they can offer new things in the future and innovate what in my opinion is a great game with and awesome community. It would be a shame to see all the potential that game has go to waste. PS fishing could very well more entertaining 😂

Yup. I didn’t like FF16 either and regret that I bought it. I kinda felt similarly towards FF15 as well. I bought them on recommendation from a friend and well – they were bad recos.

FF14 I wouldn’t classify as an MMO at all actually. Not when coming from WoW Classic, which has more freedom of movement, more emergent gameplay when questing from 1-60, and something FF14’s fans refuse to admit – more responsive combat engine(yes that’s right). The way the raids work in FF14, particularly the savage content I really dislike. You’re not fighting a boss anymore, you’re really just memorizing and learning how the flashing lights and dangerous stuff on the floor work. FF14’s raids feel like a flashbang of triangles, squares and of course full-screen blinding lights.

I burned out from FF14, and Dawntrail while it did have its narrative issues, the formula as a whole didn’t age well. The game itself needs an overhaul.

This design philosphy seems to go to all of square enix, not just cs3. FF7R games can also be played by literal babies.

XIV was never good and players were simply blinded by the visual novel story until it suddenly dropped in quality to match the rest of the game

I don’t like this video. I think it’s right to blame the creative director for the results of his work, but it’s filled with so much vague presumption that really misses the wider context of what actually influences an MMO’s direction.

I think understanding the origins of these decisions as issues of feedback is important; Yoshi-P is producing one of the most popular games on the market. He is personally responsible for maintaining that service–not directing an artistically sound video game. In an MMO, the highlighted, headlining feature is *other people*, so any decision that poses risk to that feature is negligible compared to the potential for sunk player counts. This, more than any fears of repeating the past, is the issue at the core of FFXIV, and all MMOs (past their early launch.)
MMOs fail because they’re often democratically designed. It’s easy to blame Yoshi-P for having a weak spine, but it’s also totally understandable to choose a path of least resistance, when it comes to these things, simply because the costs of failure are so astronomically high compared to other business models.

And this bleeds into XVI–boneless gameplay for the masses, mandated by yet another insane Final Fantasy budget. It’s easy to suggest that they should’ve made it more difficult, but for a development cycle occuring long-before the smash hit popularity of games like Elden Ring, why should they have guessed that a more difficult game was what audiences expected, let alone desired?

Both games simply fail at pacing–There is 100% a fun, stylish, and incredible version of XVI in there somewhere that cuts the chaff, and creates a great middle-ground between Final Fantasy 6 and Asura’s Wrath. But that’s the issue–MMOs (and other big AAA titles) have to be badly paced, because they have to stretch out the run-time of what you get within a given expac. cycle. What’s released *now* is just barely enough to tide most players over, and that’s with a growing budget and astronomical amounts of story cutscene bloat, and needless gameplay busywork.

Final Fantasy XIV is designed to waste your time specifically because there is simply no consistent way to release what is essentially 6 full-length, 40-60 hour JRPGs in 10 years–that’s more than one game every 2 years + additional free content updates. The MMO business model simply isn’t built for making art–it’s barely built for entertainment. It’s the same problem as the Marvel treadmill, and if you have any problems with the *core design* of these games, then you better be ready for it to be ignored, because there simply isn’t any time.
If you want better games, give the developers more time to think, and produce the content you want. It’s the Destiny problem–deliver the bare minimum by-necessity, because anything else would probably crash the already sinking ship. Is it good? No. Is it entirely Yoshi-P’s fault that MMO players are insane, ravenous, and demanding? No. Should the genre as a whole back away from the unrealistic themepark design that causes these issues? Yes. Should you stop playing it? Probably–I dunno, I’m not your dad. I’m just tired of this stupid idea that every issue in game development can be solved, regardless of crunch, with a “better staff.”

I don’t play FFXIV anymore, I now pay for a social 3d chat to meet up with friends while playing with the mods and take pictures.
I don’t play FFXVI after I beat bahamut because it got super boring. It was really cool at first but the fun dried out really fast before I could beat the game.

Among the many things i would agree with you in this video, what made me raise an eyebrow is the fact that you complain about the “grind” you need to endure on FFXIV, in terms of story and whatnot, to reach raiding content (even if Coils can still pose as a BIG challenge synced while also being ARR content). On the other hand you compare that grind to Throne and Liberty. While T&L is a really impressive MMO, the absurdity of the grind you need to go through with to craft even medium pve gear, is out of this world. Nonetheless i applaud of videos that put a critical POV at the Dev team of any game so as for it and them to get better at their craft.

6:40 the mobile game is NOT made by CS3 and isn’t even made by square enix. It is made by a chinese company called “lightspeed studios”

as someone that hasnt even beaten ARR yet stuff like this kinda makes me not even want to keep playing if its all going towards stuff ive seen no ppl say good things about lol

I just finished 16… Its a movie, the “game” is brain dead easy… And I’m not replaying the game on the recently unlocked harder difficulty, a difficulty that should be its default

I’m a game developer and while I agree with some of the criticism in this video, I think it fails to mention that players have asked for this (even if it is to their detriment). Yoship has mentioned time and time how if it was up to him he would make the game harder and different, but he doesn’t believe that’s what people want.

The very same quest you are praising in endwalker, people complained about it. ARR dungeons with multiple paths? people don’t engage with them or complain, cross class skills? people complained about them, Addional actions in stormblood? just take BiS abilities, Being slowed down while hit when running around in your mount? people complained about it. Exploration? people just google stuff.

The fanbase has shown yoship their unwillingless to engage with the content in the game, often trying to optimize the fun out of it or just complain about it. Currently there are players that keep asking for savage BIS to be even easier and faster to get, when it’s already one of the easiest BIS gear to obtain in any mmo. Variant dungeons in my opinion are pretty fun puzzles to do, and yet the community just looks up a guide for 12 routes and then complain the content is dead.

I truly believe YoshiP really thinks he’s doing what people want but as I said, I think it has become a bad things even to those very same players, so even if it is what people ask for, it’s not what they need. However, him going in this direction, even with 16 “makes sense”. FFXIV has seen only increase in popularity even since stormblood up to endwalker, and each of those expansions have reduced the barrier of entry of the game and they have met increasingly sucess, so I can totally believe them believing that going in that same direciton would be the besta and I can see if he thought the same principles would also benefit FFXVI

12:55 BIS gear isn’t a 730 weapon. It is bold to call this game lacking in difficulty when you cleared what is easily the easiest savage raid tier in this game’s history, 5 months after the raids release, seeing as you have been raiding since at least August. Go ram this game’s truly hard content and tell us about difficulty. There are so many things with this video, some valid, and several more out of touch. I think we need a review of the review.

Attencion! This guy ember’s arcade is a complete phobic. He has been harassing the voice actor of wuk lamat and any who show any comment of posivity towards the game. Look for his social media. He agreeded with toxic comments who wish the va dead and fired. Arcade confirmed to be an anti t catolic

FF14 has become so sterile, corporate and formulaic I just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. I sort of understand their terror of trying anything new since Square Enix depends so hard on it financially to fund their other projects but tedium will only take them so far. Stubbornness and refusal to innovate is a big problem in Japanese culture as a whole.

I won’t buy games with a severe lack of player agency anymore. As much as I like to be part of a grand storyline, I really want to play in the midst of it and not only stand on the sideline to watch. Most AAA studios do that these days as if they want to control every little step of the player beforehand to minimize bad reviews by the parts of the community not able to advance without putting effort into it. There is a reason why difficulties exist in games but companies seem to think player choices don’t matter as much as long as we can clear the game. If the game is satisfying to play is not the selling point anymore. Game companies seem to be too afraid of taking a hit and rather produce one boring title after another under the mask of awesome-looking trailers and marketing. The bad reviews are manageable and can be downplayed to be only trivial opinions of individuals or groups of haters/puritans who won’t acknowledge “innovation”. And when they put political (woke) driven issues into their games… We all know how bad that influences gaming space… or any media. It’s a crippling disease plaguing creativity and freedom and I hope this nightmare will be over in a few years when the world finally wakes up and puts an end to this bullshit holding us back from enjoying media.

Attencion! This guy is a complete phobic. He has been harassing the voice actor of wuk lamat and any who show any comment of posivity towards the game. Look for his social media. He agreeded with toxic comments who wish the va dead and fired

Thanks for the Video. It reflects my own thoughts I had from Endwalker on till now.

Final fantasy 16 has its problems weather its the one ending or not giving you the choice as to weather benedicta lived or died that one choice alone could have changed the story line from one where magic ended. to one where magic is saved and the world is saved and Ultima is defeated. why? because benedicta was the one character that could have brought hugo kupka and Barnabus Tharmr to your side after stopping ultima’s plan in its tracks the story would have went very differently and it also needs DLC that explained how the bearers got enslaved and how they stay slaves being how in theory they should be able to wipe out the non-magic users. all and all it needs one big DLC on the level of the game and one small one on the level of the Echoes of the Fallen yes they would reuse a lot of the assets for the alternate storyline but that is not a problem as long as they add in a area as big as the rising tide DLC that is original instead of going along with ultimas plan they could have gone Captain Planet at the end and brought the planet Back to Life by giving up their dominant powers while using the energy that ultima collected and to top it off making everyone magic users instead of making no one magic users at the end of the story seeing the magic civilization restored instead of a well the world was either saved by the skin of its teeth or was kids tail all along in a world that never had magic in it to start with. if this was the case in new game plus hands down one of the best final fantasy games I have ever played because if you want a dark ending you get it. if you want a light ending you get it.

Problem with yoshi p and the 14 dev team is that they listen to the players knee jerk reactions too much, players often dont know what they actually want and so when theyve complained about certain things like difficulty and jobs not having certain abilities that others do the devs have done something about it but in doing so theyve made it extremely braindead and the jobs have lost all identity barring some jobs, ironically the most unique job pictomancer is again the one that players are complaining about because its fun and the strongest job right now.
Im unsubbed from 14 but i basically am gonna resub because my friends still play, its a shame because this raid tier is very fun to go through and i can see the improvements to fight designs and such but the wait between hardish content is just too long now, it used to be 3 months per patch now its 4 and a half which makes things very stale as a raider.
FF16 yoshi p was producer but although i did enjoy the game i agree i mainly enjoyed it for the story, my thoughts on it was they should have gone all in on making it dmc combat it just feels so basic and watered down, but again youd have players complaining about difficulty. Tbh i mainly blame the 14 community for how its got like this, after playing 14 from arr ive never been so uninterested in playing it and even when im reclearing my weeklies in pf with friends im longing to play something else lol

I feel out of love with FFXIV in Dawntrail, but not because of the story. I loved the story. I hate how much harder the dungeons and trials are now compared to Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Shadowbringers and Endwalker were so much fun. Dawntrail I feel like I’m stressed in every piece of content, regardless of if its a regular duty, a 100 duty, or a trial/raid. I straight up just refuse to do savage or EX content. The new araid is ok except for the last boss. I absolutely hate it.

7:00 – PS I had that moment in Stranger of Paradise, doing the Dicaprio point on screen going ” _That’s Sastasha! They reused FFXIV assets in this game! That’s kinda neat, I wonder if I can mod in my Elezen into this!_ “

There are lots of things happening right now imo. FF14 had a recent difficulty dive in EW patches and in DT. ShB duties are still one of the most challenging ones among the regular ones. It is not rare to see TPK in The Dying Gasp and Seat of Sacrifice and even abandoning midgame. The devs clearly fell to the playerbase demands to lessen difficulty and simplify job rotations and skill, so right now the gameplay doesn’t feel as rewarding as it was in EW/ShB.
From what I’ve read, CBU3 was assigned to the FF16 mainly because CBU 1 had their hands in FF7R. From a corporate PoV, the exectuvies probably thought if CBU3 made a miracle FF14, they will definitely make FF16 into a major success.
At the end of the day, CBU3 was tasked with a major new title while being expected to keep FF14 success. They probably simplifed processes and mechanics to fit time constraints and demands, and there we have. One title and one expansion that both seem to fall behind the franchise and series.

shadowbringers was chef’s kiss, endwalker made me cry a lot… but the new expansion feels so “empty”, i didnt enjoy or got attached to any of the new characters… so many quests felt repetitive that it felt like an anime filler (expensive one).
But what has been making me fall out of love with the Final Fantasy saga as a whole is it not being as much “fantasy” as it was before, like in X ou XII (my favorites), there were so many COLORS, the clothing was not practical but it made it look like a fantasy, collecting weapons, aeons, espers… you couldn’t wait to see them in battle, every character that was relevant somehow had such a distinct hairstyle and clothes that it just made me more and more curious to get to know them… it feels too realistic nowadays, so much that feels boring as any day to day after work

Okay when you said “good mmorpg” and used WoW *Retail* (not Classic) as the example- Im out bro. Lol FFXIV isn’t perfect but I lost it when you showed that XD

I’m an MMO junkie, have been for a long time, I’ve played both of them extensively so I do know what I mean when I say that today’s WoW is just as bad if not worse than Dawntrail fr. WoW Classic though-

“I’m a normal guy, I have a normal job, and my own small business”.

That’s a pretty funny definition of normal, considering the unemployment rate these days.

In my opinion, this entire video is kinda completely out of touch. Maybe play some more final fantasy games, and maybe something else that’s older than 10 years old, for some perspective? Literally anything will do. It doesn’t matter. Wizardry, f’n hard, will give you perspective. Ultima, has a lot of emergent gameplay, will give you perspective. And Final Fantasy 1, the one everyone sh*ts on because it barely has a story? Perspective.

Maybe there’s more to games than your limited point of view as a “modern gamer”. Final Fantasy has a long history of development in the direction you’re describing, with the likes of Tetsuya Nomura and Hinorobu Sakaguchi directly involved in said direction (ever played FFX?). Maybe there’s more to the design limitations Yoshi P is working with than you are aware of. It’s cool you acknowledge the issues with game development, and abuse, when you discussed FF14’s development, but I think it’s bullsh*t to assume that doesn’t also apply everywhere else in Square Enix too.

I agree with everything you said. I’ve been playing FF14 for three years now, and while I’ve enjoyed certain aspects like the story, customizing my character, and side content like Eureka and deep dungeons but I can’t help but feel disappointed in the overall experience.

Eureka was the only time I truly felt like I was playing an MMO rather than a JRPG with MMO features tacked on. Its emphasis on exploration, group coordination, and progression created a sense of community and adventure that’s otherwise missing from the game. The deep dungeons were another highlight for me, they provided a satisfying solo challenge, but solo content like that isn’t the reason I play MMOs.

Unfortunately, much of the core gameplay feels hollow. The overworld is devoid of anything meaningful, the dungeons are linear and uninspired, and the gear progression is lackluster. Instead of working toward meaningful upgrades, you’re essentially handed near-BiS gear just for hitting milestones. On top of that, stats barely matter, there’s no real customization, and everything feels homogenized. Tanks and healers play too similarly, and even many DPS roles play closely the same.

The game’s difficulty is another letdown. It’s entirely dependent on knowledge the mechanics and the job you are playing. While teamwork is important, the fights are so predictable that they leave no room for individual creativity or improvisation. Once you’ve learned the mechanics, success boils down to repetition rather than adaptability or raw skill.

And then there’s the community. While it’s often praised for being welcoming, I’ve found it to be just as toxic as any other online game if not worse. The ‘we are nice here’ attitude often feels like a facade. Many players can’t handle criticism of the game; for example, any video pointing out flaws is bombarded with dislikes, and the game’s subreddit is one of the worst places for discussion. Unless the topic is fan art or praise for the game and Yoshi-P, any contradictory opinion gets buried under downvotes.

At this point, I’ve come to accept that FF14 just isn’t the game for me. Instead of continuing to complain or hope for changes, I’d rather move on and play something else. It’s time to let go of the sunk cost fallacy and acknowledge that not every game is for everyone.

thats the problem with ff14. The moment u mention lack of difficulty, the dissabled, elderly, house wifes, dads, come out of the wood work to complain that they wouldnt play othervise, or complain that they would be abused (in raids) by all the pro gamers for being slow to react and low dps and so on.

my bigest braking point of ff14 dawtrail (outside the constant power of friend ship speaches that just invalidat any and all character growth) was when we get to the lower forest of Yak T’el
I was so hyped as we entered it was like it had been taken from Macalania Woods in ff10 and the dnesity of the small town as you arive in that blue forest fulled me with hope …. and then you leave that samll town and the rest of the zone is just empty beyond belief, there is compelalty nothing anywhere woth looking at or exploting beyind the aither curents -.-

I had been forcing myself to keep playing at that point I love wuk lamat and her joyous character keeped me playing beyond this point but maaaaan did seeing such an empty purely nostalgia bait zone kill every bit of hope for the game, and …. then things got worse -.-

This video summarizes 95 % of how I feel about FFXIV. It doesn’t feel like an RPG anymore because all RPG systems were removed from the game or they were never in it. (elemental resistance, accuracy, gear with different abilities, etc…). Gear progression is just more HP and more damage, I feel nothing getting a new weapon.

The only thing that keeps me playing the game is the encounter design of savage/ultimate fights, which I still find fun.

You raise a lot of valid points. I agree with most of them. Dawntrail’s story especially has significant flaws, which is frustrating after how amazing Shadowbringers and Endwalker were. The world is still beautiful and I’ve been enjoying the end-game raids, but yeah, way too many “take 5 steps and watch another cutscene” in the MSQ and not enough player agency.

Yes, gameplay is really lacking in FF XIV. You get all the weapons you need by just following the MSQ, there’s no real challenge. Though people hate grinding in old JRPGs at least it makes things a bit challenging and rewarding. I just finished Endwalker and decided to stop playing FF XIV. This is the best critique video I’ve seen so far.

Think the biggest issue with FF14s gear is as you say. They are just stat increases. But no gear in the game from what I know of changes anything about your current combat job. Like older MMOs used to have this old school stat increases ( I am an old wow player) but even in those days you had items here and there (usually rare items) which in some form altered how you play your class just a little. Why can’t I have an item which changes what my job does mechanically?

But even if that was added so you had more choice and build variety… as you say… where besides end game raiding do I get a chance to utilize such choices (or more where would they matter)?

Their game design is very formulaic, for all the good and bad it does. But I disagree that the fear of difficulty/challenge is a problem with CS3 specifically. It is something that can be seen in FF games in general. FF7 Remake and Rebirth do the exact same thing, where the base game is easy as hell and any semblance of challenging content is locked behind NG+. Both games even offer modes where the CPU takes care of the real-time combat for you. FF15 switched to real time combat but made it so you can just hold buttons while the game almost plays itself and it’s near impossible to and get a game over. FF7 Remake also had very boring MMO-like side quests and not much in the way of exploration. 

They are clearly worried about potentially gatekeeping existing FF fans, who they seem to view as hyper casuals who are not very mechanically skilled and shun any sort of challenge. And to some extent I don’t think they’re wrong in that. Just look at how people apparently complained that the Rebirth Platinum trophy was too hard and the director had to come out and apologize for it. I’m confident a lot of these people probably got through the older games just by grinding and overpowering content rather than getting good at the game (I know because that’s exactly what I did as a kid who barely spoke English when I first played those games).

I think a significant chunk of sales for FF games still comes from those long-time fans, because these games always sell very well on launch but then have terrible legs (lack of WOM and it doesn’t help that the fanbase loves to shit on the current game until the next entry comes out).

I know a lot of people like to comfort themselves that they “don’t like button mashing” and prefer “strategy” but let’s face it, the strategic elements of 99% of turn-based combat in FF is basically Pokemon for young teens. FF16 actually has a relatively high skill ceiling, higher than any of the other singleplayer FF games bar Stranger of Paradise, but the game doesn’t push you in any way to even get 10% of the way and you basically have to motivate yourself to get there for the heck of it. I hope they get rid of the guard rails in the future and don’t require you to first play through 50-100h worth of MSQ to access challenging gameplay but I don’t see them ever raising the bar in terms of difficulty for the MSQ content of their games because they’re too scared to lock out existing fans and are not going to take a $100m+ risk on a game in the hopes of completely rebuilding the fanbase to one that is more into challenge.

Well this is dumb about final fantasy 14 its really hard to top the story after end walker. yes Dawntrail is a mess. its because it felt like a DLC to end walker instead of the start of a new story with just as much depth as when a realm reborn when it launched. that is really hard to do what they need is a big villain to keep you coming back to expansions like what they had with the ascian it feels more like doing the homework the ascian left you. the patch’s they did in endwalker was way better then Dawntrail witch was an expansion and it was mostly because it did not set up a good place for the story to go next it left it a open question where as in the past it was an open question but at least you new that an ascian was behind it somehow. they really need to innovate when it comes to the storyline now. look the fact is are character has beat every big villain in the universe and that is a big problem for final fantasy 14 they even down played the void witch could have been a shot at doing an overarching storyline all over again it could have been without hydaelyn to Empower our hero the best we could do is seal the void temporarily but we did not go in that Direction and that was a big mistake but there is still time and in anime its typical to have a beach episode after a arc conclusion so what the did so far was not that bad at all it was just what we needed. a palate cleanser. now time to start a new story with a long narrative.

I was fortunate enough to beat Shinryu before they nerfed the fight, but once they adjusted the difficulty I realized that XIV was going to have a huge problem going forward. If you make your encounters easy for players so they can complete the story, you’ll take more away from the gaming experience.

This was confirmed after I got my girlfriend into the game. She loved it at first but then came the glaring problems. Traveling in the world felt so boring to her, so we normalized teleporting. The story experience began to feel like a drag (with only certain moments truly gripping us), so she would only want to play PVP on most days. Don’t even get me started on PVP in this game…

I just feel like there were so many missed opportunities in this game and they only wanted to double down on everything they already did.

After beating 7.0, I feel sad about the state of this game I played for almost 10 years. I understand making decisions to prevent people from getting addicted but, as an adult with few moments to game, I want to actually feel engaged with the games I choose to play. I don’t need XIV to turn into a casual experience. I want the casual elements to remain, but they’re great when I’m SITTING STILL and want to do something casual. I need FAR less casual engagement when I’m out in the world though. I need danger and discovery but unfortunately XIV is a shell. I felt far more engaged when I was playing FFXI and I wasn’t even a huge fan of the combat system.

(sigh) Here’s to hoping Yoshi P’s experience playing Elden Ring will influence him to make bolder decisions for version 8.0.

Agreed! MSQ should be harder and challenging. YoshiP should have given the player a chance to fail and grow more often.

To player who complains that it’s too hard. You’ve played through 6 expansions. Hundreds even thousands of hours.

You should have grown like your WoL.
WoL has gone to the edge of the world and come back. Saved it countless times.

The community cried when endwalker quests were harder, hense why ALOT of shit has been dumb downed.

Its not the devs fault, its ours.

We complained, and they made shit easier.

Thats the problem, not the dev team, not the inner workings. Its what happens when a dev listens to the fans. THEY MADE SHIT EASIER SO PPL WOULD STOP CRYING.

If things were as hard as they were in heavesnward/stormblood, this video would be the complete opposite, instead complaining why things are to hard.

Remember, we did this, not the devs.

THIS IS ENTIRELY THE COMMUNIITIES FAULT AND WE SHOULD BE BLAMED. Just seriously, the community, get good at gaming.

There is something to be said about the average skill level of the average player – I don’t think this video lacks a point, but I would argue against the assumption that everyone is equally as good at FFXIV-style games as you are.

Yoshi-P has said it best himself when discussing the lack of Viera hats, which translated to: ‘Even if we hired 100 more people, Viera would still not have hats due to my leadership style.’

Maybe we should take him at his word.

This video made me question myself and my joy for FFXIV, but no! I still enjoy it as I’m playing at the same time I’m watching this video. Very good video and opinion regardless! 👍🏽

Yoshi-P needs to be able to take criticism. Him doubling down on poor storytelling for Dawntrail’s post-MSQ was really a big slap in the face. The MSQ sucked and Wuk Lamat had a suffocating presence which really made other characters as well as the story as a whole suffer greatly just in service of trying to prop up that character and shove her down our throats. So what does he do? Doubles down and says we just didn’t see what makes the character so great, so the plan is to push her more so we can learn to appreciate her. I’ve had more than enough of that character. Please no.

part of the problem is the player base complains incessantly whenever they step outside of the box and try something new. they complained about in from the cold being too hard, they complained about the thancred stealth mission being too hard, they complained about the npc escort portions being overdone, they complained about the stealth portions where you follow npcs being too hard. you can’t do anything new for this community without a vocal portion of them throwing a fit, and it seems they are the ones the team listens to because they will do something new, get backlash from *some* people, then get scared and overcorrect by just not doing those things as much or even at all anymore.

more than anything, i am baffled that for a final fantasy game that references other final fantasy games for easy fanservice points, they don’t actually implement some of the really amazing things from the older games. the reference to the thunder plains challenge but not implementing it as a minigame felt like a slap in the face. for a final fantasy game, it really doesn’t feel like one. and i think that’s part of the problem with xvi as well. the stories are incredible.. but the gameplay and systems are getting further and further from the final fantasy style that people have come to adore, such as ffxvi not having a proper party system, and ffxiv msq being yapcity with so little actual gameplay (let alone ENGAGING gameplay) to be had.

there HAS to be some better system than “talk to this npc, listen to 4 minutes of dialog, go to this other npc, listen to 5 minutes of dialog” over and over and over again…

Yoshi-P has a disdain for RPGs, probably because of all the mechanics they involve, and would clearly prefer to focus on Action-Adventure games, however, he is being assigned to an RPG franchise so…

I really think he would shine to direct a new IP at Square Enix.

Great video! As someone who really respects CS3/CBU3 as a game developer and thoroughly enjoyed both FFXIV and FFXVI, I can comfortably agree with these critiques. I think for too long CS3 has gone the safe route of developing games for everyone and removing any semblance of incentive or challenge to their games, which completely removes any extrinsic fun. This is something that worked for a while for them, but only because the stories that they told were just THAT interesting to play through. And with the release of Dawntrail being a massive dip in writing quality from previous expansions -their main selling point, there isn’t much reason for people to stay playing at the moment. Granted, Yoshi-P has previously come out in interviews stressing that they do regret some of those design choices and want to switch things up going forward. Of course now in DT, we see much more engaging regular dungeon/boss encounters than ever before. As much as I respect CS3 and Yoshi-P, there is no denying that their game design philosophy is extremely flawed, and I’m interested to see how they improve and take the feedback from DT and even FFXVI for their future projects and new games.

I’m currently on a semi-hiatus in FF. Still actively playing however turning it off more than often to do other stuff. However I have to disagree with a lot of the points said here in the video because they kinda feel…. one-sided and not properly researched.

so I agree with the game being too easy. Currently MSQ is very easy and has been for a while. However that is not a concern in my book because it’s primarily driving the story. DT for example has upped the ante quite a bit with its leveling dungeons. That is something that someone who raids savage will only mildly see or notice if not specifically taking the pace in. Savage itself got also easier for players that have played savage, but compared to older tiers, this tier has had some brutal entry points for new players. While yes, the damage requirements were not existent (apart from 2 and 3), the general design of the fights have shifted from “Kill it with damage” to “play it properly” which is something where a lot of people had big issues with when they started. Overall, teaching players “Play it proper” is a good thing long term.

“DT story is bad” – One of the few people here brave enough to openly disagree. Most of the main issues with DTs story come, boiled down, to us being only a bystander that does trivial jobs while it pretty much always has been that way. Most of our MSQ we’ve been “just there” while events around unfolded. In fact, this time we were arguably the first time actually requested to help out and not just stumble into something. Before, we were the maincharacter that just stumbled into the scene, looking forward what comes around, this time in DT we’re not the main character, instead we were actively hired to help out with stuff.

“The devs don’t play” – Good thing that Yoshi-P is a 90-99 parse BLM that actively raids savage and remember P8 where the devs actually were performing too well so that the final product was too hard, even for most of the highend raiders.

Keep in mind, that you (the writer and reader) most likely are engaged players that can wield that description “gamer”. However there are plenty of people in this game, that use it as a social feature, that spend like x00h in the first 30 levels of ARR just by crafting, socializing and so on. Also check out the forums of the game in various different languages. It’s not a single day, when people plea for help, that the content itself is too hard for them to beat alone or without other players. We’ve seen that with the solo zenos fight in SB which was, even up until today, a massive issue for a lot of players.

I like to see FF14 currently in a situation similar to Pokemon. The playerbase is angry, that nothing happens, however if you’re really invested in the game and give it a fair chance, you’ll see that plenty of stuff is changing for the better. not on a makro scale what people actually want. YoshiP has announced that they will, in future content, will dial it down a bit to go on the “make everything more accessible”-branch.

Keep in mind, thatt ff14 HAS TO BE safe at this point in time. it’s one of SEs running franchises that is still performing well and actually making money compared to other franchises. Currently the game has to perform financially (and this is by catering primarily to casual players)

Not on the “but yoshi p did nothing wrong” – in fact I think that he drastically needs to change things. e.g. the patchcycles need to be much shorter. Either they reduce them back to 3 – 3 1/2 months or raise them to 5 months but do give us content worth fo 2 patches like they currently do

This makes me think of how Yoshi P praised the Monster Hunter team for creating a Behemoth fight better than he could even do it, after watching this video I can see why, it doesn’t seem like he’s well versed in difficult enemy encounter

❤

I never cared for Yoshi-P as a director. FFXIV was a disappointment and a waste of my hard earned money. FFXV was no different in quality, not only because of the gameplay but also because the story was bleak and lacking in memorability. Yoshi-P’s defenders can suck it. Their opinions won’t change my experience. In fact it just makes it worse when they try to persuade me that it’s “good”.

I’ve been playing FF 14 for 2 years and while the story was amazing I hated how they made healers in this game. Stupid DPS machine with 2-3 dmg skills…

This is all true.
Ff14 gear and damage systems is my biggest gripe. all it does it increases your stats. I remember during a realm reborn and killing primals thinking the weapons would do elemental DMG and was disappointed. Then I realized that there are really no elemental differences in this game it’s just magic damage and physical damage ff16 is the same with gear I didn’t even bother to get the ultimate weapon because I noticed there is really no reason to I was capable of beating everything with the sword I had nothing ever felt worth it.

I love XVI tbh, the character is charming and the background world lore is amazing
Clive gameplay is the issue indeed i agree and exploration is lacking
But the peak is Ifrit gameplay combined with cinematic work and god tier music, i can forgot the clive combat and excited what comes next after dominant to another dominant fight

ff14 kept me occupied only because i was so hyped to buy 6 months of subscription ahead of time… then cruel realization came that this game is just for single playthrough, and the only holding point was zodiark and crystal mommy ark finishing. Sooo… after you see whole MSQ and do side quests and does not live with huge dementia its over for you. And yes, there are those weirdos that read the book over and over again, sometimes people call them religic fanatic too, this sort of person that fanaticaly devour single line of text over and over to the point they become live incarnation of things they were exposed to. I find it pretty similar with ff14 and everything that happens in the game development, and dont let me rant about this copius cap about how everything is the bestest and cutestest including community and every single update that give exacly same thing every. single. time.
Anyway i cheris time i spent in final fantasta, yet it was the time when i met the craziest mentaly unstable and most harmful people in my life of using interwebs… :’)

hate farming is the lowest form of content

Dawntrail was the first time I started skipping cutscenes because I wanted to do something.

There’s no player agency at all, no danger, no ….. game. It’s just folks talking.

Dawntrail was the worst offender. I maybe log on once or twice every two weeks just cause I like my character.

We’re not playing a game, we in a quasi interactive movie.

The fact that jobs received actual nuance and interesting changes but only in pvp during endwalker says a lot.

They CAN do interesting job identity. They just choose not to because it might rock the boat of balance too much.

Missing the 3 minute intro of cassette tapes for your generic video essay of the same talking points of every “Problem with insert thing”. Shoulda started with Capitalism just saying that’s how you make a true video essay. Like you can swap the name FF14 with like Fallout and Yoship with Todd Howard and that’s how generic the video essay talking points have become that you can almost just have a format for them its hilarious.

Yeah Ive been saying this about FFXIVs gear system for years. Good vid man.

Sadly, the game reached its peak during Shadowbringers and then it tried to repeat the same formula, but people are not stupid. The game got to a comfy spot where it releases small content because they have a loyal people already paying and buying things from the online store. But it’s not fair. The players are just funding Square’s projects, things like XVI, that kept the developers busy and EW patches were bad because of it. The devs seemed to stop playing their game and disconnected from the real player base.

I wasn’t sure what Dawntrail was going to give us for a story, and it was far worse than anything I could of imagined. And as I’ve said since the end of Endwalker, we really just need 14 to die and for them to work on the next MMO, our characters are too powerful, have done too much, and the entire structure/combat/flow needs a rework and to be updated. The problems with the way the MSQ flows has been apparent for awhile, I’ve said it on other people’s FFXIV videos, but the MSQ (and leveling the first class in general) lacks combat, kill 500 enemies or collect 100 of X isn’t the best gameplay, but your at least doing something and the story can exist along side combat. Plus there is almost no real threat of failure as long as you don’t agro multiple higher level mobs (minus tanks) and even then a chocobo can let most classes fight 3 similar leveled mobs at once, mobs are also so spread out that it isn’t an issue. Gear has always been an issue, there are some good things like not having to worry about stupid levels of rng on gear like current WoW, but with overmeld and material in general, you can modify the gear to the stats you want instead of going after weapon x because it has more of the sub stat you want than just a linear upgrade. And honestly I haven’t enjoyed a single player FF game since 10, I know a lot of people liked 12 (minus the MC) but it just wasn’t for me. 13 was horrible and it just felt like you were watching your characters fight with you cheering on the sidelines, 15 the combat was just not fun as all weapons existed as stat sticks and magic was broken and hidden behind a crafting mini-game (also no real challenge just some high-hp enemies), and 16 I didn’t even play, was talking about buying it and a friend sent me some links of clips of him playing it to show just how bad it was and that you could even fail all the QTEs in boss fights and win without issue.

Edit: Thought of it after, but going back to 15, look at how many additional sources beside just playing the game you needed to view in order for the story to make sense. I feel like SE regardless of who is working on it, just wants to make movies and they were told to make a game instead so they play down the “game” part of video game.

I would rather have 10 games with FFXIV’s gear progression than have 1 game with GW2/WoW gear progression
I hate free builds. They’re often imbalanced and developers don’t know how to balance them. They don’t know how to make every class playable and have the same impact.

You got your BiS but behind the BiS there’s a lot of calculations done, so you kind of do have a choice. If you want to have more Piety as a WHM then you might as well pick another set made for you.

I don’t disagree that the ‘RPG’ mechanics of FF16 are there to convince the player that this IS DEFINITELY A FF title. That being said, while I think it takes a tad too long to get to the point of being a bit deeper, I personally really enjoy 16’s combat. When you get to the point of having multiple eikon’s, it really opens up and empowers the player. Plus the spectacle of the game was something I haven’t forgotten about after playing. I think 16 is a more enjoyable game to play than 15 personally speaking.

This succinctly describes a feeling that I’ve had for a while but refused to acknowledge. I began playing FFXIV because a few friends of mine wanted a healer in savage raids, and I didn’t mind helping out. The plot (minus ARR) was good but I felt bored and didn’t understand why the game was so intent on making traversal as slow and tedious as possible unless I bothered to waste time scouring empty parts of the maps to let my mounts get a speed increase through flight. Once I beat Stormblood however, a friend of mine told me to watch the Shadowbringers trailer before I continued the MSQ and…I was COMPLETELY hooked. It felt like all of the negative feelings that were building toward the game washed away as I was entranced by the (subjectively) best content the game had to offer, and by the time I got to Endwalker and started raiding, I was satisfied. I had a falling out with my raid group however, and told my friends that I would cancel my sub and hop back on once Dawntrail came out, but I found myself surprisingly not caring once the expansion ACTUALLY released. I wanted to resub out of obligation, but I guess on some level I felt that aside from raiding and minor diversions, I was going to be bored again until I got to postgame content where the (subjectively) difficult and fun content remained, since Endwalker felt like two steps back from the narrative grip that Shadowbringers had on me.

Seems I was correct. Thank you very much for making me confront the fact that I put aside my grievances with the game just for the sake of engaging in content with friends that frustrated me to no end. I’d say that overall I enjoyed my experiences with the game, but now I’m able to move past that and play things that genuinely make me happy.

The conclusion(s) in video are valid, but all the reasoning is conjecture. Example: the noclip section, you randomly pluck this idea out of a 2 hour documentary and made up a whole scenario of how strict Yoshi-P has been running this team for years (with ZERO proof). There are a lot of examples with these kind of made up scenarios throughout the video. FF14 is formulaic by designee now, they are going to give you a consistent experience moving forward. They want FF14 to be a theme-park MMO – where you leave and comeback, because they know MMOs cannot provide you consent content. And FF16 was designed to be “safe,” because the FF main series has not been popular in years. They have never really recovered snice they made FF13 back 2009 (sales wise). It’s really not any deeper than that.

the divide between shadowbringers and dawntrial is too large! I look back on shadowbringers and how I was excited to find out the next part of the story, or learn about the new world we was thrown into. The people were suffering and their stories were a heavy weight. Dawntrial was a slog of ‘just get through this to finish it’ and a main character screaming for peace every 2 seconds

I love ff14, but there is a major issue with the new player experience. I persuaded a good friend of mine to give it a try, and while he loved it initially, he got burned out by the post-ARR patch slog. He made it to the very beginning of HW then got fed up and never came back. He quit right before the story gets good…. But that’s the problem. You shouldn’t have to play a game for 50+ hours before you get to the good part.

They really should be taking notes from BG3 and Elden Ring, two of the greatest RPGs ever, that have both released in the past 2 years. Neither pull any punches with gameplay difficulty and are super engaging right from the beginning. Also Larian is basically a masterclass in how to run a game studio.

I think a lot of your criticism with both of these games stem from them being JRPG games. Which is funny because Yoshi P himself doesnt like his games being called JRPGs.

I’ve played this game pretty consistently since 1.0, and through all the ups and downs, tens of thousands of hours, what pushed me over the edge to finally quit was……Katien, lol. I know it sounds ridiculous, but, it was more just a final straw type of situation. They really ruined the class design, feel, rotation for damn near every character. Everything feels basically the same now, there’s next to no nuance or freedom in a rotation. It’s a whole bunch of little things adding up into a bland, non engaging combat system. Remember when aggro in dungeons used to be a bit harder to hold, so having a ninja with shadewalker and smokescreen was always a comfy dungeon pick. Or remember when samurai had two fully optimal separate rotations in stormblood? When you could ‘freestyle’ your kenki dumps/shinten and it was just as strong as the actual rotation? Every class had their own unique niche perks, yes balance was worse back then and some classes were very hamstrung in certain environments, but at least it had charm and character… combat now is so insanely boring and bland. If it weren’t for the banger soundtracks I’d never raid in this game because it just so tedious and boring.
I will not speak to the quality of the writing or the story because I sped through a lot of msq especially during endwalker and dawntrail, so I’m not a good person to talk about that stuff.
Homogenized rotations between all melee ruined the combat in this game, having to maintain perfect boring rotations with zero variance for hours on end isn’t remotely engaging.

If there is something that I find very annoying in this community, it is the baseless assumptions or people acting as if they work for the company they criticize, and are part of the team, knowing all the ins and outs of it.

Regarding the video, perhaps it is his fault, perhaps not. I doubt it’s the fault of a single person, considering an entire team and upper management calls the shots (mostly investors + some upper management).

I personally think SE slowly devolved into what made FF14 a disaster when it initially launched. No clear vision, lack of innovation, and fear of going outside the box while getting stuck in the same destructive strategies. JPs are in general very conservative and rigid and this is felt acutely more than ever.

Also, I think FF14 is in maintenance mode and everything that was done in the past 5-6 years was for the Mobile they are currently pushing. (simple, formulated, standard, easy to play)

Final Fantasy as the behemoth franchise it was… died on 12.

my problem with XIV has always been my problem with FF games in general. and thats SE doesnt know how to make a game, that isnt a glorified hallway. even the big wide maps are just a closed instance with only one way to go, to the quest. i think their tech is to far behind to create a seamless transition from place to place. making the world feel open. every FF game plays the same and that goes for XIV even though its a MMO. i had a LOT of fun starting in shadowbringers and finishing endwalker. i was hoping dawntrail would keep me, but i already knew it was a flop from the trailer alone. ironically ARR and havensward still some of the best parts of the game, the growing pains of learning it. but after you hit shadowbringers its totally different vibe, endwalker hits or misses depending who you are and connection to the story, dawntrail to me showed the devs undercooked heavily, and even a lot of drama around it felt forced just for engagement to keep the games name alive.

the whole race to world first stuff also feels like its coming to a crawling halt in interest even with echo trying to widen the audience.

He is like a Miyazaki of Elden Ring. He thinks he is being innovative, but in reality just outdated. They have one of the best franchises in the world, they know how to make good games, but not how to make complete games. all these guys need to watch The King’s Avatar animation (the best gaming animation out there) and learn how to make a complete MMORPG or MOBA style game. Final fantasy 14 doesn’t even have chat bubbles. that games 20 years ago had. Monster Hutner franchise. u cant even tame monsters. they think multplyaer is a bad thing when it actually gives life and replayability to their games.

Shoot you forgot the main issue with ff16. Is that even the story the thing that excuses all of the gameplay shortcomings falls absolutely flat on its face in the later half of the game. 16s story failures made me realize that 14 is really only good when the story actually motivates you to play it. Which is why so many people complain about Dawntrail, because when you take away the good story and replace it with the garbage that dawntrail gave us people start to look at the rest of the game and realize that there wasnt that much there to begin with.

I remember when I found the Masamune, one of the most famous swords in the series, in a treasure chest in a random ditch in FFXVI. And because FFXVI’s gear is what it is and Masamune wasn’t better than the sword I already had it was essentially worthless to me. THE Masamune, lowered to random vendor trash. It’s wild how they just didn’t pay attention to some things in XVI at all.

I agree with some points, but not others. All of this criticism is at least fair though, even if I do disagree with some of it.
Firstly, I want to talk about the FF14/FF16 thing because as we know, CS3 was responsible for both. I’ve said lots that FF16 was the worst thing to happen to FF14 as it gave us the biggest content drought in the game’s history. Stuff was repetitive, and much of this happened in FF16 too. Having them work on both the live service FF14 and a main title game stretched them thin.
I also agree with your criticism of Dawntrail and general lack of player choice in general — it sometimes feels like reading a book; things are set in stone well before you interact with anything. And the world design is often beautiful, but equally barren and you aren’t encouraged to explore it beyond a few things like Aether currents.
Jobs in FF14 have also become dumbed down, many of them feeling soulless or similar to each other.

However, there’s a lot that I disagree with too.
Yes, FF14 is not difficult. It is designed to be incredibly easy so any player can get through the story. Is that such a bad thing? Final Fantasy games have never been challenging, and there are many other franchises that pick a similar route. Not every single game has to be difficult, and in FF14’s case, there are plenty of difficulty options for those seeking more challenging combat. Maybe it is more noticeable since the story isn’t very engaging in Dawntrail, but again, lack of difficulty is not new or inherently bad.
Also, while FF14 and FF16 have failed to innovate in some areas, they both have in others. Using FF14 as an example, we’ve seen Criterion Dungeons, Island Sanctuary, and Chaotic Alliance raids as new forms of content to enjoy. There are also plenty of ways players can customize their experience with the use of a very deep glamor system, player housing, their aforementioned island sanctuary. It’s fair if it doesn’t interest you or other people, but it does appeal to a lot of people and brings a certain audience into FF14 that wouldn’t be interested in other MMOs.
Furthermore, a lot of things you’ve mentioned are intrinsic to the genre they are tied to, and are not specific to CS3 or Yoshi P. That doesn’t mean they aren’t fair criticisms, but stuff like lack of gear choices, no excitement in the overlord, and linear progression are not unique to FF14 in any regard; and in some cases, they are done for a very specific reason. Why do we need 5 different gear sets for each class? Farming for a bunch of different types of gear at different content levels would be extremely time consuming and the open world isn’t designed to be points of conflict beyond hunt trains because that would be distracting. Open world MMOs are very different and there are pros and cons to both. A good example in T&L is that if you’re so worried about how much time you have, often times you might miss a world event that’s going on, and will get completely outpaced by those around you.

I thank you for putting in the time to make the video, I think feedback is so crucial to what is going wrong in FF14, and I really do hope they turn things around now that they can focus entirely on FF14 now.

It’s a good thing that more people are voicing their dissatisfaction with the game. The game desperately needs to shake things up

I do appreciate that you mention danger and tension. FFXIV was always my “casual” game, and I don’t mind the lack of difficulty, during quest or story dungeons.
I don’t login to play a Dark Souls style challenge, never liked those games, but I’d appreciate some danger here or there. I appreciate feeling like I’m more than a babysitter in both story and gameplay.
Furthermore, everything in Dawtrail just had me thinking, “Damn, if I could just play my character, I’d take you all out at once.” I’ve saved the universe; this is trivial.

Add the homogenized class design, over reliance on nostalgia/ easter eggs, mediocre and lengthy story, and, for me, lack of interesting setting/ bosses, I didn’t even want to hang out in the world anymore.
This expansion is the first time I login just to hangout with friends on patch days and leave.

Questing and story is so forced that I couldn’t even get my mom to play the game to max level. “It’s just walking and talking to people,” she said. I have dragged her through MMOs for over a decade, and this is one of the only ones she couldn’t make to max level.

I also don’t mind simplified systems in terms of gearing. A lot of people compare to WoW or other MMOs, but, if I wanted to play their game, I would.
However, one choice? If you are tank, pick fending.
I love some simplicity and balance, but balance at the absolute death of building my character is too far.

Also…as a summoner main….
GIVE ME MY DOTS BACK D:
My fun rotation 😢

Sorry, that’s my rant. XD

China is coming , Japanese games are kinda meh at the moment maybe next DMC may shine

I absolutely hated FF16 and felt like both my time and money were seriously wasted. Glad to finally see someone calling it out.

Nice video. I hope ff14 starts to experiment more

Good video, thank you for your point of view!
As someone who appreciates the final fantasy games for their story and sometimes struggle with the combat, I feel like even I can look at this and nod.

I will have to admit that I am biased. I’ve been playing FFXI since it came out. I played the closed beta for FFXIV. It melted my laptop, but I was still excited. I was having a rough time in XI, since the Abyssea add-ons where making people abandon the more community driven open world exp camps, for sitting around opening chests from lv 30 to lv 75, then just run around and cheese the weaker enemies until you hit lv 80.
So I wanted FFXIV to be a fresh start. I enjoyed ARR, I was okay with HW, I enjoyed SB, ShB, and EW. I have not played Dawntrail yet. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it once I do.

But at the end of EW, I noticed that my more casual and explorative playstyle wasn’t really working out. FC only ever wanted to do savage and raids. They didn’t really connect with me since they only logged in to do weeklies and raids. Then they started to take longer and longer breaks, leaving me to be completely alone. And playing a single player game is fine. But playing a mmorpg alone, that feels a bit rougher.

So I went back to FFXI. If I was gonna play alone, then I wanted to at least be in the game that always brought me comfort. We have had trusts in FFXI for a long time, and they helped me out in the different storylines. Another recent change was that you could now choose NOT not start a new storyline, even if you met all requirements. FFXI is not linear at all, and you can play almost any expansion storyline whenever you want to. I was surprised that after Rhapsodies of Vana’diel, that the devs decided to learn new cutscene programs, and gave us even more story.

A lot of FFXIV mechanics/models/ is taken from FFXI, given a shiny new coat and maybe some updated mechanics. I call FFXIV lovechild of FFXI and WoW. It just makes sense. FF story tropes, and WoW gameplay and UI.

So I am concerned about Yoshi-P.
Right now, FFXI is run by a skeleton crew. They don’t want young devs to stay there even, because FFXI is so old now. They want the young devs to move on to bigger projects.
But even then, the devs that did stick around gave us some amazing things. It’s sad that the dev behind the monstrosity and monster rearing game play was let go before they could fully flesh it out. I see monstrosity as a great new pvp that’s waiting for someone to understand it. So yeah I’m currently leveling my monipulators towards unlocking Cerberus, so I can take on anyone who wants to try and fight an actual human inside a HNM.

Woops, sorry about the tangent.
Yoshi-P is now in charge of FFXI’s business side.
FFXI was the highest grossing mainline game until 14 finally dug itself out of the grave (a grave that the FFXI team dug, I’m not ignoring that fact). FFXI kept the lights on at HQ while 14 was bleeding money. And today, FFXI still has a good enough subscriber base that it’s still keeping it’s own servers afloat, and getting new content.

But I’m worried that any extra money FFXI does make, will be funneled into FFXIV, because the latter is seen as the real star now. Yoshi-P, before this whole FFXI collab, was often saying in interviews that he didn’t like FFXI. He played WoW. Which is fine. But he would also get sensitive or defensive when players sent in questions or comparisons with FFXI. Or when players asked for jobs that FFXI made iconic, such as blue mage and beastmaster.
I really hope the higher ups don’t mess things up for FFXI. There is, finally, a NA livestream team, so the western player base in NA and EU can chime in. Normally it would all have been in Japanese only.

There was recently an adventurer survey for FFXI. In it, the devs noticed quite a lot of players wanted a classic server. A server locked in the 75 era. Before Abyssea. Because the game used to be tough. You had to work hard, have patience, be prepared, and be careful when moving around in FFXI. People miss it. (Honestly if they had locked Aby behind a lv75 min requirement, it wouldnt have messed stuff up so badly…)

I have no idea if the devs will listen. If they do, I hope they reach out, because there are a few lv75 private servers out there, so turning back the time isn’t impossible. And scaling it so that we can still have the expansions, could be possible. I’d love a 75 era server, but I don’t know if the devs have the money for it-
*Because* I’m worried that Yoshi-P, *who is not the biggest fan of FFXI and wants players to fully migrate to FFXIV*, will not be willing to fund such a server. He would rather players to sub to FFXIV instead. Maybe get “his” game another award…

So yeah, I am a bit biased while watching your video.

At least you play Alliance.

3:55 Japanese generally work harder, are stricter and are more deferrent to authority than Westerners are. Its a cultural difference

This video is a bit disconnected.
Its clear you wanted to talk about 16 and how realising the errors of 16 led to you recognising the errors of 14.
But you do not link it al together, you spent alot of time giving your opinons but estsblishing it as fact.
and you do not link it to the problem Yoshi-p. You just say “its his fault”. And you do not link your complaints of 14 and 16 well, you just gesture vaguely saying “its similar” and “it is because I say it is” without consideration of other thoughts other than what you have come together.

Saying your opninion as fact is still an error, even if you say it very suave…

But the game doesn have problems. The content style is reptitive and too template. The expansions have become a package that is the same structure each time.
The game needs to half the level cap, reduce msq mission bloat and bring the more engaging style of dungeons and trials from later expansions backwards whilst having new forms of quests.

They simply are on this path of needing to fund the enitrety of Square Enix whilst needing to overhaul the entire game.
Dawntrail is just the writing dipping heavily, which then stretches the gameplay to the already passed breaking point. Its exposed how lacking the variety and interactability of content in the msq is and how important it is to have a good writer on the helm

While I think author points are valid, some I feel are bit a miss. I have many thoughts, but that would be a light novel if I wrote them all here 🙂

One point where I disagree is on emergent events. FF XIV is theme park mmo, not open world with random events. To expect things like in Throne and Liberty is not realistic. Though at least during chain FATEs I often group up with strangers during that. Maybe that counts?

Regarding player agency on story – FF XIV and XVI are primarily JRPG. These games usually have static story line, at best modifed by choice to defeat or not some optional boss (and even that is usualy extra ending). Primary focus is on telling story – taking it to extreme, they are another form of Visual Novel. Which also means if you fail at story delivery, game sucks (Looking at you DT). For me, XVI was blast and XIV failed in latest expansion.

Where player agency comes in these games is gearing and stats. Better games have various stats and you are usualy choosing withing spectrum of glass canon – blunt tank, with various resistances etc. FF XIV was never strong in that side and they streamed even more (not happy with it but understandable), but FF XVI was a big failure there. XVI felt like they focused on action combat, spectacle and story, and everything else was kinda just glued in because it was expected from that game. If they removed that, maybe just keep accessories for various resistances against debuffs, it would be better. It would be nice to have info about design process, did they added crafting/gearing because someone insisted it has to be there? Maybe that’s why difficulty feels so low, because it was not fine tuned to crafted gear?

Difficulty is subjective. For XVI I agree there should be harder difficulty from start, but that might be cultural thing – look at Capcoms Dragons Dogma 2. Player were asking for harder difficulty, for better ng+ and instead we got easy difficulty. Why? Dunno. Probably based on japanese audience? Wish games went at least with FF7Rebirth route, where dynamic difficulty made game not difficult, but also not sleepfest.
XIV though – XIV is mmo that aims to sell to largest possible audience. And that means people with various skills. Sure I get annoyed when as healer i’m paired with WAR, who basicaly doesn’t need healing. But then I also remember encounters like with 2 german boys in Amourot, where we spend about hour progressing trough dungeon. Every time we wiped they did better next time, but it was clear game was hard for them. How do you balance that? But latest msq dungeon was more fun, with last boss had much easier to fail mechanics. Hopefully they keep that up.

Overall solid video, I mostly agree with stuff about FF XVI (except for story, personaly loved it), but I feel like you are looking for wrong things in FF XIV. Other games will probably give you more enjoyment in that regard.

As for YoshiP – FF XIV devs in general should be applauded for their communication and approach to fans. They are not gods, but god wish more developers were like them or Larian.

They gave up on quest design when too many players said the quest “This is Thancred” was too hard even on easy mode. That was the nail in the coffin

YoshiP was not the director for FF16 by the way, he was merely the producer. The director of FF16 was Hiroshi Takai, who directed The Last Remnant, Square’s infamously bland Xbox 360 era JRPG. Longtime Square fans could see 16 was going to be meh long before it came out, and it has little to do with YoshiP. A lot of people were fooled by Square’s marketing stapling YoshiP onto 16

This sounds fairly melodramatic. Really the only bad parts of FF14 are the PvP (not a major focus) the post ARR MSQ and the MSQ of the new expac Dawntrail. Everything else is fine. “Not innovative enough” means nothing whatsoever, its a meaningless buzzword. Do you want FF14 to deviate from its core gameplay? For what purpose? It works.

i knew 16 was going to suck when literally the first side quest was to bring food to people that are 2 meters away

The problem with Yoshi-P is that he reskinned WoW and people made him believe he made a good FF. Now he tried to reskin DMC and failed, again. XI is a trillion times better than XIV.

Damn im over here saying FF16 is in my top 2 final fantasy games, while you’re saying it’s one of the worst game you ever played…

I hope the game can improve on these aspects, if only to satisfy other players.

I play this game extremely casually, only just started Endwalker a couple weeks ago after having played this game for about 6 years, chipping away at MSQ with my besties every couple of months or so. I dread to hit the era of narrative everyone seems to be complaining about, but also struggle to imagine it.

really dude, FF16 “waste your time and boring !!!”, this is coming from MMO player like you, GIVE ME A BREAK !!!
i can tell you as a casual gamer, i don’t spend my time in the game trying to play side quests and “mini games”.
I play a single player games FOR THE NARRATIVE AND THE STORY and almost never play a game more than once, FF16 is great game for the casual gamer.
as for the rest of your video i don’t know who is Yoshi-P and i don’t care ☹☹☹

Your first argument is like ‘hmm maybe they are still doing crunch??idk lol’

Your FF16 complaints kinda sucked and reveal your poor take throughout the video – complained about the open world in a non-open world game, and then about the combat whilst showing basic abilities and no stylish combos in a stylish character action game. Complaints about that game were valid with the sidequests and the gearing, but for combat and game design imo it would be better to say that you don’t like action games and wanted FF16 to be a proper, old school RPG. It was not – it was a stylish character action game.

FF14 is clearly no longer what you are looking for in an MMO the same way that FF16 is not what you were looking for in an RPG. With the latter, it sounds like you wanted Final Fantasy: The Witcher. With 14 it sounds like you wanted Final Fantasy: World of Warcraft.

You even mention Devil May Cry, assuming you have played it, the game is very easy, and can be cleared literally mashing auto attacks, rarely dodging and very few abilities (maybe with the exception of the Vergil fight). In fact, your first playthrough you aren’t even meant to have all the abilities. What makes the combat system in these games fun and challenging is you – the player. You need to theorycraft and brainstorm possible combos, things that might look cool, feel cool, or add extra challenge. For example, you can find hundreds of amazing FF16 boss counter builds where they go no hit – it literally looks like a different game, or a super stylish juggle combo with perfectly timed combinations I couldn’t even think of. DMC is even more famous for these no hit stylish boss videos and juggle combos.

In FF14 the combat is prima facie easy yes, but high level savage on content and ultimates are undeniably the hardest and most creative fights in any MMO. They build these games by giving you the tools and choice to grow and make your own fun and challenge. I agree that quest design is not the best, but I have never hated the simple way the story is delivered in FF14. In fact, I find some of the quests in other MMOs frustrating, sometimes acting as a barrier to the story and slowing me down.

I also somewhat agree with your gearing complaint, though I am sceptical that it was an actual issue for you given the limited time you gave to it. I somehow feel FF14 has struck a good balance for gearing in terms of progression early in the tier. Being able to go into the raid with a full set of crafted gear is perfect – no RNG, no annoying side content to do, just get a set and start raiding. I do believe that they are far too slow to unlock the raids however, and that it can be hard to gear alt jobs as the patch goes on. Nevertheless, the gearing in 14 mostly respects the players time. Your complaint for gearing in FF16 is a joke however – again, it is an action game, not an old school RPG. In fact, my complaint for FF16 gearing is that it existed at all – imo the abilities themselves were enough of a progression to feel like Clive was growing with power.

I think overall SE and CS3 made the games they wanted to make, and then you are upset that its not the game you were expecting or wanted. Thats okay – but complaining that a game is one thing when it was designed as another feels like aimlessly shadowboxing. I am not minimising complaints completely – gearing is not perfect in either game, the DT story was not the best and I can understand some people getting bored with the quest design. But the combat is exactly what they designed it to be and its not Yoshi P’s fault you don’t want to engage with it.

There’s nothing most 14 players fear more than having to have a spec and a build. They’re terrified of it. I’ve brought this up multiple times only to be shot down.

Releasing FFXVI with the side quests like that considering Witcher 3 came out in 2015 is insane.

teleporting everywhere and invisible walls make wow look great. wow has fun open world

Good vid mate, subbed

FFXVI Profits from being as low friction as possible- it’s s sub based game,. and if the core gameplay was all of a sudden a soulslike they would lose 75% of their players who wouldn’t be able to progress the main story (which everything is locked behind). There is harder content but you have to opt into it. This seems like a sensible way to build a profitable mmo.

For FF16, well if you didn’t like it you didn’t like it. MMO conceits don’t often translate well to single player games, and the sales numbers weren’t great.

The rings can also be viewed as an accessibility feature. I don’t view them as negative because they are optional. Yes they help expand the audience of the game and that is not a bad thing.

“Safe” i think thats the main phylosophy of Yoshi P at this point, if it aint broke why change it? but man, thats kinda the reason i havent been subbed for almost a year now…

I understand your critique and as someone who’s been playing since ARR I do understand, but a big reason to do the endgame content is to be able to clear it, and have fun.

If you wanna go for BIS more power to you but BIS is honestly only for ultimate, you dont need bis anywhere else in the game.

If you think 14 is boring I’d highly recommend doing all the ultimates before quitting because almost all of them are fun and extremely rewarding to experience

The difficulty issue is ubiquitous in gaming. The modern generation does not want to work for anything. (Or at least this is the opinion of game studios.) If a difficult challenge can’t be overcome almost immediately then people become frustrated and quit. This leads to a bland open-world with no threats in the main campaign. And you must keep in mind, this is true for a wide variety of games, including the Resident Evil remakes which are far easier on their baseline difficulty than their predecessors. Basically, Normal = story mode, Hard=normal.

FFXIV has some of the most challenging content ever created in an MMO. The Omega Protocol on release eclipses any encounter in any MMO in difficulty. How does the player base respond to such challenges you ask? I’ll explain!

1.) Above all players want clout. They want to clear ultimates and get the title so they can feel warm and fuzzy inside and like they’re good players.

2.) They’ll do anything for this dopamine and that includes using third party tools to cheat to an extreme manner, oftentimes completely removing all difficulty from the encounter. There are addons that will perform your rotation for you, display aoes on the ground players can’t otherwise see, and calculate the optimal solutions to complex mechanics instantly.

So yes, challenging and engaging content does exist. The player base just refuses to approach it legitimately because they care more about unearned status than the actual challenge. (Probably because most of these players are unemployed and want to get back to their catgirl Instagram account.) Is it any wonder all of this content seems phoned-in now? Not only do the casual players want things to be casual, the hardcore players want things to be casual too.

The interviews that came out leading up to FFXVI’s release started my disillusionment with YoshiP. In particular, when he talked about how he would be happy even if players didn’t think too deeply about what the story as long as they made it to the end credits thinking “Wow, Clive was cool.” And also when he mentioned that they didn’t make any secret hidden content for the game because it would be a waste of dev resources to make something that very few players stumble upon. He seems to have an incessant need to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I’m very curious to see a game with Ishikawa in the creative directorial seat, divorced from YoshiP. I suspect that a bulk of the most memorable creative decisions from Shadowbringers to Endwalker including stuff like In From the Cold can be attributed to her vision.

They also have terrible taste in attire, you can tell how Yoshi P’s “style” infests FF14. Expect to have your glamour completely destroyed by too many folds, buttons, belts, collars and leather. As a result, 99% of the glamour in FF14 is unusable, especially for female chars. Also, they still insist on pointless class only glamour restrictions.

There is no problem. Bye.

Been a sub starting in 2019… last night a canceled my sub. So yea its not just youtubeers farming vids its a real thing

yoshi-p is the most overrated directors/producers of all time. he is a man who takes NO RISKS and makes mid tier slop over and over again. Yes this includes FF16 which was objectively not a good game. It was flashy, but the gameplay was dull, characters boring, story predictable, and honestly I can’t think of anything that was actually mind blowing about ff16 other than the spectacle sprinkled in for 30 mins in between 10 hour stretches of boredom.

I was worried that i am alone in this, thank you for this video. I have thousands of hours in ffxiv, bought ps5 so i can play ff16 and i feel exactly like you. Yoshi-p just hate gameplay and gear and kinda everything that makes RPG RPG. And dont worry, i am voting with my wallet, unsubed from ffxiv but i cant refund ff16 sadly, never even finished it.

I’m level 99 and still haven’t even gotten through half of Dawntrail. I’ve never done that before. I’m actively avoiding the story. The open world is a set piece, it serves little to no purpose in FFXIV. I realized this when I was playing Lord of The Rings Online. There’s story, titles, unique gear, furniture, all out in the world to discover. Rare mobs that drop cool stuff. And FFXIV has nothing. There’s literally ZERO reason for me to explore an area OUTSIDE of being forced to if I want to fly in the zone. Something that is really only ever useful if you craft.

It’s remarkably shallow.

I completely agree with your criticisms, for me, I found FF16 enjoyable to play through because I self-imposed restrictions that I felt the game should have in order to make it an engaging experience. I never used healing items, since the fact that you could use them with zero action cost (they can be used while the game is pause, or your character is stunned, and have no animation, just instant healing), I just ignored them entirely for the playthrough. This made the boss fights far more engaging since my health bar and capacity for healing were much more narrow (really just the limit break), additionally, I would always reload from save if I died on a boss, since boss checkpoints felt cheap, just a way to push the player to the finish line. This allowed for a fight like Odin to be very intense and let me actually learn his attack patterns and need to avoid practically all the damage. I would highly recommend these restrictions since they do help sell the boss fights as being worthy gameplay climaxes. The issues with side-quests being mundane with just good story isn’t something a player can fix on their end, and I just sorta dealt with it. It will eternally annoy me that games seem very modular in how to lower the difficulty, but not to raise it. I completely understand someone, may not want to spend 2+ hours on a boss fight, but I do, that’s what I find fun, that’s how I feel involved and engaged with the game.

As for FF14, I tried it after 16, I played for roughly 20 hours but it was just so incredibly boring and there was no way for me to make it more engaging, so I quit. Just to add, I have played a ton of WoW, and typically get Keystone Master for M+ early in the first few weeks of a season, but I actually don’t dislike questing, so the promise of a better story than WoW’s sometimes throwaway ones seemed cool. I just found FF14’s gameplay for questing to be so disconnected from the story. The way I would put it, in Classic WoW, it’s easy to get spend hours upon hours at a time questing, since nothing interrupts it, you can just spend time in the world and there is a bit of danger so you’re focused on the game, it’s not very hard, but you’re engaged, and no cutscene is pulling you out. When watching an anime or something, you can watch episodes back to back because you’re engaged in the story, it’s easy to be absorbed in what you’re watching, because all your focus is in that world, you’re not being forced to solve 5-10 captchas every 10 mins to watch the next part. When playing FF14, it was so jarring going back and forth, I could never get into a flow state, there was no way to be engaged in how I was questing, no way to form or keep a mental checklist, optimizing how I’m going to tackle my quest log, since I was watching a 10 cutscene,. Then there was no way to engage with the cutscenes, because between them I need to go kill 5 sheep or pick up boxes. It all lacks cohesion.

“I really struggle to think of another studio in the AAA space that demonstrates as much disdain for player agency as creative studio 3” – Was with you until this comment because its literally no different for other games. Crafting systems are shoved in mindlessly into every AAA game, open worlds are done uninterestingly and putting some lame collectible behind waterfall is no better than nothing behind it. Normal difficulties pose no challenge either and we get loads of cutscenes all the time. Hell a game like RDR2 doesnt let you do anything different than it says where to park your horse or you fail the mission.

Reality is: They pander to some casual audience just like almost every AAA does and with Dawntrail they killed off the one good thing the game had going for it: the story.

Yoship is great and one of the reasons the game became a great game, BUT he has lied to us for years saying that the patch delays were needed for the devs to not have too much work and the patch to have quality content. Turns out said devs were not resting more but working on 3 more proyects (one ff16) and the patches have been longer with less content since endwalker. And after being asked why the content is taking so much time and why not invest more money to get more workers in the project he said that “its not a matter of money only they need to get people experienced in the game engine and that takes time” after taking a big part of the senior devs from 14 to ff16 (by his own admision).

i loved 16 but i felt all the time that the game would have been a lot better with more world exploration like rebirth or full combat like a devil may cry, also while the last secondary quest were good in story, most were generic mmo quest without interaction with the party.

I still like 14, thats why i want optional repeteable content to do between patches that i can just login, play for a bit and progress it and stop the fall in players that the game is having.

If you dont do “hard” content, wich honestly doesnt last much neither if you only do it for the glamour and not the BiS, you have no casual content to do in a group in a repeated for unless you have not done euroka and bozja, wich now are empty af.

FF14 has been a big part of my live but i get the feeling that square, even knowing that 14 its their golden egg goose, do not give the a F about the game compared to entries like the FF7 Remake trilogy in terms of effort specially since endwalker.

You’ve just said everything I’ve felt about FF14’s developers and Yoshi-P ever since Shadowbringers. The game is just going almost vertically downhill and is showing no signs of stopping. Dawntrail was the final straw that broke my 2.0 player’s back, and it will take a Goliath’s effort to win players like me back. There’s just no game anymore. It’s a bad visual novel with bad gameplay, bad gearing system, bad cosmetic system, and a bad JRPG. Rofl.

Some advice: stop bragging about your life. we’re not here to hear about how enslaved by your job you are or how you own a business. Don’t care. As for the games, I think part of the problem is you’re too young to really remember themepark mmos starting out. This is how they operate. SWTOR and FF14 are both like this. They’re meant to deliver bare minimum MMO gameplay. yeah it sucks but it’s hardly all YP’s fault since the standard for themepark MMOs has existed for over a decade. If Squareenix tells the team to work on the game, they can’t go in and just change every single thing about it including the genre, which is what would be the case if they veered away from the themepark design SE wants. they can only do what they’re allowed to by corporate. this video paints YP like it’s entirely his fault. you should rename this video from “An Honest Critique” to “an opinionated and uninformed rant”.

Iam been saying for years that Yoshi p is becoming the problem of Ff14.

I think youre missing an important point with this whole “there are no threats in the game”-argument: Most people suck at videogames.

Also: No new types of content? Kriterion dungeons? Chaotic alliance raid? Island sanctuary?

I agree that the gear and character progression is extremely basic but I actually prefer it over something like WoW where you cant even play the game if you made wrong talent choices or if you dont have enough gear.

I feel his games lack character customization in favor of ease of use and ease of production.

I’ve felt pretty similar to this, but one thing that slowly had me drifting away was the lack of interest with battle content for me. As a midcore player. For awhile, I would just come back at intervals, then I’d only come back at the start and at the end of an expansion, now I don’t even know if I care even that much. I may at least watch some on youtube to get an idea of what happened and what I miss, but then I’d imagine my next step is to just not even care. I never subscribed to the mentality of “well, endwalker finished, so that means the story is done and it’s normal for people to leave” I would still stick around for the story if the story was good, but it’s slowly growing less interesting for me with DT just being maybe only 30% or so enjoyable. It’s frustrating since I really want to enjoy the game, and tried to even go a hyper casual approach to have no expectations from the game, but I end up just not caring about anything. I don’t even have a job in the game that I like anymore, as a SMN main/caster main. I don’t care about the dialogue, pacing, writing, or a lot of the stuff going on and the FF9 references, with FF9 being my favorite FF game, being sort of hit and miss as I cant even enjoy the final zone without it just being turned off. The gear progression is lame so I don’t care to do anything involving it, but on top of that, a lot of it doesn’t look good to me. I play male characters and you either get rather edgy gear, which is cool sometimes, or rather feminine looking gear that doesn’t appeal to me, half jackets, showing my belly, weird stuff like that to me. So gear that I actually like on me is few and far between. A lot of the cool/edgy stuff doesn’t have a lot of personality to it too.

That’s a well put out video buddy. Certainly hits the sweet spot of where I stand for FF games.

They need to bring the focus back to the core base again and make the gameplay fun again with more interesting content be it solo or coop, though I personally like some solo challenges in an mmo lol.

Whatever sort of casual players they have been fishing, they don’t last very long, and that makes their feedback useless. and it seems Yoshi just takes that and then applies it to the next patch, further making the game less fun to play with classes, dungeons, side quests and the list goes on.

Every point you made hit the nail on the head. I was a WoW player that left during SL and came over during SHB but the look of DT didn’t…excite me like SHB or EW did but gave it a go anyway. I actually timed my friend and I playing and it took us nearly 2 hours (hour and 35 mins) to reach our first combat chance. We played for 4 hours the first day and just…needed a break. It was fatigue of cutscene after cutscene. I wanted to play a game. I wanted to fight. Use my class. We finished DT and just sat there feeling unaccomplished. Its sad because there is still a soft spot for the game in my heart but after work, I want to play a game, not watch a movie and if I wanted to, there are so many better options out there. I went back to WoW and have been loving TWW for respecting my time, giving me different avenues for gear. Heck even the story has jumped in my opinion from the past.

People need to see that every game is not perfect. Nothing is. It’s human but everything needs critique and sadly positive toxicity will end this game. I recall once I offered on FFXIV’s page that it’d be nice if they brought back old holiday event items for new players or those who missed out. Take it down from the cash shop for that timeframe and then you can put it back up. What did I get in return? I wasn’t rude, nothing. I stated it how I stated it here but I was treated like I might as well had disrespected someone’s deceased parent. It was an outrage that I dare suggest something small to their game. I was flabbergasted and just unfollowed. A lot of players are silenced due to hostility and sadly, the game won’t change because of that. It’s okay to love a game…but even the most die hard fan HAS to see that after all these years, something needs to change or else other MMO’s are just going to outrun them and leave them behind.

You should have called this video ” I discover what a final fantasy game is”.
Every final fantasy game is a story based game and the fights are always easy it is why superbosses became a thing over time for people who wanted more of a challenge, you’ve basically said nothing if value here.

it’s not fair to compare ffxiv to a visual novel, in visual novels you actually make decisions that influence things lol

Excellent video that I wholeheartedly agree with. Following getting BiS and the mount from the savage raids, I felt no urge to return and catchup with the new story/raid content. After I lost my ingame estate due to games like PoE2 and Marvel Rivals holding 100% of my attention span, I can finally unsub without any worry 😭

Maybe I will return in the weeks leading up to the launch of the next expansion, but at this point, I genuinely cannot see myself continuously engaging actively with the Dawntrail patch content.
Especially when Monster Hunter Wilds is coming out soon.

hmm @1:57 you do know there is a combat mode in 16 that doesn’t hold your hand? Sounds like you should’ve chose that instead. Go play FF11… without Trusts… You did say you don’t have time? Not sure what you’re complaining about lol…

Anyone brave enough to say Yoshi-P is “not your friend” deserves a like. Unfortunately, anyone who was actually there and played the game Day 1 would know these issues have been there since the very beginning. XIV is an example of what happens when you try to be as accessible as possible. It causes you to remove every single interesting thing about your combat system and just rely heavily on flashy lights and loud noises. They’ve recognized this as a problem too, because it’s how we got Eureka and it’s successors.

The unfortunate part is players asked for this. So I can’t even say it’s their fault.

Square Enix funds this game on a shoestring budget. This game needs to evolve or it’ll die.

Normally I would actually agree with this, but the one counter argument that I is the fact Yoshi-p did an interview where he said that he thinks 14 has become too easy and too boring, he wants to increase difficulty but has to do it slowly so they don’t risk losing the more casual audience

My experience with XVI was almost the same. I trusted Creative business unit 3, I truly thought XVI was going to be an amazing game.
Turns out I never managed to finish the game because after 50-60 hours in, doing every piece of content on offer I had access to, nothing pulled me in. The combat system was bland, the characters mostly uninteresting, the world empty and the story too safe for its initial setting.

Now I’m just scared for the future of the FF franchise with Yoshi-P probably leading the main series moving forward. When I hear him talking about his vision for the series and what XVI turned out to be, I’m not sure another golden age of the FF franchise will come anytime soon.

Meanwhile the VII remake games are doing something special, something that embraces the series roots while modernizing its systems.
I don’t particularly like Tetsuya Nomura because of his involvement in exteemely convoluted storylines, I have to admit what his team accomplished with the VII remake games under his leadership is astonishing. That’s what I’d want for the future of the FF franchise.

I hate dawntrail and want to rip this game apart on how it wasted my time and break my trust in dawntrail msq .

But I think gearing you should try present alternative to problem cause what happen now is what work on the framework of new age end game content mmo . On the theory of that even when you have freedom on stat or mixing build 90% of players will just copy that top 1% player anyway . The more you try complex it the more system have to be implement to guard rail someone who not prepare to enter the endgame content or it just scare away someone who want to try . And what value on freedom if it not made a direct satisfied experience or play moment . The more you can chose is the more you can chose wrong and people will ask that top 1% to guide them for not wasting time and precious resource anyway

I hate DT with passion but on this point . Maybe the root of problem is lie deeper on how thier want a easier time to control on item stat and player satisfaction in random environment .

Thank you for validating my conflicted feelings about FF16. I went into that game with zero FF14 experience and only the endless praise I hear my friends give Yoshi-P.

While I mostly enjoyed 16, it certainly disappointed in so many aspects. I simply could not believe some design flaws in that game were things that older games like FF7 Remake or even KH2 solved ages ago.

Only a small point in the video, but those specific accessories in FF16 are meant for people with disabilities, and I remember seeing several people speak positive about having the choice to use them. So I think it’s pretty unfair to list those as a negative.

I was in love with FFXIV for so long, but after Dawntrail the rose tinted glasses finally disappeared. Waiting for the expansion was much more exciting than actually playing it. After doing exactly the same things, with the same amount of dungeons, with the same amount of bosses and mob packs, with the exactly same itemization as few expansions before – what is there to be excited for? It’s just sad when new expanions feel stale from the beginning, instead of being something fresh and exciting.

You’re a little late to reaching this point, but welcome all the same.

I would not say it’s disrespectful for games to be long when you have little time rpg are long they do take time, it’s just part of the game genre. Anyway great video, valid point, i stopped playing around endwalker,

I’ve been finding it hard to play through 16. I play for a few hours and then don’t pick it up for a week. It’s feels tedious to play and, while the story imo is good, it’s too much cutscene and narrative over gameplay. It’s also a resource hog on PC, so I can’t multitask the game. Feel like I should’ve finished the game already, having started it over a month ago.

They have strived to make a game for everybody but in doing so they have made a game for nobody. They have dumbed down every aspect to make it accessible to everyone. Sadly I’ve been playing since 2.4 and will continue to play to raid with friends.

So I’ve got some thoughts about things here so I’ll provide some engagement and although I’ve left a dislike I can recognize a video that had work put into it and I think at the end of the day as far as youtube’s concerned any interaction is good for the algorithm so that’s that and this is this.

1) *Why are we talking about micromanagement in a video about stagnant game design?*
While I agree that creative business unit 3 (CBU3) has been pretty stagnant in their work flow I do believe the speculations that Yoshi P is still micromanaging the staff doesn’t really have a place within this critique of the studio and director. Although you have said they are speculations and you can’t know what is true and what isn’t, it is still baseless speculation that places a level of incendiary ideas within the reader or viewer in this case which leads to them overall being primed to see things in a negative light. When making an argument and especially a critique it is best to avoid unsubstantiated comment when there truly is no evidence of what I would say is workplace abuse. Japan has a very negative work culture already which just means that this sort of statement within the eyes of a casual viewer can paint their opinions in a way that yes is technically affirming to your argument is not conducive with getting people to see the correct point of your argument but rather find the emotional fault within the person and company you’re talking about. This moves it from being about the games they develop and how they come to those decisions to an ethical argument that the workers of CBU3 are being given unfair working conditions.

2) *These would have been really good points if it wasn’t for what’s currently happening…*
You argue that the gameplay currently in ffxiv (as of the dawntrail expansion) has become very by the numbers, safe, stagnant. The fact of the matter is this expansion and it’s patch have been the first time since stormblood i’ve heard players cheering and crying about the dungeon difficulty and overall fight designs. Dawntrail from what i’ve seen in a sizeable amount of the community while disliked for its story (which is overblown and I feel looked at far too negatively) it has actually been celebrated for its fight designs overall with the dungeons in particular feeling a lot more fun to run through due to interesting boss fights being spread throughout.

The argument that gear in FFXIV is bland would have been correct if it weren’t for the fact that they have now released the Chaotic Alliance Raid which gives us more max ilvl gear options. the bigger argument here that you touched on but did not give enough focus is that the overall way the stats are assigned in the game and how they work lead to boring gearing experiences because almost every class likes Crit Rate for some reason or other and don’t like Skill/Spell Speed that much unless you’re playing Monk or Black Mage. As far as my personal experiences with MMOs most of the games i’ve played had 1 gear set that needed a super ridiculous grind that lead to the very best gear in the game at least until the next patch or expansion. In most of those games once achieved the only thing left to do was continue playing the game and enjoying the power spike it gave you but otherwise there wasn’t actually any other benefit. As far as FF16 is concerned your argument here was correct it very much wasn’t worthwhile overall up until the questlines to get the very best gear because it required more effort and wasn’t handed out like a piece of candy.

3) *I truly don’t know what you want from this*
The section about emergent gameplay i’m not going to lie kind of hurts your argument here for me. I firmly believe you can’t expect emergent gameplay from a tab target based MMO though I will admit my ignorance on Throne & Liberty’s gameplay style but from footage i’ve seen I was under the impression that it’d be an action based MMO meaning it has combos that are player defined to some extent, something along the lines of a Black Desert or Blade and Soul. This argument does come up for FF16 depending on how you played it. for me I found a few times where I walked into a fight woefully underlevelled and had to engage with the systems of the game in a much more in depth manner (it was a few hunts that had come up) the overall fun of the Notorious Monsters helped keep the minute to minute gameplay fresh and fun for me until I got to the next big story fight where I believe FF16 really shines.

cont. below

i dont agree with the vertical progression criticism of xiv cause after playing WoW for so long seeing its playerbase criticize others for playing the ‘wrong’ spec with the wrong points lateral MMO progression can go to hell

I mean, coming from someone that doesn’t even like the story of XIV – a lot of people play it for that and want all the cutscenes. Do I? No. But I don’t play it for that. Some games are meant to be cutscene heavy and thankfully a button exists to skip them.

I think FF14 is a perfect example of the damage that can come from too much positively from the community and not being critical enough. FF14 can’t keeping using it rebirth as a defence. I don’t think I’ll touch this game again I’ll just watch the story on Youtube at most. Dawntrail was the last straw after Endwalker felt rushed to me should’ve been 2 dlc in my opinion and the gameplay is very boring for me as every class feels the same

I only boot the game up to socialize at this point. Still haven’t touched any of 7.1 out of a complete lack of interest. When story is all your game really has (and let’s not pretend even Savage qualifies as “deep gameplay”; it’s memorization and gear checks), then the moment that story isn’t awesome, the entire thing falls apart.

I’m glad others see how mid FF16 is. It was way too easy and the story fell off once you beat Bahamut.

Thank god. I thought i was crazy! I tried for so long to explain the blatant problems in ffxiv base design choices but the community constantly lashes against any criticism.

I think FF 14 has the problem that too many people listen to these one-day-fly content creators. And they do nothing but move from game to game with their swarm of locusts. The game was great long before you and is still a lot of fun :).
If you don’t like it, there’s the door :).

Pretty mindless filler video tbh. Clickbait title, few surface level arguments.

Yoshida I think is losing his touch. I felt it with FF16, which was such a farcry from what I expect from a traditional FF RPG game (no party, no real RPG endgame progression), and Dawn Trail I gave up on completely before it had even launched. I could sense it miles away what this expansion would turn into, with no real direction after Endwalker. I watched the MSQ on YouTube, and I couldn’t stomach Wuk Lamat. She nearly made me punch my wall at times. FF14’s appeal is wearing thin on me, because it is not a true open world experience, just like with FF16, and that’s what an MMO should be in my eyes — highly interconnected areas which in turn makes the world seem like an organic living space. Everything is isolated and consolidated, it feels barren. FF14 is also NOT pushing its boundaries on content anymore, it’s a repeat of releases and people know what to expect with each patch. Dungeons are an absolute joke with wall to wall pulling, gearing is ATROCIOUS and purposeless outside of glamour with no skills trees and no ability to customize one own’s talents and skills which cater to a playstyle within a job (why am I forced to always tank as a paladin? Why can I not spec into a healer, tank or dps as I see fit?), materia melding is pointless and doesn’t allow one to create unique builds, add to that the cookie cutter PvP loadouts that again allow for NO personal touch and playstyle. The raids are not inherently designed by Yoshida, but his staff, and they remain the highlight of FF14 for sure. I was in love with FF14, I adored it for several years, but the veil has been lifted and I see right through the paper thin foundation upon which it rests at the moment

I lost all faith in FF16’s combat when I started defeating fire monsters with fire attacks. That never happened in previous FFs.

1:12 « Final Fantasy 16 kinda sucked » aye you lost me there

Good job grinding the current ff14 hate brother. See you in a few years when the meta changes back to glazing ff and hating wow 😀

As a massive ff fan I agree with you. 16 was boring. Everything you said was correct. I’m the type of person who plays a ff game from start to finish especially my first time. But I haven’t even actually fully beat 16 yet. Not because it’s hard because it’s not. All I heard when it came out was people complaining how hard it is but it just wasn’t. You can literally wear rings that doges for you and auto uses your moves. It’s silly because did people really struggle in this game? The bosses are easy. There is barely any actual enemies in the wilds. The hardest thing I haven’t yet beaten in my unfinished game is the trial you need to only uses garudas attack for. I suck at apparently hers only.
Square keeps making these baby ass games now. I WANT IT TO BE HARD I WANT TO STRUGGLE ON BOSSES SO I FEEL ACOMPLISHED AFTER THE 10005 ATTEMPT. DO YOU HEAR ME SQUARESOFTDICK STOP THE NINTENDO LEVEL BABY BULLSHIT

I don’t know if you will like the story, but FFVII remake-rebirth are much better in some aspects, like world, exploration, combat, mechanics in general. I recommend.

I started playing FFXIV during 5.4 due to everyone harping on about how amazing Shadowbringers is. Even though I didn’t like the gameplay much, I did go into the mindset of treating it like a visual novel with some multiplayer aspects, and getting to Shadowbringers was so worth it and made me fall in love with the game.

Endwalker wasn’t as close to being as good as Shadowbringers, but still had its moments. But when Dawntrail released and I had to trudge through the MSQ, I felt like Final Fantasy XIV lost one of the key components that kept people coming back to the game. For the first time I felt my attachment to it was severed.

On a gameplay standpoint, FFXIV and FFXVI are incredibly shallow due to how simple they are. FFXIV felt like a retired gamer’s game, and FFXVI should have not even felt like that since it’s a character action game.

If I wasn’t for me being a part of multiple communities I’ve been fond of, as well as enjoying house design, I would of left without hesitation. But from a casual players perspective, this is the point where they’re done with the game and we’re expected to see FFXIV slowly dwindle in numbers. I think a lot of people lost their attachment to the game.

Too late already disliked on the point of calling WoW a ‘Good MMO’ even tho it has the exact same problems you described at the start of the video.

What the video said in the first 5 minutes… IMO rather than this being a Yoshi-P problem, I’d say this is a Final Fantasy problem in general. (Also Kingdom Hearts) I can only speak for my experience from FF7 onwards, but it’s sort of an FF tradition at this point to provide an incredibly easy main game so the players can focus on the story up until the 90% part near the end where you unlock the actual challenges. By then the difficulty spikes way up. From the Omega weapons to Organization XIII, you need to double your already long playtime to prepare your characters for the real fight because the main game does a poor job at ramping you up.

The game does have a point with putting the good parts in the end though, but again that could be an FF issue. One example of this is Lightning Returns FFXIII. I finished the entire main game, and only then they explained the game has Weapon and Armor upgrades on NEW GAME +. Locking an entire feature to NG+ is quite a questionable decision for me, and no way I’m going to repeat the entire game just to check out the new system so I missed out on that completely.

Another example would probably be FFX’s similar weapon and armor upgrades. While they are indeed available in your main game, most of the stuff you need to fill up empty slots do require grinding endgame materials so you similarly have to wait until the end to maximize everyone’s potential.

+1

XIV had interesting customisation options see ARR relic weapons and back when scholar pixies had different machanics etc. but they remove a bit more every single update.

if the fan base would recognize and address the issues which plagued ff14 since heavensward, the mmorpg would not be what it is today where it’s longevity is hanging solely by how well the story is received. it is no coincidence that the second dawntrail’s story didn’t live up to ff14 standards, everything else became glaringly problematic because all those issues were once able to hide under the narrative of ff14 having such a good story that they can compensate to have other flaws and still be considered a good “game”.

I’d like to use Eden ark as an example of a problem about “players aren’t involved in the story” – Eden story is basically about Ryne and Gaia (a homage to FFVIII, which I hate for being too straightforward and uncreative homage, but that’s another story), it revolves around one person getting another from her shell. And what’s MC’s role in all this? Beat this ass one time to restore the world, beat that ass so that pretty girls can be together. Am I the only one who feels that we’re just a hollow function and not really BEING in this story? With how’s it’s been told, it would make sense if we controlled Ryne and watched through her perspective, that would be fair, at least. But no, we have no real presence in the story, and Ryne also doesn’t fight on her own, since Gaia’s important only for her – we’ve never been given a meaningful time with Gaia so we could fight for her as well. We fight in Ryne’s place and then just disappear in terms of continued story.
And I see this approach to storytelling as a problem for a long time – it’s like Yoshida believes that all players are playing MMOs just for the sake of fighting and nothing else. But they DO have a rich world, they DO have a rich story, so I’d like very much to BE A PART OF this world, and not just a fighting function. Let us either fully interact with our surroundings like a true RPG, or at least write a story in a manner where our presence means something more that just “fight – congratulations, you’re so cool and important – now fuck off” cycle.

I still liked FFXVI…

“To be honest, the game needs an add- on like this. The story gotto the highest point and was at its best in endwalker. Making the add on like that is the easiest option to calm down player expectation and open the way for a new engaging story.” – Wuk Lamat

me hearing you out left the building the second you said 16 sucked.

i’m coming up on 11 years of playing FF XIV, and i also played XVI, and i agree with all of those points.
DT cranked all of the bad aspects of XIV up to 11, and i had stopped caring about progression 6 years ago.

I think yoship is hardcore player who just cant understand casuals.

bro thinking JRPGS arent movies is the wild thing FFX has entered the chat (this is all mostly directed to the complaints about XVI MMO’s are different)

Here is something that people straight up do not understand , these games beside XIV are short, people have nostaliga and rose tinted goggles are just bad at RPGS because people think defensively over just raw DPS. FFX is a prime example of a game that is 3 hours of actual game play when you speedrun the game and 6 hours of cutscenes a lot of gameplay is straight up just padded into your mind because lots of people did something called “Grinding” cause they were bad, You never have to grind in an RPG a lot of playtime is just padded because people are bad so they remember these games have BUSSIN gameplay, They were always movies, Via text or via cutscene with very little gameplay in general. At the end of the day Skill issue.

Well…I certaintly ended by sub for now…At the very least, until the next expansion. And it’d better be at the very least at the level of Heavensward, or better yet, Shadowbringers. And after Dawntrail, i will be very cautious around FF14. A shame, considering this is probably one of the few MMO’s that captivated me. Tough i must admit, i still to this day have this feeling, that mby FF14 would be better if it was a standart SOLO FF expirience. Or atleast Square could make a version of FF14 like that, with story from ARR up to Endwalker, with better combat and touching up on problems with story and stuff. Would sell pretty good i think.

It’s as if everyone has different tastes. idk I’m still enjoying ffxiv

When I play ff16 especially during the boss battle made me feel like im playing ff14 and it never left especially when I fought the last boss

I think you missed the point here. I don’t wanna sound negative or offensive but think about it, maybe FF14 is not the game type your looking for, at this point of your life. Let me explain.
For starters, i really didn’t like DT and i have spend hardly 2-3 months on the expansion. The stary wasn’t good and there was no content i could grind and have fun like Bozja for example. So if i not having fun at the current state of the game i jump on another game, like you said SQ and Yoshi-p are not my friends so why should i spend time on a content i don’t really care.
And sure all this time since DT i played other games like wow for my MMO itch, playing Poe2 right now for my need for action. What i trying to explain here is that you don’t need to stuck on a single game all the time, play w.e. you feel like, and i know having to pay sub and missing event can be a great way to stuck on your MMORPG, but think for a moment, does a single game fills all your gaming needs? Like you on the video, you where playing BG3, an AMAZING game and i don’t know you but i think you might have fun with it in order to show it to us. Your video making is good, keep it up expand your view and don’t narrow your vision on a single game or genre. Some people say video games are art, and other say it’s a great way to escape from your daily life, i don’t know what you think about it, but let me tell you when you see a video game as a chore, it’s time to go 😉

Imo, they struck gold with A Realm Reborn, Heavensward added depth, and then after that, they stripped away mechanics that made the game challenging to make it more marketable and accessible.

I was obsessed with XIV during HW, but none of my friends wanted to play it. Now that it’s marketed well and everyone’s playing it, it’s not fun. Ironic.

It was when they were explaining a patch i was watching a MrHappy react to it. And he got all the dates right he knew exactly what was coming and when. And it was kinda frustrating cause it means even to new players like that this game is on such a predictable outcome. He doesnt do anything outside of the box and its really starting to kill the game.

the “stagger” system was the WORST thing they could have implemented. it drags out combat and makes the player feel weak, you hit enemies with a pool noodle until the game allows you to use an actual weapon for a few seconds.

honestly so many people watching this because so many people feeling the same. I am going to share the video as well

Your mistake was believing anyone that said 14 is the best narrative in gaming. Its quite hands down the worst narrative in FF history. Ive not played 16 yet despite having bought it and its my experience with 14 that is giving me my hesitation even though i bought the collectors exition because well, i like shiny things.

unfortunately for me, it was blu mage that broke the magic.
I fell out of love with xiv, and it never came back.

Keep in mind “creative studio 3” might have that name but it’s still business unit 3 emphasis on the business part.
Next to that if that director wants people to not mess with his story by taking away control most of the time, then why doesn’t that guy not make movies instead. Clearly thats what he is more interested in.

Good video. Also I think you should give old school runescape a try. There was a wonderful video about the game by TheoryWiseOS called “I quit WoW and spent a year addicted to Oldschool Runescape”

EMBERRRRRRRS ARRRRRKAYD LISSSEN TO MEEEE.

Ive been having issues with FFXIV’s difficulty since Endwalker. The fact that with every expansion the story just continues but the gameplay stays the same and it takes longer for a new player to reach endgame is in my opinion a flaw. Because the game doesnt teach you core raiding mechanics or your job except for the tooltips of your new skills. So players are going through a 200hr story without having to literally do anything except pressing 123 combos and getting through the game. When you have a 200hr MSQ where you dont have to basically do anything, players will get used to doing nothing and you can see that in the endgame where people have max level characters but still dont understand the cores of their jobs or how their gear works. You can see that as soon as you go to partyfinder extremes and savages. Its almost impossible to find a good random group because most of the times you have people who dont even know what a debuff is. While there is enough content for the people who dont want to engage in their rotation or battle content, the only next thing in difficulty is already savage and extreme which is too hard for the majority of the playerbase. There definetly needs to be more midcore content which requires you to utilize your skills to a degree where people can learn about their class without instantly wiping their raidgroup if making one minor mistake.

What bugs me is that the developers KNOW how to elevate the story using gameplay.

The solo duty as Thancred in ShB vs Ran’jit or the one in EW where you played as the random Imperial soldier communicated to the player the emotions of the scene in a way that ONLY gameplay could have done.

And the open world being so bland that they need to make brand new zones just for exploration is really the biggest example of what’s wrong with CS3’s design decisions: Everything is streamlined to the point of there literally being no player input.

I started playing in mid shadowbringers and the game felt really good. And the game was good, at least for me, encounters felt fresh a lot of jobs had unique features. It’s just nothing changed since then.
-Classes get dumbed down for 2 expansions in a row and now we are just playing lobotomized shb jobs.
-Encounter design started to feel old after a couple of raid tiers as most encounters are just a remix of old mechanics with nothing unique going on for them.
-Gear feels pointless as the entire purpose of gear is just to get into the instance with no gameplay alterations, like tiersets in every other mmo or stats having meaningful impact on rotation.
-EW post .0 and DT were just boring as hell with mediocre writing and mostly awful gameplay segments.
I was a BLM main going into DT and I was just so disappointed with the way they handled the job. And their promise of making jobs unique in 8.0 is just ridiculous as now we are stuck playing the same old jobs for 2-3 more years.
And the fact that they can’t balance the game when they homogenized everything to this extend is just funny to me

I’ve started playing FF14 during 2024 for real. I had heard some good about the story, and genuinely wanted to try it out.
That mostly was after some talk with some ex-player of said game that I finally got convinced.
I’ve beared with me the horrid web-sites and launcher, ARR’s generally really horrid intro along with its mind numbing gameplay loop, while still giving some appreciation that boss fights it already got.
But the biggest issue remained the same : the mind numbing gameplay loop… and the progression. Both of which ruined the appreciation I could’ve had during the following story.
Yes, even for Shadowbringer, which is where i’ve stopped by the end of November. It was above average to my experience, but clearly didn’t carry aways those issues that kept building up over the path i’ve had to go through.
Why does progression also mattered in the story ? Because the same story during Heavensward and Bloodstorm puts a fairly heavy emphasis on the “fact” that the WoL gets “stronger” over the encounters, while that was never felt for me.
And it’s not just the gearing that is an issue for me, but also the general class designs, that is extremely slow at the start, picks up at 60~70, and then I felt like i was getting duplicates of the same spells (I played Healer and Tank). And while I understand that the purpose is to juggle through the CDs, it really felt like it didn’t matter to use em until some extreme lategame content, and thus unlocking newer spells felt bad when i was getting another AoE heal spell that didn’t really interact with the rest of the kit.

I’m saying that this ruined it, but that’s not even the main issue : It’s also the fact that, during the “climax” of ARR, Ultima Weapon and Larabreah (with the Blessing of Light bullshit), and ARR Patches, the Banquet, these moments really just felt like the protag was a walking plot device that the story would use or discard whenever it pleases more so than an actual actor. And this is something that kept happened here and there onward, specially during Stormblood that had missed opportunities of character development because of this approach.
There’s also the fact that “glow-up/power up” moments during story generally didn’t make sense, mostly because they NEVER translated into gameplay (with the only exception of Shadowbringer at the end). That was most obvious from ARR patches to end ot Heavensward Patches, which Dragonsong’s final fight being the prime example of that : You receive the blessing of a dragon to fight another dragon… and nothing special happens except the fight itself, with no mechanical thing related to that moment whatsoever, which… simply feels disconnected. And yet the story insists that this “glow up” moment mattered ???

Also, as the video mentionned, FF14 commits a huge sin of not respecting the “Show, don’t tell”, with the prime example of that being the moment that results in Papalimo to sacrifices himself. Cuz sure, it ties all of the plots elements that SAYS that it would result into something powerful, but at NO moment does it SHOW that it would actually go out of control, even for the protagonist. The story only TELLS you afterwards that it would be too much for the WoL, because assumingly as powerful as Bahamuth, but it only felt like some randomly thrown bullshit.

With all of those reasons, I never got attached to anyone in the cast, which I’ve found boring for most, and it wasn’t even an enjoyable journey to go through, even during Shadowbringer, despite its higher in number good moments, but only results for me for an above average story.

Maybe I did the mistake to go full steam ahead with the story, barely going for the side stories that results into some raid content (which i would say is the ONE THING that the game does well), but that doesn’t remove the fact that there’s an issue with FF14’s team at handling gameplay loops, specially since it effectively never has changed since the very start.
The reason I did this however, is because of the weird restriction of the game on which you NEED to go through a questline before unlocking a dongeon or a boss encounter, with harder versions not even included in one package. Instead of, you know, just doing said interesting content.

And while i dislike being this guy, to this day, I still question how in the world one would find characters like Aurchefant endearing, and my general poor experience with the story has genuinely ruined my appreciation for FF14 fanart.

even with its flaws, 14 is still an amazing game and I’d rather play it than most other games

Idk bro, seems like a you problem

I wish YOUTUBERS WITH INFLUENCE STOP creating thse types of videos MAGICALY/COINCIDENTLY right after some BIG DRAMA is going on..
It litetraly happened with Asmon FF14 drama when and even before.
MAGICALY/COINCIDENTLY YOUTUBERS ALWAYS CHOSE TSHE TYPES OF VIDEOS TO MAKE RIGHT AFTER SOME RELATED/UNRELATED DRAMA HAPPENS.
Im more inmterested in WHY they do that instead of just making teh videos like these when nothing is happening….

while ff14 plays too safe and formulaic, I do think some of what people want is what others dont want. Class, gear etc expression for example is debatable. Some prefer being able to play one class and be able to jump from one to another, while another wants the changes to be real differences. I prefer the current one only because they’re able to maintain the balancing, from my experience with games that have vast class differences, the balancing tends to be shitty, we’ve had that already before where certain classes get gatekept from parties because their fave class is low tier in the meta.

Also how magicaly interesting you make this sort of video right after the Narc drama stuf……
Interesting how youtubers with influence ALWAYS do these types of videos ONLY AFETR SOME BIG BAT S*T crazy dama happens…..
INTERERSTING ISNT IT………

I agree to a substantial amount of your critique, thanks for your video. Personally, I do not agree with the difficulty one because I think the casual dungeons, trials and raids got a bit harder (I still see groups wipe from time to time) and I still enjoy that kind of content (especially the Dawntrail raids). So, difficulty is a fine line: There were games like Cyberpunk 2077 where I almost never died in my entire game (and still had fun), but games like Lies Of P, Another Crab’s Treasure or Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown were all kind of tough and sometimes annoyingly hard (thus not always fun to play).

However what all these games I mentioned have in common is that they are so fun to explore! I really feel like in FFXIV there are no hidden secrets. There is no reason to go off the path to discover something. I remember discoverin the new worlds in Heavensward or A Realm Reborn when I just started playing FFXIV during covid because this was all new to me and I liked the vibe and the atmosphere of the world. But after some time, they kind of look alike (parts of Dawntrail looked like Endwalker areas).

As you said: The gameplay is monotonous or sometimes almost nonexistent. Especially in Dawntrail where I just got so annoyed by all the cutscenes and I just wanted to fight and bash some enemies. ^^

So the metaphor that came to my mind when watching your video is the one of a father-child-relationship: Yoshi-P is like the father of grown up son/daughter that wants to break free and he and his studio is scared of letting it go. I really wish they would rethink a lot of their gameplay choices so that the next expansion will differ a lot from the ones before. More platforming, more diverse quests, more secret loot and yes, maybe more difficulty, too.

I am currently on a FFXIV hiatus but will definitely planning to tune in when there is a major (!) new update/patch.

4:50 What you purposly fail to mention is that COMMUNITY/PLAYERS THEMSELF ASKED/SCREECHED for that.The moment they implemented dungeons,bosses,mini boses that are a bit chalanging ,community immedietly screeched their lungs out and b*ched about it and after a patch or two dungeons,some story tied fights got way more easier than what they were originaly.
Heck some good story/additional lore dump quests or story got basicaly cut/removed just for the sake of over simplicity and some storyand dungeon fights got extremely watered down.

Eureka is great emergent gameplay in ffxiv.

I think the points this video focuses on are very important points of critique for the playerbase to think about. It goes beyond people going “WelL ThE CaSUalS ComPLAing RuIN MaH GaME!!!” sentiment that alot of player seem to have. I do agree that CS3 seems to be afraid to take any risks lest it upset the playerbase at large, yet they need to understand that it is impossible to please casual, midcore & hardcore players alike, yet its clear that the casual playerbase is who CS3 caters to for all non-raid (ex, savage, ultimate) content due to fear of people being unable to complete content. As touched on in the video, satisfaction in games comes with overcoming something difficult. Every time I’ve felt any true excitement in this game has been after completing something difficult. This game doesn’t need to be POE2 hard or anything, but like Dawntrail’s MSQ was genuinely miserable to sit through, story points completely aside. I found myself in previous expansion MSQ’s often being glued to my computer wanting to see what happens next in the story, but with Dawntrail the only motivation I had to finish the MSQ was to get to the endgame. I’ll never forget those damn stealth missions. They’re not challenging, they’re not fun, and really the only thing they manage to do well is make me want to take a break everytime I see one pop up.

I also really agree with the point being made with gear. The playerbase often jokes about “The true endgame is Glam!” without realizing how literal they’re being. Never once in over 4000 hours of gameplay have i acquired best in slot gear, because never once have I felt the need to do so. Gear feels so meaningless outside of letting you take that raidwide a little bit better than before and letting your numbers get a little bit bigger than before. The chore of even obtaining gear at endgame with no alternative (Cloud of darkness chaotic is a good start!) makes me not want to even bother. I don’t want to feel forced to run savage every week just so that I can in 8 weeks get 1 (one) job up to BiS to for literally no reason other than to either run ultimate or to continue farming savage but a teeny tiny bit faster than before. CS3 has completely locked any gear identity with a poor design choice of making everything numbers based, and can’t add any unique stats to gear that actually makes it interesting lest it upset game balance. When you look at Eureka or moreso Bozja, one of the most fun things in the game is to run into Bozja instances with haste gear and play on 2x speed. It’s such a simple change but it’s enough to make me rethink how I actually see gear outside of “i wonder how much direct hit materia i need” every single patch.

tl;dr i agree with the points being made in the video, but simultaneously people need to stop being cringe and blaming casuals for “ruining” the game by complaining, and rather hold CS3 accountable for neglecting portions of their playerbase. It’s impossible to make every side happy yet you can still find a relative middle ground without putting everyone to sleep.

Completely agree, fell off FFXIV after Shadowbringers. Every character has the same rotation and the same optimal gear. No theorycrafting, no options to play around with. Also, FFXIV’s story is severely overrated. Fans shout to the heavens about how the story was basically high art. It was good, by MMO standards, but not as great as everyone thinks. Mute player character, endless fake deaths, stilted canned animations, long pauses between lines of dialogue, and horrendous pacing of the story severely hamper it.

Overall, it was a good run between ARR and SH, but I got tired of the same old thing eventually.

It is the same for me. I fell out of it as well.

FF16 is so boring they give QTE to open every door in the game.

I feel this. Ever since I hit cap with Dawntrail, I felt like I was just going through the motions. Log on, do dailies, hit weekly cap, do M4, do Jueno. Last week I logged on and came to the realization: I burned out. My oldest FFXIV friend stopped chatting with me (last time we actively talked was July), another friend had suffered FC drama right before Christmas. All of it boiled down to one question for me: Is it worth logging in? The answer that popped into my head was *_NO!_* The fun and enjoyment was gone. Playing FFXIV reminded me of my days playing WoW: nonstop grinding just to keep up. By the time it hit January 1st, I realized that I didn’t need to keep up with everyone else, just the story. So when 7.2 hits, that’s pretty much what I’ll be doing; logging on Day 1, do the MSQ, unlock the raid, do it once, run M8 for 7 weeks, then just log on to keep my FC and personal from being demoed.

Prior to Dawntrail, I would’ve wholeheartedly recommended FFXIV to new players. Now….I’d tell them “stay away”. I bought FFXVI, never installed. The game is so boring that the disconnection is too much to ignore.

I tried getting into the game on several occasions, but playing it felt more like a chore than anything. I didn’t care about the story at all, so when game told me to run across two zones to speak with a NPC, only for me to skip the cutscene and then be sent back to talk to the previous NPC, I just dropped it. Combat is boring and crafting is repetitive. I tried couple of dungeons, but they felt super easy. The game is supposed to have lot of content, but all of it seems boring.

16 was great. You suck

Are you kidding me? You work for 12 hours and after that you really play games? Jesus is what you need lol

As a MMORPG Player i can not stand FF14 because it wants to tell a story that is good (?) but i just want power and be the best in a MMO. As a Singleplayer / Coop game it would one of the best FF ever made.

I mean Phantasy Star Online showed that you can do both and make a good Singleplayer RPG and a really good MMORPG.

I like how ff7 remake and rebirth is like, the antithesis to 16 and 14. 14 and 16 have the most boring quest design of just running around doing the same bullshit over and over again. Talk to this person, kill this thing, interact with this object for 5 seeconds, watch a 20 minute cut scene. remake and rebirth having some of that, but it also has you solving a mystery, dressing up as a lady, doing a dance minigame, playing leap frog, riding a dolphin at mac 3, Chocobo racing, but actually fun, going on a date with your favorite character, fort condor, and the best card game since triple triad, queen’s blood.

remake and rebirth you need to think about your party make-up, as well as what abilities you want/need. Should I bring aerith to spam magic and have strong heals, or should I bring yuffie to use more physical attacks and zip around avoiding damage. in 14 your classes don’t matter, so long as you have a tank, healer, and dps, you can do anything in this game. it doesn’t matter what those tanks, dps’s or healers are, you can do it all the same. The only difference is that the fight/dungeon will be longer/shorter. and in 16 you only play as clive and while you do get to customize what moves and dominants you have, you basically just choose what you like and ignore everything else because there’s no elemental weaknesses or resistances. there’s no status effects, there’s no variety or worry about any of the foes your fighting. It’s…boring.

Remake and rebirth is where I hope ff17 will lean into. Say what you will about the plot of the games, There fun as fuck to play.

lol tldr “i came to ffxiv to spite wow, i loved the ONE expansion with the good story, and final fantasy xvi sucked because it wasnt turned based? any more?

14 went right downhill when Yoshi did 16, in turn both are failing big time. The story on 14 is poor at best. The part that attracted most of its player base

Been playing 14 since 2013, got tired of the formula around ShB, but stayed around for the story and dressing up my wol until first post patch of EW. At that point I had completely fallen out of love with the game, I knew what I wanted out of 14 was never going to happen so I stopped raiding and doing most content that wasn’t hunts/fishing eventually I stopped doing that too and just played other games completely forgetting about 14. I played DT on release as an excuse to hang out with friends, but I really didn’t care about what was happening and I just wanted to make jokes with the homies. I played for like a week then let my sub run and I haven’t looked back can’t say I feel like I’m missing anything anymore.

I saw xiv up to endwalker to finish off the story. I’d started so I finished. After the endwalker story finished I left. I was already kind of where you are now but for other reasons.
“Raids” stand on a geometric shape that a boss will inevitably try to knock you off. Press exact same buttons in same order at all times.
Dead world. Nothing happens in that world unless the WoL makes it happen. I’m not a person. I’m a weapon people point me at problems to solve.
There’s no reason to even go out into the world once MSQ is completed.
Every new “feature” is a gimmick designed to put as many unnecessary steps between me and an arbitrary goal/reward.

Honestly, very fair critique, but you did not stick the landing at the end there. Belittling the people who disagree with you was completely unnecessary.

I gave up on Squenix after they lied about wanting to fix FFXV, but they kept putting out half-assed DLC…They lost my trust when they showed their true colors through their actions, not to mention the absolutely unacceptable real life advertisements in the game.

Yoshi-P was pulled to thin making 2 games. He needs to get back to FF14. He needs only make 1 game.

>good mmo
>posts retail wow and not classic wow

FFXIV started falling off when it started shifting away from it’s older brother FFXI, the more and more they trivialized everything, the more it lost it’s identity as a Final Fantasy MMO, where is the difficulty? where is the challenge? where is the dangerous open world? the open dungeons? the complex fighting mechanics, skillchains, magic bursts?

when I remember FFXIV, I remember the Story, not to say that it’s bad that I do, but when I remember FFXI, I remember the time I got a Valkurm emperor pull from a Japanese player, or when I save my party from wiping in a BCNM by pulling aggro, using gravity on the mob and spinning the arena till they got mana, or when I first got to 75, and all the parties I’ve done to make that happen, I remember running away from a goblin that hit a little too hard.

ON TOP OF THAT FFXI story is still one of the greatest narratives the FF franchise has to offer

I left after endwalker and I’m glad I did because the game felt complete in my eyes. There was no way they would top Shadowbringers or Endwalker either.
Also playing for years since ARR with Raids after Raids and Dungeons after Dungeons barely anything changed and when they introduced new modes like the Criterion Dungeons they added worthless rewards for doing it, so what was the point. I love the game too I just wish it would change after 10 years.

Unfortunately I agree, after being hyped for FFXVI I was disappointed to say the least, the game was ok but felt lacking to me and you explained it perfectly. Dawntrail also had this same feeling despite the dungeons being really good. Crossing my fingers that the next expansion is better because Heavensward-Endwalker made FFXIV my favorite game of all time.

Went through the exact same trajectory. XVI is a genuine failing of the FF franchise and shows how XIV isn’t truly a product of technical limitation but is the result of a design philosophy, the same that made XVI. I just can’t understand how anyone would want that in a game.

While I do agree that player agency being taken away and that progression is a illusion in XIV. Dawntrail has improved in the difficulty aspect when you look at the trials and dungeons, and while the savage and ultimate is not that hard it is pretty fun and interesting. Improved world design will be fun to have. And I do agree Dawntrail has shown that quest design should be improved upon, but in all honesty I don’t believe its Yoshi’s fault more the people behind him.

I mostly agree, but you didn’t go far enough. Yoshi-P plays it safe because FF14 is the only thing that makes money in SE. Rather than iterate and risk losing subs with big changes, he plays it safe in order to keep as many players as possible. And since the belief is that Final Fantasy games are about story, that is the part that gets focused on the most.

For me, it was a strange move when they announced that they were dissatisfied with the sales, and then shortly after, even before Rebirth launched on PC, they suddenly stated they were satisfied with the sales of both 16 and 7. So, within a short period, we have two contradictory statements from them.

world of warcraft a good MMO? LOL okay, disregarding everything you have to say about mmos

Solid video. I stopped playing early on in dawntrail when I had to follow an npc for what felt like an hour. After coming out of a 10 hour shift I legit almost fell asleep on my chair and decided I just wasn’t loving the game anymore.

TLDR: I feel the game used to have a better early game and they removed a lot of things that fleshed that out which was probably right because they weren’t even good difficulty but they need some good difficulty or gameplay variety.

You know what, I’ve been playing POE2 lately and I did wonder recently if the new player experience now is even as interesting as it was when I started in HW. Back then you had to put skill points in stats, though you’d put in in attack related stats of course, Diadem had gear that was actually rng which people didn’t like with the rates of getting it being low because it was a limited amount randomly going to someone in the big fight and stuff so even that was done bad and also back then they had the system that made you level other classes to get a job unlocked or to get skills for other jobs, not the best but more than just hit guys and level up. They did also have stats like accuracy, not well implemented but made people have to build more than crit and DH.

All of these things removed because they didn’t feel good, and though difficulty sometimes doesn’t feel good, I understand some of these things being removed but it would be nice if they added something to make things more interesting, a proper gearing system or stat system or something, the main problem being there that they’re aiming for all jobs to be playable and that’d also mean probably making other changes to the job’s gameplay and all games face the problem of meta gaming, good jobs vs bad jobs and with Picto and the new ultimate that’s becoming more apparent in FF14 despite the jobs being made like this.

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain…

I’ve always found it weird that a random product manager from Enix who had the most baseline competence necessary to reorganize a trainwreck MMO production into a very faint mechanical shadow of World of Warcraft became some worshipped genius comparable to and even exceeding the guy who actually created Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi.

The class designs and rotations have never been anything but mediocre, same of the boss encounter design, the world, the art design, the quest pacing, the “exploration”, and every other component of the gameplay itself. I can understand how people might appreciate Natsuko Ishikawa for writing some nice material, but that’s not Yoshi-P’s work, and we can see what happens to the story outside of her contributions. Even then, a lot of the story concepts in 14 are recycled amalgams of big ideas from the stories of 5, 6, 9, 10, and 12.

Very little of notable quality has been created here, and the exceptions had nothing to do with the guy who always gets the credit. And finally, his banal producer mentality asserted itself more powerfully than ever in the conception of XVI, a cynical mishmash of popular trending market successes like Game of Thrones and Attack on Titan. This is how your average boardroom executive thinks, not a visionary creator. He’s done nothing but regurgitate other stuff in lesser form, and he started from the lowest bar possible.

He seems like a nice guy, and I like how he’s shielded his products from NFT garbage being pushed by his cohorts on the board, but let’s be honest about what he his and what his obvious limitations are. This isn’t even close to being the creative heir to Final Fantasy. The weird parasocial adoration people have developed for this corporate middle manager is not ultimately to anyone’s benefit.

Tbh you aren’t wrong. With that said, I do not like DT at all but I do enjoy the more laid back approach to an mmo as a whole. I migrated from Retail WoW to FFXIV. So I’m sure that’s where most of this stems. But as someone who also works and does a bunch of other things which limit me to only a few hours in the evenings most days to actually play, I don’t want an hour of a half of it to be spent figuring out what to do. I’d just like to play. This is obviously not indicative of how I feel about most games and I agree that SHB was the best xpac, but for an mmo, I like not having to spend a lot of my free time trying to figure out what to do.

I started playing GW 2 again and really enjoyed being challenged I wish ff 14 did the same thing.. Also I forgot how much voice acting is in GW 2 story wise, why dose 14 have so many story parts zero voice acting in it, hell even ESO has full story voice acting even for side quests.

Agree with everything you said, and those reasons are why I have fallen out of love with FFXIV after many years of playing.
Yoshi-P is an amazing micro-manager, but is so obsessed with pleasing everybody, that he listens to every single bit of criticism, even the one that doesn’t make sense. Example: XIV’s story is EXTREMELY simple, like you could finish it while blindfolded, and yet if you look at online forums, it’s full of people that complained about stuff like Ran’Jit’s encounter in SHB or the two amazing moments (Thancred’s MSG quest and when you are a soldier) in EW. Yoshi-P is dumbing down the game to cater to these people that can’t even push a button, because of fear of losing possible players and so possible people paying for a subscription. It’s honestly insulting, and I really wish that some change can come to CBU3, because in this moment I have completely fallen out of love with them and with their games.

The sad thing about Creative Studio 3 prioritizing the story of FF16 over everything else is that the story wasn’t even good. It was way too derivative of the Game of Thrones show – to the point that they even copied the bad parts of it.

At least the game had some sick Kaiju fights though.