Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Sick'em!

How many mushrooms does one need to eat to see the internet as a digital spacetime and the live service and MMO game worlds as pocket dimensions of that digital reality?

Not many, there's a billion isekai with that exact story line.

And again, the same reused excuses: not being the first, not actually talking about it.

No, I don't think saying cultural pride doesn't automatically lead to efficiency is inherently political.

If I say certain party has better policy or certain policy needs to be enforced then that's political.

Failed miserably :(

With the right variety, one.

Not to hate on XIV but it's wild to me how incompetent the management of the game is at this point.

It's operating on 5 platforms now (potentially to be released on another soon with Switch 2), which limits what it can make as opposed to if it was PC only (they limit the content based on the weakest platform) and greatly increases how long it takes to make each patch (patch validation to consoles is famously problematic, since it has to be verified by Microsoft and Sony). They also will have to deal with potential censorship demands over storylines and cosmetics for companies like Microsoft (which impacts all platforms).

All platforms are combined on the same servers, which again causes great problems. If Microsoft for instance decided to not verify a patch, they can't release the patch for any platform till they do.

They also run versions of the game for other regions like China.

They are stretching their developers more and more, and forcing them to create numerous builds of the game. They also support far too many languages.

The type of content it creates is exclusively hyper casual with high drop rates, which means it lasts a shorter duration before new content has to be made. The content they make is incredibly expensive to create due to requiring large teams and high graphical fidelity.

The main saving grace is the RP / Modding community that mostly came from Second Life and effectively make their own content, cause they will hang around no matter what. However this also means they cannot add any kind of cheat detection system, out of fear of losing these people.

This is why WoW is so dominant, they kept to one platform and have more hardcore content that lasts longer. XIV is extremely bloated and difficult to work on, and WoW is trim and efficient by comparison.

Ontop of all this YoshiP seems fixated with creating more single player games from the core group of developers of the unit that was made purely for online games. Stretching his developers even more. Japan has strict labor laws, which means they refuse to hire many new people due to not being allowed to lay anyone off. Which is obviously a problem and leads to burn out when they overwork the ones they have.

I'm not a fan of either game, but this is purely an observation of the way the games are managed.

Keep up the good work on 14, SE.

ffxiv is a game of all time

The worst part of all that is that XI has to share their resources, which means we are dead last for almost any kind of dev time. For a piece of crap game that is so vapid and soulless. Only held up by people who don't know what a good game is and just like the graphics.

I read about 3 words into that and then I thought to myself...you really do talk too much.

i mean is xiv actually a ***game though? there's a lot of data that suggests it's been at least passable (as much as this one is!) for over 10 years.

XIV, at one point, was my favorite game to play and addictive like crack cocaine.

This varies inversely with how new you are to it, and how good the story and gameplay systems are.

Every player goes through a honeymoon phase with it. Generally lasts a year or two past the current point where a major expansion plateaus.

I got majorly addicted to it from 2.0 until about 5.5. During 4.0~4.55 I started to fall out of my honeymooning with it, and started to get real critical of it, and even engage in doomspeak about it. Then the finale to 4.55 was chock full of FFVI references and strong story beats. Followed by it blowing the *** out of the water with Shadowbringer's 5.0 storyline.

However, Shadowbringers also gutted the gameplay rigor for tanks and healers but discontent remained out of sight due to the powerful narrative, and just enough original content that it was still a very fun expansion. Tack on a little Matsuno storyline in Bozja, and the hook remained.

6.0 had the hype train of what came before it that really drove Endwalker's sales, but as I have opined before, it failed to deliver but people were blinded by the hype.

7.0 was garbage, and the gameplay is heavily diluted from what it once was. Same principles for any GCD based real time action, but largely without any nuance or metacomposition being possible within the confines a job system that was supposed to be all about doing just that on a fight by fight basis. They gave up by 5.0 and started the homogenization then, and it was largely complete by 6.0, and 7.0 watered it down further.

Every time you think, "Surely it can't get any simpler." they strip something else away. Even to the point where they delete combos or make combos irrelevant by letting you do other skills in the middle of them without cancelling your combo.

TL;DR - XIV went from being a game centered on its gameplay with a good narrative, to being a cinematic game centered on its narrative with a side of gameplay. The narrative's now bad too, btw. So, nah, it's no longer good.

My golden rule is to not even beginn reading anything past 10 lines.

I'm not going to pretend to be a mindless stan or anything, but I think it's still important to recognize the presence xiv still commands on the world stage in comparison to its competitors despite the hiccups we've witnessed.

I'm not of the opinion that either of Square's flagship MMOs are in any real danger of eos or anything anytime soon, as the fate of truly bad games have been in the past (Toon Town, Tera, Club Penguin, etc to name a few examples).