If FF is your juice, fine. Go play it.

Why do you need something like that?

I must be missing something as that link has a small amount of high-level information and a few details of what will happen across 5 patches.

Not much of a 10-year plan if that is it. Considering that article seems to be based on a stream I doubt there was much detail released making it a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

Regardless, Zenimax should not be concerned about FF14 news releases. They need to focus on ESO as each game needs to be its own game. In other words, we do not care about FF14 as we play ESO.

I suppose that ZOS have maximum 3-4 years plan. I think they are more situation oriented in terms of updates

Even if Zos does have an X year plan, they are tight lipped enough about those kinds of things we are not likely to ever hear about it. I personally believe they do have a plan, because trying to build a game on this scale without one is impossible.
I also believe that sharing at least part of their plan would go a long way to helping them get there. Right now, (especially with some of the combat changes) they are getting a lot of push back because too many people think they are just changing things to make changes. If they share a view of the vision they are working towards then, that will help dispel at least some of that pushback. There will always be haters, so we cannot expect everyone to get on board, but I think that sharing their plan would still help.

Tornaad wrote: »

Even if Zos does have an X year plan, they are tight lipped enough about those kinds of things we are not likely to ever hear about it. I personally believe they do have a plan, because trying to build a game on this scale without one is impossible.
I also believe that sharing at least part of their plan would go a long way to helping them get there. Right now, (especially with some of the combat changes) they are getting a lot of push back because too many people think they are just changing things to make changes. If they share a view of the vision they are working towards then, that will help dispel at least some of that pushback. There will always be haters, so we cannot expect everyone to get on board, but I think that sharing their plan would still help.

I want to say they did actually acknowledge this point the other year. The combat team, for example, has a vision of how all the changes over many updates arc towards a certain goal, but all we see are the big changes each update without having an idea of what the endpoint is - or even in some cases what the starting point was in terms of what they felt were issues to address.

I get the sense that they think the Combat Previews address this, at least in part, but they are typically very piecemeal and focus on a single update with maybe a vague reference to a bigger picture. Not having a clear idea of that bigger picture and therefore how the updates fit within it has not uncommonly left some people feeling in the dark (or at least IC-level twilight) about what’s going on and what’s next.

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Tornaad wrote: »

they are getting a lot of push back because too many people think they are just changing things to make changes.

The problem is who they are listening to: the focus group of select end-game people, and their pet guilds.

Generic PvE can be done in mob-dropped green gear, with any build. So why fine tune that outside of game-breaking disasters. It's the demographic that does their niche content that needs the surgical fine tuning. ..which is why a lot of changes don't make practical sense for 95% of players, but are critical for the functioning of the "raiders", and the highly vocal PvP crowd.

I'm calling shenanigans on your comment; if ZoS actually listened to end game players we never would have had the abomination known as U35 where players of all levels suffered. ZoS does not listen to us, in fact if you read the social media comments and snarky patch notes comments during the past 18 months you'd see certain devs see us as an adversary instead of someone to listen to. If ZoS actually listened to us the end game wouldn't be such a small community post U35. As for PVP, ZoS listens to them so much that they haven't gotten any new PVP content in years and got free livestream bans simply typing the dreaded "PVP" word in live stream chats inquiring what the status is. We also have ESO content creators leaving the space or diversifying to other games on both the PVE and PVP sides. In actuality ZoS focuses on casuals and whales who dump obscene amounts of real money into the crown store far more than PVE or PVP end game players.

I personally prefer to be surprised every year (even if the chapter's province/territory/race is not one of my first choices). Same goes for smaller content.

What I would like to know is the 10 year plan for ES6.

Pelanora wrote: »

Sigh such a forums comment.

It's funny you say that, because what I think is a very 'forums comment' is passively-aggressively calling out some devs, over something another game is doing, and thinking you can force them to make a statement about it. That's peak forums.

ArchMikem wrote: »

What's with this new "ten year" thing with game developers/publishers? First I heard of one was Bungie's contract with Destiny. And isn't ESO nearing 10yrs old already?

I think it might be a standard business term.

My employer has an overall 10 year plan and each department or project has their own, with a few longer-term ones. The longest I know of is a 100 year plan, but I work in wildlife conservation so sometimes long timescales are necessary. (That one is for re-growing a few hundred square miles of forest, from seedlings.)

On that basis I assume ZOS have a 10-year plan but I suspect it's all high level corporate stuff which wouldn't tell us much about the actual game. At best it'd confirm they plan to stick with the current release schedule or to review it after X years and the rest will be things like targets for overall income, subscription levels, crown sales etc. recruitment targets and maybe dates for big hardware refreshes.

They're not going to have planned out (and certainly wouldn't share) 10 years worth of balance changes or other details players care about like the location and story for each expansion, which new houses will be added to the game and things like that.

Great suggestion! I would love to see a 10-year plan for this game. We currently only get 1-year roadmaps for the game, but having some sort of long-term road-map and plan to advance this game further would be amazing.

As with anything in life, having a 5-year or 10-year roadmap plan is highly beneficial. Something to let the players know that the team is committed to a future goal shows dedication, organization, promise, and vision. All good things for players to have renewed trust and have their own unified vision.