We always hear about spaghetti code but how much of it is true? I'm a game programmer and my impression of FFXIV based on how it feels to play, is that they have been mostly unable to truly add new mechanics to the game or to polish the gameplay and UX. Most of the content that gets made reuses the exact same systems that have existed since ARR. There are improvements to those systems, but very few actual new systems that enable meaningfully new or different gameplay.
Let me give some examples:
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Let me give some examples:
- The UI is incredibly clunky. It seems that most actions lock you in certain modes that are rigid and not compatible with each other, so you can only browse one UI at a time and can't easily access a lot of things. This applies to things like glamour dressers being a usability mess due to vague "server constraints"
- Same applies to the retainer system, which is needlessly obtuse and an obstacle to selling your items
- Speaking of items, let's talk about how bad inventory management is. Everything gives all sorts of tokens that have to take inventory space and for some reason can't be stored as currencies. I had an entire retainer of just raid tokens of all sorts. That combined with the convoluted armory chest system means everyone has to inevitably spend an hour doing inventory management every now and then
- Pricing and selling items on the market requires so many steps to see prices, probably because of server constraints that often get mentioned
- The world content hasn't innovated since FATEs. Everything is just FATEs. Even field exploration zones are just a map with fates.
- Cosmic exploration is fun conceptually, but in truth it's also nothing meaningfully new. It's just fates where you sit and craft in a loop.
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