Game Devs Can Make Weird Decisions About Gameplay, And I Have To Wonder What They Were Thinking

Do you ever feel like developers kinda checked out while designing something in an MMO? Like, it seems they got to something and just went, “We have no idea what to do here.” But obviously something needs to be done there because, funnily enough, it’s a core component of what they’re trying to do.

I ask this because I’ve had that exact feeling recently while doing Final Fantasy XIV’s Cosmic Exploration. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the majority of it. I mean, it’s crafting and gathering. I enjoy doing both those things. And I didn’t really expect anything to stray too far from those two activities. We’re here to gather and craft, and get our shiny new tools.

Of course, to make it all a bit more exciting and give us more story content, the devs put us to work building a base on the moon. Much like Ishgardian Restoration, this means working as a group to complete goals. So, in addition to us just crafting our hearts out, they’ve added three other things for us to do: Mech Ops, Red Alerts, and the big Fate.

Mech Ops is a group activity that allows some people to pilot mechs to do things like clear a fungus or break up rocks. Others join in as ground support, clearing smaller fungi and rocks. Red Alerts are group crafting sessions where players must complete tasks using one of five or six of the crafting and gathering jobs. This is also a great way to earn additional currency, which we immediately gamble away.

Finally, there are the big Fates. These come around only when everyone has done enough to fill a big bar. You would think that, due to their rarity and size, they’d be the most impressive of events. However, what we’ve got is a group of people running in a circle, clicking on things for 40 minutes (or until they manage to complete the cycle enough times). The first time the big Fate came up, we ran in circles, clicking on things to repair it. The next two times, we ran between little vehicles and charging stations. We’d click the vehicle to remove the battery, click the charging station to charge said battery, and then return to the vehicle to click on it again and put the battery back in.

That’s it. That’s the big event that marks major progress and something new being built. To be honest, the gameplay for that bit is exhausting – and not in the “I’ve been beating my face against this boss for 20 minutes” kind of way. And it really feels like the devs just kind of went, “Well, we need something here… Click on things? Yeah. Click on things.”

I’m not the only person who’s a bit put out by this particular event. Others have bemoaned the situation to me. The thing is that it’s left me thinking about what it must be like for developers, particularly for games with a lot of people, all with different tastes, trying to come up with fresh things for them to do.

Admittedly, this doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem in other games that I play. And those are F2P. But, they’re also newer games, with half the lifespan at best. The HoYo games, Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, seem like they also boast a bigger dev team. That said, they’re constantly rolling out something different for players to do in their events. And while some of it is stuff I elect to skip over, it’s obviously fun content for those who are into that part of the gameplay.

It’s also worth noting that, for the most part, those are effectively single-player games. So that could make things easier.

And, perhaps that’s part of the problem. MMORPG developers have a somewhat unenviable task. That is building a world that players not only want to live in, but that they want to live in together. In most games, that means finding ways to cater to the wide variety of tastes of the people playing your game. At least, that’s the case if you want to have the “massively” part of “massively multiplayer online”. There are those MMOs that decide they’re going to do one thing and try to do it really well, but that limits the number of players the game is going to draw.

It’s made even worse if the game is somehow unfriendly to its core player base, such as not valuing their time.

At least with MMORPGs that try to do a little bit of everything, there’s something for everyone to do, even if some of those things aren’t as good as others. If you don’t feel like one activity is a good use of your time, you can go do something else. That said, it would help if the less-than-stellar gameplay were relegated to things that are designed to take up less of your time. Forty minutes of running between things and furiously clicking on them to only have everyone fail in the end because you don’t have enough people there is not a fun way for anyone to spend their time. We could have spent that time crafting.